Maximilian Kolbe and the Body Freely Given

In the summer of 1941, a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz. The SS guards selected ten men from Block 14 to die by starvation as punishment. When Franciszek Gajowniczek heard his number called, he cried out for his wife and children. A small, bespectacled Polish priest stepped forward from the ranks. "I would like to take his place," Father Maximilian Kolbe said quietly. "I have no wife or children."

The guards permitted it. For two weeks, Kolbe led the condemned men in hymns and prayers in the starvation bunker beneath Block 11. Witnesses reported that while others screamed in agony, Kolbe remained calm, offering words of comfort and holding the hands of dying men. When the guards finally entered the cell on August 14th, Kolbe was the last one alive, kneeling in prayer. They killed him with an injection of carbolic acid.

Kolbe understood something Paul wrote to the Corinthians nearly two millennia earlier: "You are not your own; you were bought at a price." He did not cling to his body as a possession to be hoarded or indulged. He recognized it as a vessel belonging to the Almighty — and he offered it freely.

Paul's words in this passage are not merely about avoiding sin. They are an invitation to see our bodies as Kolbe saw his — as temples of the Holy Spirit, instruments of a glory far greater than our own survival. To glorify God in your body is to live as though you have already been purchased, because you have.