St. Edith Stein
ONE
Today is the Feast Day of St. Edith Stein, a Jewish convert to Catholicism who became a Carmelite nun and took the name Theresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was captured by the Nazis in Holland and executed at Auschwitz, August 9, 1942. Her feast day comes at a providential time. I have received numerous comments from our devoted members and podcast listeners who are struggling right now with trials of many kinds. These comments always break my heart, but that’s where saints like St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross come in. Hers was a life dedicated to embracing the cross of Jesus Christ, in complete contradiction to the spirit of our secular age which emphasizes comfort and pleasure seeking. Her life reveals the power of redemptive suffering. Her identification with the Cross transformed her, including her life at Auschwitz. Instead of viewing her sufferings as an expression of God having abandoned her, she recognized that her life had been truly conformed by the Cross, and had become a means of mediating grace not just for herself but for others, especially the Jewish People. In 1938 she wrote; "I understood the Cross as the destiny of God's People, which was beginning to be apparent in 1933 (the year Hitler came to power)…I felt that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take it upon themselves on everybody's behalf. Of course, I know even better now what it means to be wedded to the Lord under the sign of the Cross. However, one can never comprehend it, because it is a mystery".
TWO
Discovering the redemptive value of suffering became one of two huge factors that led to Edith’s conversion to Catholicism. The other discovery that overwhelmingly drew her to the Church was the experience of meditation. Her doctoral studies in philosophy only increased her hunger for truth, and this hunger further led her to desire intimacy with God. She once encountered a Catholic mom stepping into a dark Church to pray before continuing with her shopping. “This was something totally new to me,” she commented. She had only every thought about churches and synagogues as places for worship services. She stated; “I saw someone coming straight from the busy marketplace into this empty church, as if she was going to have an intimate conversation. It was something I never forgot". This experience was a mere prelude to something even more profound. One evening Edith picked up an autobiography of St Teresa of Avila and read this book all night. "When I had finished the book, I said to myself: this is the truth". Later, looking back on her life, she wrote; "My longing for truth was a single prayer".
The gift of prayer changed St. Edith Stein who in turn changed the world. Will you be changed too?
THREE
For St. Theresa Benedicta, the Cross symbolized the union of both prayer and the redemptive power of suffering. The Cross was the full revelation of Christ’s offering of Himself to the Father on behalf of sinners out of love. For her, the cross was the very power to confront and defeat the face of evil. When Hitler ascended to power in 1933, she believed him to be animated by the spirit of the AntiChrist. The hideous nature of his ideology threatened the peace of the entire world. She recognized in her desire to become a Carmelite nun a potential and mysterious way to counter such hate with divine sacrificial love. As a religious, she could pray and offer herself for the evil ones — the Nazi oppressors — as well as for the innocent ones, the Jews and all souls everywhere suffering in World War II. Shortly before her death she said to a priest; "Who will do penance for the evil that the Germans are inflicting?" On the way to her crucifixion, the gas chamber at Auschwitz, she spoke of her suffering as an offering "for the conversion of atheists, for her fellow Jews, for the Nazi persecutors, and for all who no longer had the love of God in their hearts." In her essay, "The Natural and Supernatural in Faust," she writes; “The battle wages over the human soul; heaven and hell wrestle for it. If we could see this soul in its loneliness and need, conscious of its way only in dark distress, its way shrouded in foggy night, if we could witness its struggles, its fallings and recoveries, we would be engulfed by a trusting certainty that the soul is signified in the hand of God, that its way and end lie clear as day before the gaze of the Almighty, and that He has commanded His angels to lead it from error to light.”
FOUR
She did not panic in the face of persecution and suffering. Her confidence in divine providence lay in her confidence that in the end, love wins. Therefore, everything, even the most awful and intimidating, can be transformed by God’s loving purpose, to work everything for our benefit. God may tolerate but never directly will evil because He knows He can bring good out of it for us. She wrote, "Things were in God's plan which I had not planned at all. I am coming to the living faith and conviction that—from God's point of view—there is no chance and that the whole of my life, down to every detail, has been mapped out in God's divine providence and makes complete and perfect sense in God's all-seeing eyes." In our own struggles and trials, it can be very trying to endure the setbacks and contradictions of life; especially when these entail watching loved ones suffer. But these should not dissuade us from assuming the very attitude of St. Theresa Benedicta, who knew that God’s loving care not only provides for us in all our necessities but uses all circumstances to bring about the very best end.
FIVE
St. Theresa Benedicta’s sister Rosa also converted and became a nun in the same order. God knew that even when one has the heart of a saint, in the face of such tragedy, Edith would need support. None of us are called to go it alone. We all need support in the form of a community to not only endure hardships that may lie ahead, but also to grow and to overcome our own selfishness. When St. Theresa and Rosa were arrested by the Gestapo in 1942, she said to her sister, “Come, Rosa, we go for our people.” Prof. Jan Nota, who was greatly attached to her, wrote later: "She is a witness to God's presence in a world where God is absent." Although nothing could prepare her for the horrors of the death camp, she never lost faith and hope. Eyewitnesses said of her that she was a force of peace and source of strength for those around her. May we call upon her most profound assistance when we are facing the toughest challenges, knowing that in St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, we have a friend who will open for us the way of the redeeming power of the Cross.