Memorial of Saint Teresa Benedictaof the Cross, Virgin and Martyr
Her great intellectual adventure was her encounter in 1912 in Göttingen with E. Husserl. She entered the world of phenomenology and the community that participated in it, including M. Scheler, R. Ingarden and R. Reinach. Then she had the opportunity to take a closer look at Catholicism. This milieu sincerely searched for the truth and was open to Christianity.
Edith Stein meeting with Anna Reinach, her husband Rudolf Reinach died in the 1917 war, had a great influence on her spiritual transformation. Edith was very afraid of this meeting. She thought that Anna was desperate and devastated by this tragic event. Meanwhile, she was full of inner balance and peace. It was then that she intuitively - as she writes in her autobiography - for the first time encountered the mystery of the risen Jesus who really conquered death!
Complementing her spiritual search was reading the autobiographical work "The Book of Life" by St. Teresa of Avila, whom we remembered on October 15. She read it in one breath overnight, and the next day said, "It's true." Her rediscovery of the presence of the Living God was accompanied by Abbot Raphael Walzer. On January 1, 1922, she was baptized in the Catholic Church. She constantly deepened her faith by reading the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and J. H. Newman.
More and more the thought of a vocation to religious life matured in her heart. She wanted to give her life completely to God. She did so by joining the Carmel in Cologne on October 14, 1933. She took the name of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She continued her scientific work in Carmel. She was delighted with the depth of the Catholic liturgy that was being renewed during this period. Prayer was at the center of her life, so she wrote: “Every true prayer is a prayer of the Church; by means of that prayer the Church prays, since it is the Holy Spirit living in the Church, Who in every single soul 'prays in us with unspeakable words. The mystical river flowing through hundreds of years is not some stray branch of the life of prayer in the Church because in mysticism the Holy Spirit lives and breathes wherever He wishes. He himself is the creator of ever new forms. Without him, there would be no liturgy or the Church ... It was the mysticism which created this polyphonic, constantly rising song in honor of the Triune God".
The Carmelite nun, apart from philosophical works, also wrote a commentary on the writings of St. John of the Cross, entitled "Knowledge of the Cross". It was a time of increasing Nazi terror in Germany, mainly against Jews. Sister Teresa Benedicta wrote from Carmel a dramatic letter to Pope Pius XI, in which she asked to intercede for the cruelly persecuted Jewish people. Her request was heard when the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge was published in 1938, in which the Holy Father condemned National Socialism.
The Saint realized more and more that God expected her consent to martyrdom. She was ready for anything. Although she and her sister Rosa were transferred to Carmel Monastery in Echt in Netherlands, they were not saved. Just before her arrest by the Gestapo, Sister Teresa Benedicta said to her sister: "Come on, let's go suffer for our people." It was August 2, 1942. A few days later, they died in the gas chamber of the Nazi concentration camp in Oświęcim (Auschwitz).
John Paul II beatified Teresa Benedicta of the Cross on May 1, 1987, and then canonized on October 11, 1998, and proclaimed the Patroness of Europe. During Her canonization Saint John Paul II said: “The love of Christ was the fire that inflamed the life of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Long before she realized it, she was caught by this fire. At the beginning she devoted herself to freedom. For a long time Edith Stein was a seeker. Her mind never tired of searching and her heart always yearned for hope. She traveled the arduous path of philosophy with passionate enthusiasm. Eventually she was rewarded: she seized the truth. Or better: she was seized by it. Then she discovered that truth had a name: Jesus Christ. From that moment on, the incarnate Word was her One and All. Looking back as a Carmelite on this period of her life, she wrote to a Benedictine nun: “Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether consciously or unconsciously. (…) The mystery of the Cross gradually enveloped her whole life, spurring her to the point of making the supreme sacrifice. As a bride on the Cross, Sister Teresa Benedicta did not only write profound pages about the “science of the Cross”, but was thoroughly trained in the school of the Cross. Many of our contemporaries would like to silence the Cross. But nothing is more eloquent than the Cross when silenced! The true message of suffering is a lesson of love. Love makes suffering fruitful and suffering deepens love”.
She is also the patron of dialogue between Christians and followers of Judaism, from which she drew strength in her childhood and early youth.
Short thought from St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross meditation accompanies us every day: “Our love for people is a measure of our love for God. But it differs from the natural love for people. Natural love is for one or the other person connected to us by blood ties or by similar character or common interests. The others are "strangers" who are "not our concern", even ugly by their nature, so that they are kept as far away as possible. For the Christians there is no "stranger". He is the "neighbor" whom we have before us and who needs us, whether he is related or not, whether we "like" him or not, whether he is "morally worthy" of help or not. The love of Christ knows no bounds, it never stops, it is not afraid of ugliness and dirt. Christ came for sinners and not for the righteous. And when the love of Christ lives in us, we do as he does and follow the lost sheep”. (German in: Geistliche Texte. ESGA 19 (2009), p. 8.)
Until Tomorrow
fr. george