The last woman whose wisdom we will use for our reflections this week is someone close to our own time, St Edith Stein. She was canonised in 1998 as St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
Edith, the youngest of 11 children, was born on 1891, in Breslau Gemany, at
the time that her Jewish family were celebrating Yom Kippur (the great Jewish Festival of Atonement. She was an intense, sensitive and highly intelligent person who lost her faith in God in her teen years and decided to give up praying. After school she ended up studying philosophy, obtaining her doctorate summa cum laude.
Edith had some experiences in this time that left a deep impression on her. Once she saw someone
who had been shopping in the marketplace going into an empty church “as if she was going to have an intimate conversation.” It was something she never forgot.
While visiting a friend who had just lost her husband in the war, she experienced the deep faith of her friend and later wrote: “This was my first encounter with the Cross and the Divine power it imparts to those who bear it… it was the moment when my unbelief
collapsed and Christ began to shine his light on me – Christ in the mystery of the Cross.”
She had a brilliant mind and wanted to be a professor – something impossible for a woman at that time, but she wrote academic articles about the philosophical foundations of psychology. Around the same time, she began to read about Christianity. The search for truth was what was at the heart of her life.
In 1921 there was a turning point. Staying with friends she picked up an autobiography of St Teresa of Avila and read this book all night. When she had finished she said to herself: “This is the truth.” She became Catholic and went home to tell her mother who as a devout Jew, was devasted by the news. She wanted to join a Carmelite convent, but her spiritual mentors disagreed. Instead, she taught German and history at a Dominican school. She was generous with her time and
help especially to her weakest students. Edith accepted speaking engagements, mainly on issues impacting women, and worked on translations and theological works. She gave priority to time for serious prayer – the first hour of the day was always given to God and she would often pop into the chapel to pray at other times during the day.
In 1933, World War II made it impossible for her, as someone with a Jewish
background, to continue teaching. She entered the Carmelite convent but refused to renounce her Jewish heritage in solidarity with the oppressed Jewish people. She was arrested by the Gestapo on 2 August 1942, while in the chapel, and sent to the camps. She went willingly to share the suffering of her people and set about comforting the mothers and helping to take care of the children. Those she was with later said of her: “She is a witness to God’s presence in a world where God is absent.” She
died, in the gas chambers, on 9th August in Auschwitz.
Edith believed that there was something redemptive in being willing to share in the sufferings of Christ. Pope John Paul II said of her: “as a Catholic during Nazi persecution she remained faithful to the crucified Lord Jesus Christ and, as a Jew to her people in loving faithfulness.”
Consider in conversation with the Lord: Where might I be called to stand in solidarity with a person or a group who are being oppressed?
