My Journey With St. Edith Stein

St. Edith Stein had absolute faith in Christ
and yet considered
herself Jewish to the end.

n It was from the lips of Father Gilbert V. Hartke, the renowned drama priest of the Catholic University of America, that I first heard the name Edith Stein. This was in 1962, two years after my conversion from Judaism to Catholicism.

Father, who had brought me into the Church, was planning to take his overseas players to Germany for a performance of The Merchant of Venice. Because of the Holocaust, I had vowed never to set foot on German soil.

Aghast, I asked him, “But why go to Germany? How can you present Shylock to a country that massacred six million Jews?” He smiled gently, as was his way, and answered that there was great remorse for what had been done to innocent persons, like Edith Stein.

“A German Jewish convert who became a Carmelite and was killed at Auschwitz.”

I ran to the library to find what I could on her, and that was the beginning of my love affair with Edith Stein, the famous German philosopher and educator born in 1891. Now, thirty-eight years later, my devotion to her is greater than ever.

Why is this? I can only say that Edith lifted me out of deep perplexities as a woman, human being, and new Catholic. I know that she holds the answers to the question of women, the relationship of Judaism and Catholicism, and the dearth of personal spirituality in this world so besieged by evil.

What it means to be a woman
Back in those days, I was trying to teach and do graduate work while my husband and I raised five children. I tormented myself with the question, “Is this right or wrong?”, until I read translated parts of her text Die Frau (The Woman). So convinced was I by her answers that I studied German in order to translate the entire work, published as Essays on Woman. Following my conscience and her dictate to never neglect the family for outside interests, I pursued my studies slowly, winning a doctorate seventeen years later.

Edith writes that it is not against the order of nature and grace for a woman to work, serving humanity through professional and public life. The world needs us for our feminine gifts of maternal love and empathy. Not only are we responsible as heart of the family if we have one, but our vocation is to meet the needs of children at large, to bring God’s love into the marketplace through various posts as educator, lawyer, doctor, social worker, etc. Woman has unique gifts of empathy and discernment and can meet on a personal basis the burden which another carries. She has a unique bounty of appreciation for moral values and is gifted with the Holy Spirit in exercising a close relationship to God and other persons.

This spiritual gift is a fruit of her natural bent in surrendering to God. Only so can she find her own union with God and the grace to exercise to all her unique power of maternal love and companionship. Rather than limiting her, the act of surrender is the highest expression of her freedom. This explains the high preponderance of women among the faithful and the consecration of single persons out in the world. But married women can also be the spouse of Christ and the daughter of Mary who, Edith writes, collaborates with every woman activating authentic womanhood.

The young mother is urged to stay at home with little children, for no one can really replace her. The child’s character is formed early; even the embryo in the mother’s womb is affected by the being of the mother. The child is mostly shaped by the mother who intuitively knows her own child and its needs, who alone can instill the basis for trust in the world and confidence in him/herself. And it is the mother who mostly holds responsibility for the child’s moral and spiritual development, for God gave her the makeup to do so. But Edith also writes, if there is dire economic need or if the talents of the mother demand that they be exercised beyond the family circle, then the mother has the right to go out into the world, as long as she maintains a close bond with her child and finds a reliable person to care for him/her.

Complementary roles
The man as well finds full personhood in surrender to God, for it is only by knowing and serving him that all personal faculties can be fully developed. Man and woman are not competitive; rather, they are complementary, as one hand complements the other. Edith describes man and woman as a dual species: they image God in their manhood or womanhood; together they form a harmonious image of God himself. Both species were given the same mandate to create and lord over the earth, to enjoy it, and to generate posterity. This is man’s top priority and to care for his family the second. But for the woman it is the reverse: to care for her family is her top priority; to create, lord over the earth and enjoy it is her second.

Edith developed her feminist philosophy during the twenties and thirties, as she taught young women and studied their psyche. She was considered the intellectual leader of the Catholic Woman’s Movement, to whom she gave lectures throughout Europe. Comprised mostly of Catholic academic women and teachers, this movement was highly respected by the Church.

Edith wrote much concerning women and the Church. She believes that they symbolize the maternal spirit of the Church. The Church needs women because Christ needs them. She advocates that they be used in ecclesial and pastoral work, even as the consecrated deaconesses of the early years of the Church.

But she doubts that the priesthood will ever be bestowed on women. For Christ had been incarnated as a man, although his gateway to humanity was a woman—Mary. He chose only men as his apostles, not the women who were among his intimate friends, not even Mary. Yet she leaves the question somewhat open.

Fighting for the common good
Woman has a vital role to play for the bettering of humanity. To fight for the common good has become a religious concern, she writes, as Hitler takes power. Woman is a responsible member of society and must exercise her own judgment in the eternal fight of good over evil. This was in direct opposition to the Nazi views that excluded all women from government positions, confining them to the kitchen, children, and church, and considering them as mere biological vehicles to bear Aryan babies! Edith fearlessly writes that women should rather fight for democracy, morality, and world peace.

One must understand Edith Stein’s theory of responsibility in order to understand her intentions. We are each responsible for all on the human scene, and humanity as a whole is responsible for each person. This explains the nature of the Church as community, but it also reveals the obligation of each individual concerning the quality of the human condition. For we as persons share the guilt of sinners and are obligated to seek through our prayer the grace of contrition of the sinner. Edith’s theory of Stellvertretung, acting as proxy for another, goes even further. She writes that a person in a state of grace can petition God to grant pardon to the sinner, even asking that the punishment due the sinner be borne by the one who prays.

Her holy response to human evil overwhelmed me. Since my teens, I had wanted to be a writer to fight world poverty, racism, injustice, and war—to help make the world a better place. When I graduated college and found myself in the inequities of the real world, I became so depressed that I lost my fervor to write. Now, through the example of her life and the wisdom in her work, I was strengthened to do so.

Edith had always been a world citizen, for her nature was deeply philosophical, questing for answers on a cosmic level. She had been assistant to the famous philosopher of her time, Edmund Husserl. She was also an ardent member of society. Already in her young years she had started to read the daily newspaper, which she considered history in the making. She was an early suffragette and a Red Cross nurse during World War I. Her social and political consciousness was high and, wedded to her philosophical gift, produced Empathy, Psychic Causality, The Individual and the Community, and The State. Always, in her analysis of human rights, she presents the spiritual person as the nucleus of a just society.

Holiness is the primary vocation
In her writings, Edith is concerned with the proper formation of the person as an image of God. For her, holiness is the primary vocation of the human being, male and female. When the individual is able to freely and consciously live in his/her most interior depth, then the individual does become a person. For the human being best resembles God as a rational, hence spiritual being, motivated to freely give self to God for sake of neighbor, thus forming a spiritual trinity. In fact, the person who develops an interior life is able to transcend the ego and attain the fullness of the Trinitarian life, imaging the giving of the Triune persons to each other. For here the person meets the crucified Christ, empowering him/her to go outward, carrying God’s love to others. Needless to say, such words nourished my growth as a Catholic.

Edith Stein was to concern herself with the ultimate human questions of life, existence, and death in her last great works written during her years as the Carmelite, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross: Endliches und Ewiges Sein (Finite and Infinite Being), which reveals her debt to Thomas Aquinas, and The Science of the Cross, a study of the life and work of St. John of the Cross. These works display her graced genius of intellect and spirit which is activated in her final self-offering.

I was staggered by the nature of this offering for the honor and glory of God: as reparation for the Church, the deliverance of Germany from the anti-Christ (Hitler), for the Jewish people, world peace, and the good of those who no longer knew or loved God. This was the answer of a saint to the existing evil. She had said that the Passion of Christ was the only way to save humanity and she wanted a share in that.

Jewish to the end
I had inherited my beautiful mother’s deep religiosity. In fact, my earliest recollection as a child was of her coming suddenly into my room and finding me on my knees praying. She was surprised because this was not the Jewish way of prayer. When I was given the four-year scholarship to a college conducted by the order of St. Joseph, my mother said to me “With God’s help you will not lose your Jewish identity.” I never did, but the foundation was laid there for my gift of total faith in Christ by the nuns, priests, and a holy school chum. I was able to understand how Edith was slowly brought to the faith through persons: her teachers, colleagues, and Teresa of Avila, by her reading of the saint’s autobiography.

When I found Edith Stein in 1962, I knew that she also recognized the Jewish continuity within herself in her Catholic faith. My strangeness disappeared as I understood in her my own conviction of not having abandoned the Jewish faith but of penetrating into it with even greater fidelity. With her, I felt as the early disciples had been, at home with the Jewish Mary and Jewish Christ. I recognized the utter marvel of the early Christians in my own conversion.

Edith had absolute faith in Christ and yet considered herself Jewish to the end. After Hitler’s first economic boycott of the Jews in 1933, she wrote to Pope Pius XI asking that he issue an encyclical deploring Nazi anti-Semitism. Rather than vote for Hitler at a plebiscite, she revealed her Jewish identity, an act which was to cost her her life in 1942. One of her Jewish colleagues writes that Edith never proselytized deliberately; she would have been embarrassed to do so. In fact, she was ecumenical long before Vatican Council II, for she believed that all people of good will can attain salvation as long as they are not in a state of sin. Edith writes that the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets, and it is the same Holy Spirit which allows a person to call Christ “Lord.” It is this reverence for Judaism which impelled her to write the story of her youth, Life in a Jewish Family, honoring Jewish humanity.

The unity of our Judaeo-Christian tradition is clear to me, for Edith Stein symbolizes that unity. I know that my love for her induces further obligation to work for understanding and closer harmony between the two faiths. I clearly felt that obligation after my baptism, but, with knowledge and love for Edith, the fear to do so was gone as I joined in ecumenical dialogue, gave lectures and wrote articles.

When I first started to work on the unknown Stein in 1962, I felt as if I were in a dark tunnel, crawling towards a great light. During the subsequent years, I studied her works, traveled seven times to Europe to do research, and visited her family and friends. She became very close to me, my best friend and mentor. And, on the day of her canonization, in the square of St. Peter bathed in a dazzling sunlight, I suddenly realized that I had come out of that tunnel to the heavenly light of her beatitude on earth as well as in heaven. And I prayed that her great light would diminish the darkness of human ignorance and sin, that her holiness would encourage the sanctity of others, and that she would intercede for her Jewish and Christian brethren, bringing them to the deep love of kindred for each other.

In November 1917, Professor Adolf Reinach was killed on the front, in Flanders. His young widow, Anna, asked Edith to help her classify all of her husband’s philosophical essays, with the intention of a posthumous publication. Without hesitating, she left the University to carry out this duty of friendship. Having witnessed at Gottingen the couple’s intimacy, their happiness, she feared that she would find her friend overwhelmed with sorrow. Anna appeared to her to have been transformed by the trial. Her delicate features were marked by the deep suffering that afflicted her. But Christ’s strength dwelled in her soul. The Cross had penetrated to the very innermost part of her being; it had at the same time wounded and healed her. The sacrifice, borne in love, united this soul to the crucified Saviour. From her entire person emanated a new radiance.

« It was my first encounter with the Cross, with this divine force that it confers to those who bear it. For the first time, the Church, born of the Passion of Christ and victorious over death, appeared clearly to me. At this very moment, my unbelief gave way, Judaism grew pale to my eyes, while the light of Jesus Christ rose in my heart. The light of Jesus Christ grasped in the mystery of the Cross. This is why, when taking the Habit of the Carmel, I wanted to add to my name that of the Cross… » - Edith Stein’s Spiritual Works (p. 55-56)

American Catholic’s Saint of the Day

August 9, 2007

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

(1891-1942)

A brilliant philosopher who stopped believing in God when she was 14, Edith Stein was so captivated by reading the autobiography of Teresa of Avila that she began a spiritual journey that led to her Baptism in 1922. Twelve years later she imitated Teresa by becoming a Carmelite, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

Born into a prominent Jewish family in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), Edith abandoned Judaism in her teens. As a student at the University of Göttingen, she became fascinated by phenomenology, an approach to philosophy. Excelling as a protégé of Edmund Husserl, one of the leading phenomenologists, Edith earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1916. She continued as a university teacher until 1922 when she moved to a Dominican school in Speyer; her appointment as lecturer at the Educational Institute of Munich ended under pressure from the Nazis.

After living in the Cologne Carmel (1934-38), she moved to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands. The Nazis occupied that country in 1940. In retaliation for being denounced by the Dutch bishops, the Nazis arrested all Dutch Jews who had become Christians. Teresa Benedicta and her sister Rosa, also a Catholic, died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz on August 9, 1942.

Pope John Paul II beatified Teresa Benedicta in 1987 and canonized her in 1998.

Comment:

The writings of Edith Stein fill 17 volumes, many of which have been translated into English. A woman of integrity, she followed the truth wherever it led her. After becoming a Catholic, Edith continued to honor her mother’s Jewish faith. Sister Josephine Koeppel, O.C.D. , translator of several of Edith’s books, sums up this saint with the phrase, “Learn to live at God’s hands.”

Quote:

In his homily at the canonization Mass, Pope John Paul II said: “Because she was Jewish, Edith Stein was taken with her sister Rosa and many other Catholics and Jews from the Netherlands to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, where she died with them in the gas chambers. Today we remember them all with deep respect. A few days before her deportation, the woman religious had dismissed the question about a possible rescue: ‘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.’”
Addressing himself to the young people gathered for the canonization, the pope said: “Your life is not an endless series of open doors! Listen to your heart! Do not stay on the surface but go to the heart of things! And when the time is right, have the courage to decide! The Lord is waiting for you to put your freedom in his good hands.”

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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