How God spoke to St. Maximillian M. Kolbe when he was only a child, revealing to him his future mission and martyrdom through in a vision in a dream. His mother testifies to this in a letter she wrote:
"Trembling with emotion and with tears in his eyes he told me: 'I prayed a lot to Our Lady for her to tell me what would become of me. And later, finding myself in a church, I prayed to her again. Then she appeared to me holding two crowns in her hands: one white and the other red. She looked at me tenderly and asked if I wanted those crowns. The white meant that I would persevere in purity, and the red meant that I would be a martyr. I replied that I accepted them both … Then Our Lady looked at me sweetly and disappeared.' The extraordinary change of the boy, for me, confirmed the veracity of the event. He always made himself understood, and on every occasion, he hinted with a beaming face at his eagerness for a martyr's death. And so I prepared for it...like Our Lady after Simeon's prophecy."
(S. RAGAZZINI, A espiritualidade mariana de S. Maximiliano Maria Kolbe dos frades menores conventuais, 6-7, unpublished translation by pfsgm)