MOUNT CARMEL
CLOISTERED CONVENT
ST. TERESA BENEDICTA
As converted Jew, she told Fr. Hirschmann with special joy and pride: " You have no idea of what goes on inside me, each morning when I go into the chapel, and look at the tabernacle and statue of Mary, and then say to myself: They too were of our blood!"
Here we are unveiling the story of a woman, fully German and fully jewess, who converted to christianity just by reading the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila..
Birth in a Jewish Family
Edith Stein was born at Breslau in Germany in 1891 of an orthodox Jewish family. An exceptionally intelligent girl, she entered the university of Breslau at the age of nineteen, where she majored in philosophy. She became intrigued with the phenomenonlogy of Edmund Husserl, which is regarded as the forerunner of modern existentialism, and she obtained permssion to continue her studies with Husserl himself in the city of Gottingen. In 1916 she followed Husserl to the university of Freiburg, where she obtained her doctorate summa cum laude, writing a dissertation " On the problem of Empathy." She then became Husserl's personal assistant, proving herself a brilliant existentialist thinker and dedicating her energies to what she called "her only passion, the search for kowledge."
Edith Stein stated that during her university career she could be considered an athiest because she was unable to believe in the existence of God, but she was neverthless profoundly impressed by some close Catholic friends. Then in 1921 she spent the summer with some Protestant friends at their home in the Palatinate, and when she was looking for something to read one evening she discovered a copy of St. Teresa of Avila's autobiography in their library. She began to read the book and became increasingly more fascinated, remaining up the entire night to finish the life of the sixteenth century mystic. She completed it in the early morning, and exclaimed: "There, that is Truth!" She embarked on a study of Catholicism, and on January 1, 1922, she was baptized in the Church
A Catholic
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After her conversion she obtained a position teaching German literature at the Dominican convent school at Speyer, and she started on the great philosophical work of her life, which she called "a search of sense of Being and an attempt to make a correlation between medieval thought and the vital thought of our time." Her book entitled Husserl's Phenomenology and the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas was the product of that endeavor. During the nine years she remained at Speyer she also published a number of other books, including Psychic Causality, Individual and Community, The State, and translations of Newman and Aquinas. In addition, she lectured widely in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and France. Her lecture on "The Ethos of Woman's Vocation," given at Salzburg in 1930, brought her to national prominence. She presented a striking image on the lecture platform, this quiet, dignified women with the strong, handsome face and dark features, who enfolded the brilliance of her mind with stunning clarity and precision.
In 1932 Edith Stein became a lecturer at the Institute of Scientific Pedagogy at Munster in Westjalen, where she remained for two years. She had cherished a desire for many years of entering a Carmelite convent, but her spiritual directors advised against it, protesting that she had a great intellectual mission to perform in the world. But in 1933, Hitler forbade non-Aryans from holding teaching positions, and she was forced to resign from the Institute.
A Carmelite
Her director then gave his assent to her long-time desire, and in October of that year she entered the Carmel of Cologne, adopting the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was an excellent nun, a deeply contemplative soul who has at last enjoying the full opportunity of penetrating to the core of existence by her life of close, personal union with the living God. But this towering intellectual who had been lionized in Europe for years found herself almost completely inept at the housekeeping and menial chores of the convent. "It is a good school of humility," she wrote, "to have to do things constantly which, despite a great effort, I accomplish only very imperfectly." However, she was deeply contented in her new life. Gertrud von Le Fort, an old friend, remarked on Edith's "radiant, almost transfigured countenance" after a visit, and a friend from the university said, "Her happiness overwhelmed me."
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The provincial of the Carmelite friars ordered her to continue her writing in the convent, and during the remaining nine years of her life she wrote a number of minor works and two major books: Eternal and Infinite Being, a further discussion of Christian existentialism; and The Science of the Cross with particular emphasis on the relationship of suffering and death to the paschal mystery. But Edith was also preoccupied with the sufferings caused to her people by the Nazis. "I spoke to the Lord," she wrote, 'and told Him that i knew it was His Cross that was being laid on Jewish people. Most of tem did not know that; but those who did, ought to embrace it willingly in the name of all. This I desire to do. He only needed to show me the way."
Sacrifice to the Heart of Jesus
The way was becoming clearer as Hitler intensified his "final solution" to the Jewish question. By 1938 her situation in the convent was precarious and her presence dangerous to the rest of the community, and thus in that same year she was secretly taken across the border to the Dutch Carmel at Echt, which had originally been founded by convent of Cologne as a house of refuge during Bismarck's Kulturk. In the year 1939 she wrote down three sacrificial prayers: One for the jewish people, one for the prevention of World War II and one for the sanctification of the Carmelite family.
On Passion Sunday of shortly before the beginning of the World War the prioress Mother Ottilia found a note with the following words: "Dear Mother, please allow me to offer my sacrifice to the Heart of Jesus for true peace so that the reign of the antichrist may break down without a new World War, and a new order can be created. I know that I am nothing, but Jesus wants it to be that way. I am sure He will appeal to many during these days." Edith had a premonition that she would not live very much longer. On Friday of Corpus Christi, June 9th, she wrote her will and concluded it with the words:" I accept the death which God has meant for me incomplete submission to His will and with gladness.
Way of the Cross
After Hitler's occupation of Holland she again found herself in danger, and preparations were under way to send her to a convent in Switzerland when Gestapo officers marched into the convent and arrested her on August 2, 1942. In July of that year the Dutch hierarchy, under the direction of the primate Archbishop De Jong, had issued a pastoral letter condemning the persecution of Jews, and a few weeks later the Germans took reprisal by arresting all converted Jews in Holland. The German general-kommissar stated in a newspaper interview that the arrests were a direct reprisal for the bishop's statement, and the German authorities must now "consider Jewish Catholics as their worst enemies" and "see to it that they are deported with all dispatch to the East."4
Edith Stein was loaded into a police van, and the Gestapo took her to the internment camp at Westerbork. She walked into that scene of terror and fear calmly and confidently, and she became a source of strength to the other prisoners. One witness, a Jewish businessman, later related: "Sister Benedicta stood out from among those brought to the prison camp because of her great calmness and recollection. The cries, distress and confused state of the new arrivals was indescribable. Sister Benedicta went among the women as an angel of mercy, calming and helping them. Many of the mothers were on the verge of madness, succumbing to a black and brooding melancholia. They neglected their children and could only weep in dumb despair. Sister Benedicta took care of the little children, washing them and combing their hair, and bringing them food and looking after their other basic needs."
On August 7, Edith Stein was put on a prison train bound for the East, but before her departure she managed to smuggle a note to the prioress of the convent: "I am quite content now. One can only learn the science of the cross if one truly suffers under the weight of the cross. I was entirely convinced of this from the very first, and I have said with all my heart: Ave Crux, Spes Unica." She was brought to Auschwitz and executed on August 9, 1942. At her death she had reached not only the fullness of Christian maturity, but also the deepest point of intellectual penetration of the existentialist philosophy, for her act of certitude on the way to Auschwitz-"I am quite content now"-is the final affirmation and the only true response to the existential anxiety of our age. Cardinal Frings, the archbishop of Cologne, introduced the cause of beatification for Edith Stein in 1962. She was beatified as a martyr on 1 May 1987 in Cologne, Germany, by Pope John Paul II and then canonized by him 11 years later on 11 October 1998 in Rome.
QUOTES OF ST. EDITH STEIN
1. "The search I had been making for the truth turned out to have been a prayer"
