Around 1930, Dr. Takashi Nagai, an atheist at the time (and future survivor of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki in 1945), visited a Polish Franciscan priest recently arrived in Japan—the future Saint Maximilian Kolbe. He tells this story:
"When he shook my hand, I realized he had a fever. I asked him: ‘Don’t you feel sick?’ – ‘Examine me!’ he replied with a bright smile. I examined him and exclaimed: ‘Father, this is serious! Both of your lungs have tuberculosis!’ Undaunted, he continued to smile and said: ‘Thank you, Doctor, you're a good doctor. Both in Rome and in Poland excellent doctors have told me the same thing for the past ten years.’ My reaction was to exclaim: ‘What? For ten years!?’
And this Knight of the Immaculate had been traveling the world for several years in this physical condition! As a physician, I was confronted with an incredible case, a challenge to science. And he continued to be active and cheerful although he only had the use of 1/5 of his lungs and a continual fever. Then, Father Kolbe gave me a Rosary, saying with a smile: ‘It's all in here! Everything is in here!’"
In 1934, Takashi Nagai asked to be baptized.
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