St. Maximilian Kolbe

Book excerpt: Volume six of the Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner, entitled simply, St. Maximilian Kolbe, gathers together Fehlner's essays on the great Conventual Franciscan saint and martyr. These works come mainly from the journal founded by Kolbe, Miles Immaculatae, and were composed in the 1980s when Fehlner was editor of said journal. Readers of this volume will note the close connection to the themes of ecclesiological renewal and the Conventual Franciscan charism treated in volume five, as Fehlner worked to integrate and synthesize Kolbe's Mariological and pneumatological insights in a context of ecclesial mission and evangelization. The essays in this volume form a mosaic of Kolbean theology and spirituality, mapping out the geography of Fehlner's own theological itinerary that will reach, in terms of scholarly output, its final destination in his posthumous Theologian of Auschwitz (2019). Themes addressed, among others, in this volume include Kolbe's understanding of the history and unity of the Franciscan Order, the Trinity in relation to Immaculate Conception, creation and evolution, consecration, Kolbe's vision for Niepokalanow, Kolbe and the contemporary magisterium, and Kolbe's relevance for a contemporary retrieval of Bonaventure's theology of history.