A meditation on the martyrdom of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross

Folks, Edith Stein is among my most admired saints. From devout Jew to convinced atheist and a promising career as a ground-breaking philosopher in the phenomenological school, she chose to abandon all in favor of conversion to Christianity, even to Catholicism and embrace the Discalced Carmelite habit. Her conversion to Christianity deepened, and did not diminished, her identity as a Jew and the connection to the people of the Lord according to the flesh.

The Nazis were well aware of this connection, for they dragged her out of the convent in the Netherlands where she had taken refuge and murdered her in the gas chamber after a ride in the death train. She died as a Catholic and a Jew among Jews.

Her martyrdom was quintessentially Christian. What is the Christian response in the faith of wanton, overwhelming evil? Is it to fight it back with the weapons of the world? Many do think so, but this is not the Christian way. Others think martyrdom consists of the taking of one's own life in the process of taking many, many others. This view is even worse, for it desecrates the meaning of martyrdom by injecting it with a justification for mass-murder.

No. The Catholic Christian view of the ultimate weapon against evil is completely counterintuitive, even senseless to a doubting world. It consists of laying down one's arms, the real ones and the figurative ones. One must disarm in what would appear to be utter surrender, and like a lamb taken to the slaughter house, in one sweeping act of utter love, the Christian offers his or her life as a holocaust to the Lord, leaving nothing for anyone in an apparent act of complete annihilation. It is in through this action, patterned after the prototype of Christ's suffering and dying on the Cross, that the Christian soul takes the ultimate stance against evil.

The Christian response to the questions "Why a good God allows evil things to happen" and "What should the Christian response to wanton evil be" is found on the Cross on which God himself was immolated. This is the unique Christian answer to the problem of evil and no other religion on earth, no philosophy, has crafted such an eloquent argument than that of God suffering evil for our sake. The Christian martyr, then, reaches perfection in a Christ-like death and even if we aren't able to see it with the eyes of the flesh, we are certain in faith that such a death draws a line on the sand across which evil shan't pass.

The value of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross's legacy is not found on her intellect, writings, conversion, and even her exemplary life. The value of her legacy lies on her martyr death, in the way she chose to share the collective destiny of her martyr people, in the ultimate manner in which she chose to resist evil via non-violence. That's what made her a saint, that's what made her a martyr and that's why she's now fully contemplating the face of her Beloved.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Saint Edith Stein
Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Virgin & Martyr
Optional Memorial
August 9th
co-patroness of Europe

"I even believe that the deeper one is drawn into God, the more one must 'go out of oneself'; that is, one must go to the world in order tp carry the divine life into it."
From The Collected Works of Edith Stein
Self Portrait In Letters 1916-1942
translated by Josephine Koeppe, O.C.D., quote page 54
letter #45 to Sr. Callista Kopf, OP ,presumably sent to Munich
History -- Prayer -- Gospel Reading -- Homily Pope John Paul II at Canonization (1998) -- Homily Pope John Paul II at European Synod (1999) -- Edith Stein and the Contemplative Vocation -- Prayer from St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross -- Verses for a Pentecost Novena

History
Edith was born in Breslau, Germany, on October 12, 1891, the youngest of seven children in a prominent Jewish family. Edith abandoned Judaism as early as 1904, becoming a self-proclaimed atheist. Her brilliant intellect was seeking truth, and she entered the University of Gottingen, where she became a protégé of the famed philosopher of Edmund Husserl. She was also a proponent of the philosophical school of phenomenology both at Gottingen and Freiburg in Breisgau. She earned a doctorate in 1916 and emerged as one of Europe's brightest philosophers. One of her primary endeavors was to examine phenomenology from the perspective of Thomistic thought, part of her growing interest in Catholic teachings. Propelled by her reading of the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila, she was baptized on January 1, 1922. Giving up her university post, she became a teacher in the Dominican school at Speyer, receiving as well in 1932 the post of lecturer at the Educational Institute of Munich, resigning under pressure from the Nazis, who were then in control of Germany.
In 1934, Edith entered the Carmelite Order. Smuggled out of Germany into the Netherlands in 1938 to escape the mounting Nazi oppression, she fell into the hands of the Third Reich with the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in 1940. Arrested in 1942 with her sister Rosa (also a convert) as part of the order by Hitler to liquidate all non-Aryan Catholics, she was taken to Auschwitz, and, on August 9 or 10, 1942, she died in the gas chamber there.
Pope John Paul II canonized Edith on October 11, 1998.
[taken from John Paul II's Book of Saints, published by OSV 1999]
Collect and Readings: From the Common of Virgins or Martyrs
Prayer:
Lord, God of our fathers,
you brought Saint Teresa Benedicta
to the fullness of the science of the cross
at the hour of her martyrdom.
Fill us with that same knowledge;
and, through her intercession,
allow us always to seek after you, the supreme truth,
and to remain faithful until death to the covenant of love
ratified in the blood of your Son
for the salvation of all men and women.
We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Gospel Readings -- John 4:19-24
The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship". Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

[Prayer and readings from a Carmelite web site: http://www.carmelites.ie/Saints/edithstein.htm]

Prayer from St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
"When night comes, and retrospect shows that everything was patchwork and much that one had planned left undone, when so many things rouse shame and regret, then take all as is, lay it in God's hands, and offer it up to Him. In this way we will be able to rest in Him, actually to rest and to begin the new day like a new life."

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