Yesterday, August 9, was the feast day of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, whose original name was Edith Stein. I used this handout about Edith Stein on Sunday with the men at the CMCF state prison rehab unit. We are also celebrating the feast day of Maximilian Kolbe this upcoming Friday. Both of them died as prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during WWII. I pray that these two saints help these men who are going through the rehab program and trying to leave behind their addictions and trying to address their mental health issues. St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is a great saint for them to see as an example.
Quotes:
“O my God, fill my soul with holy joy, courage and strength to serve You. Enkindle Your love in me and then walk with me along the next stretch of road before me. I do not see very far ahead, but when I have arrived where the horizon now closes down, a new prospect will open before me and I shall met with peace.”
"We all, who are faithful children of the Church and who see the conditions in Germany with open eyes, fear the worst for the prestige of the Church, if the silence continues any longer. We are convinced that this silence will not be able in the long run to purchase peace with the present German government... But the responsibility must fall, after all, on those who brought them to this point and it also falls on those who keep silent in the face of such happenings." This provocative quote is interpreted as a moral imperative that to stay quiet in the face of evil makes one complicit in it. This quote is taken from a prophetic letter written by Edith Stein to Pope Pius XI on April 12, 1933. Just weeks after Hitler came to power, the Jewish convert and Catholic nun urged the Pope to publicly condemn Nazism and the escalating persecution of Jews. Although the Pope received the letter, it appears he did not directly respond to her.
"Our love of neighbor is the measure of our love of God. For Christians, and not only for them, no one is a ‘stranger’. The love of Christ knows no borders.”
Narrative:
Edith Stein was a German-Jewish philosopher and Carmelite nun. Born in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland) to an observant Jewish family, Stein became a leading academic, studying phenomenology under Edmund Husserl. (Phenomenology is the philosophical study of conscious, subjective experience. It focuses on examining how things appear to us in our lived experience, rather than analyzing the physical world objectively.) She went on to write extensively on empathy, philosophy of the human person, and theology. For a time, she had left the Jewish faith and proclaimed herself an atheist. After reading the autobiography of St. Teresa of Ávila and then studying her works and having a profound conversion experience, she was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church in 1922.
In 1933, as the Nazi regime rose to power and enacted antisemitic laws, Stein was forced to resign from her teaching position. She entered the Carmelite order in Cologne, taking the religious name Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Teresa, Blessed of the Cross). To escape escalating persecution, she transferred to a convent in Echt, Netherlands, in 1938. In 1942, in retaliation for the Dutch Catholic bishops' public condemnation of Nazi racism, the Gestapo arrested Jewish converts to Catholicism across the Netherlands. Stein and her sister, Rosa, were transported to Auschwitz, where they died in the gas chamber. The Roman Catholic Church later recognized her as a martyr, honoring her both for her intellectual contributions and her solidarity with the Jewish people. She was canonized as saint in 1998.
Edith Stein had the courage to seek the truth of God in her study of philosophy. This journey led her to the Catholic faith and taking vows as a Carmelite nun. She embraced the cross of Christ in her suffering. She had faith in facing the evil of the Nazi regime. She is a great example of faith for us in the modern world.
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