We have many saints that we celebrate who
were members of the Carmelite religious order.
We think of St Teresa of Avila, St Therese of Lisieux, St John of the
Cross, and St Teresa of the Andes, just to names a few. Today we celebrate another great Carmelite
saint – St Edith Stein, also known by the name she took as a Carmelite nun –
Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was
born in part of the German empire in the late 19th century to an observant
Jewish family. She earned a PhD in
philosophy. Her study of the writings of
St Teresa of Avila drew her to the Catholic faith. After her conversion and baptism, she became
a Carmelite nun. She was transferred to
a convent in the Netherlands during WWII for her safety because of the threat
of the Nazi regime, but a statement read by Catholic priests in their parishes
in the Netherlands in 1942 that condemned the Nazis brought about the
imprisonment of Jewish converts to Catholicism in that country. Edith Stein died in the Auschwitz
concentration camp in 1942 at the age of 50.
We look into the human heart at the
grace of God that can be at work there, but we also see a lot of violence and
destruction that can come out of our human heart as well. In today’s Gospel, as Jesus marvels at the
openness of the heart of a child, of how that child can accept God’s kingdom,
he sees the ways that we adults can close ourselves off from the Kingdom of
God. We think of not only of the
terrible things that Edith Stein and her generation witnessed during WWII, but
we think of the acts of terrorism and violence we see at work in the world
today: dancers gunned down in a night
club in Orlando, people killed as they are celebrating their national holiday
in France, a priest killed in a parish in Normandy while celebrating mass, and dozens
of people killed at open-air markets in suicide bombings in the Middle
East. May our hearts be open to God’s
kingdom. May we be channels of Christ’s peace.
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