Monday, August 09, 2010

Edith Stein: A Life United to The Cross By Michelle Laque Johnson


When Edith Stein was canonized in 1998, there was a lot of controversy in the Jewish community. Some felt that the Nazis murdered her because she was Jewish. That is true. It is also true that Edith Stein became a Carmelite nun by the name of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, that she wrote that she wished to die for the salvation of Jews (which included her own family), and that she was killed in retaliation for a letter written by Dutch Catholic bishops protesting the deportation of Jews. As a result of that letter, the Nazis began rounding up Jewish converts, who had previously been spared.
Catholics view this saint as a sort of bridge between the two religions and, as one bishop wrote, a call to Christians to unite “with the Jewish people in opposing any and all forms of anti-Semitism.”
But as her Carmelite sisters know, there was much more to St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross than this controversy reveals. She was as original as EWTN’s upcoming production, “Edith Stein: St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross,” which features Fr. Charles Connor’s examination of the saint’s life. The programairs 5:30 p.m. ET, Mon., Aug. 9, Edith Stein’s feast day.
Edith Stein was originally a brilliant professor, an author, a popular Catholic speaker, and a true feminist, and later became a Carmelite nun, a beloved and much sought-after advisor, and a lover of the Cross. One of her books, “The Science of the Cross,” http://bit.ly/9Rb2QA, was penned at the request of the prioress of her convent to commemorate the 400th anniversary of St. John of the Cross. That book includes the saint’s own observations about a life that was increasingly lived under the cross of the Nazis, who eventually killed her and her sister in a gas chamber in Auschwitz.
And she was brave. When she was forced to go to the office of the Gestapo, despite the fact that she was a cloistered nun, she felt compelled to greet the Nazis with the words, “Praised be Jesus Christ!”
Eventually, the Gestapo would come for her – and witnesses testify to her sanctity even within the camp. Later, all the nuns in Edith’s former convent were forced to flee the country. Thankfully, they brought the saint’s writings with them.
As Edith Stein once wrote: “The more an era is engulfed in the night of sin and estrangement from God, the more it needs souls united to God. … Certainly, the decisive turning points in world history are substantially determined by souls whom no history book ever mentions. And we will only find out about those souls to whom we owe those decisive turning points in our personal lives on the day when all that is hidden is revealed.”
Certainly, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is one of history’s decisive turning points.
Note: For more on this saint, please go to EWTN’s saint website, http://bit.ly/baJOEj; for a novena to the Holy Spirit penned by Edith Stein, please go to http://bit.ly/bJzvvb.

Posted via email from deaconjohn's posterous

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