Today the Church commemorates the Feast of Teresa
Benedicta (Edith Stein)
Born on October 12, 1891, of Jewish parents, Siegried Stein and Auguste Courant, in Breslau, Germany, Edith Stein from her earliest years showed a great aptitude for learning, and by the time of the outbreak of World War I, she had studied philology and philosophy at the universities of Breslau and Goettingen.
In
the midst of all her studies, Edith Stein was searching not only for the truth,
but for Truth itself and she found both in the Catholic Church, after reading
the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila. She was baptized on New Year’s Day,
1922.
When
the Jewish persecution increased in violence and fanaticism, Sister Teresa
Benedicta soon realized the danger that her presence was to the Cologne Carmel,
and she asked and received permission to transfer to a foreign monastery. On
the night of 31 December 1938, she secretly crossed the border into Holland
where she was warmly received in the Carmel of Echt. There she wrote her last
work, The Science of the Cross.
Her
own Cross was just ahead of her, for the Nazis had invaded neutral Holland, and
when the Dutch bishops issued a pastoral letter protesting the deportation of
the Jews and the expulsion of Jewish children from the Catholic school system,
the Nazis arrested all Catholics of Jewish extraction in Holland. Edith was
taken from the Echt Carmel on 2 August 1942, and transported by cattle train to
the death camp of Auschwitz, the conditions in the box cars being so inhuman
that many died or went insane on the four day trip. She died in the gas chambers
at Auschwitz on 9 August 1942.
Let us pray with St. Teresa
Benedicta:
"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 meet it with
peace.” St.Therese pray for Europe, so that this great
continent will turn back to Christ … and then we shall have PEACE. Amen
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