Memorial of Edith Stein

In a coordinated act of resistance by the Dutch bishops, a pastoral letter that condemned the deportation of the Jews was read from every Catholic pulpit in the Netherlands, on Sunday, July 26, 1942  Nazi retribution was psychopathic, swift, and lethal.  A round-up that targeted converts from Judaism to Catholicism was enacted on August 2^nd.  Edith Stein, known in religion as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and her blood sister Rosa, a laywoman who also converted,  were taken from Carmel that day, as were all non-Aryan members of every Dutch religious community. When the train transporting her stopped near the Dominican Convent in Speyer, Germany a place where she had taught before entering Carmel Stein was able to send a message to the sisters that read, “Greetings from Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.  We are heading East.” She disembarked the train on August 6, 1942 after a long uncomfortable trip. Brushing the dust from her habit she straightened the veil as best she could.  Unlike some of the passengers, she knew the dust on her clothing wasn't going to matter for long.  Born on October 12, 1891 in Breslau, Poland she was back in the country of her birth.  But, the sign on the train station read Oświęcim, Auschwitz in the English-speaking world.

 

The youngest of eleven children born into an observant Jewish family her academic brilliance was obvious at a young age. She declared herself to be an atheist at 14. 

Reflecting back on that troubled period she wrote, "I consciously and deliberately stopped praying so as to rely exclusively on myself; so as to make all decisions about my life in freedom."  It would take almost seventeen years for her to discover true freedom. 

 

She received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Frieburg, under Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, writing a dissertation titled, On Empathy.  Two episodes during her student years moved her from the illusory freedom of atheistic self-dependence to the radical freedom possible only to those who live under the mystery and shadow of the Cross.

 

The first occurred when she visited the widow of a classmate killed in WW I. Though bereaved, the young widow's faith was such that she was consoling those who had come to console her. That example left a deep mark on Stein  who wrote:  "It was my first encounter with the cross and the divine power it bestows on those who carry it. For the first time I saw with my own eyes the Church born from its redeemer's sufferings

triumphant over the sting of death. That was the moment my unbelief collapsed and Christ shone forth---in the mystery of the Cross."

 

During the summer of 1921, she was browsing through the library of friends and stumbled upon the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. Upon finishing it she said, "This is the truth." She was baptized on New Year's Day 1922, age 31.  Stein entered Carmel in Cologne in 1933.

 

As the Nazi persecution of Jews increased in intensity she was moved to Echt, Holland in 1938 where she wrote her last work. titled The Science of the Cross. Despite knowing her fate Stein dismissed plans to move her to England explaining, "Do not do it.  Why should I be spared?  Is it not right that I should gain no advantage from my Baptism? If I cannot share the lot of my brothers and sisters; my life, in a certain sense, is destroyed." 

She ascended Calvary in the gas chambers of Auschwitz on 9 August 1942,just thirteen days after Dutch Carmelite Priest, St. Titus Brandsma was murdered by lethal injection in Dachau.

 

Stein left an enormous amount of writing behind.  Her letters are the most accessible. Released from the self-imposed shackles of atheistic pseudo-freedom she found radical freedom in the science and shadow of the cross.

 

St. John Paul, II, quoted her in his homily at the canonization Mass: "Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love. And do not accept anything as love which lacks truth!"

 

St. Edith Stein, pray for us.

_________________________________________________

I've had a long time devotion to Edith Stein who accounts in part for my vocation to the Society and was also part of my master's thesis on healing miracles.  The healing of two-year old Benedicta McCarthy, who was named after the saint whose parents, Melkite Rite Priest Charles McCarthy and his wife, had a long-standing devotion to her.  The McCarthy's were from Brockton, MA.  It quite a story.  

The photos are from the church at Sevenhill Retreat House in Sevenhill, South Australia.  We made our tertian long retreat.  

Cross prepared for adoration on Good Friday.  We departed on Palm Sunday to return to Sydney.

The Church at Sevenhill was simple but lovely.   

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD