DYING FOR OTHERS

DYING FOR OTHERS

A prisoner escaped form Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp in Poland. As a warning to the others the prison guards picked out ten men at random, to be executed in public. One of the men was the father of a family. As the victims were being marched out to execution, another prisoner, Maximillian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest, stepped forth and offered to take the man’s place.

The officer in charge was stunned but he accepted the offer. Maximillian died, and when he was canonized a saint some forty years later that man, whose place he had taken, was seen on international television, with tears streaming down his face.

He had met one man who really loved. “Greater love than this no man hath that a man should lay down his life for a friend.”
(Jn 15:13)

-     Putting other before myself is one way to think of living a Christian life.