Saint Edith Stein

It is one of those moments, where having taken the often intense demands of the Gospel for granted, God does not merely throw water in our faces to shock us, sometimes He needs a whole ocean to get us to respond. To emphasize this Gospel toughness more clearly, Jesus then makes reference to a King preparing carefully for battle against a formidable opponent. Perhaps there is no greater metaphor for our lives as Catholics than soldiers training for and engaging in battle.

It is in fact the most appropriate image when one looks carefully to the Cross of Christ and the mangled figure who hangs there. The way many Catholics embrace their faith today or understand it, would be like a King who in preparing his soldiers for an intense tank battle hands out plastic forks and knives…no one would dare go into battle so poorly prepared…lives are at stake.

The opponents of Jesus Christ: Satan, sin, suffering and death see our lives radically different…and they want nothing more than to hurt us, to destroy us, forever.

If today Jesus emphasizes the condition of hatred of one’s family as the prime prerequisite for being His disciple, He does so to highlight the fact…that in this world if our primary concern and focus is not Christ and Church, we will never know what true love is. That is the radical paradox of one’s commitment to Jesus Christ.

In loving Christ, our love for others is transformed and empowered with the totality of God’s infinite love. To make more sense of what Christ is demanding of us, the example of Saint Edith Stein may assist us.

Saint Edith Stein was born into a traditional Jewish Family who tried to instill in Edith a strong sense of Jewish Identity. Having been born on one of the holiest Jewish Feast Days, Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement in 1891, her Mother insisted that Edith was destined for Jewish greatness.

However, the older and more educated Edith became, the less enthusiasm and less belief she had not only for Judaism, but God in general. Admitting that she had simply become too smart for such silly and archaic notions as God and organized religion, she became more or less an Agnostic: one who recognizes the possibility of God’s existence, but could care less about it.

However, it would be the horrors of World War I that would become the catalysts that propelled Edith down the path of truth until she would at last arrive at the Foot of Christ’s Cross upon the Calvary of a war torn Europe. Along this path she encountered a Christian Married couple who were for Edith, her dearest friends. Sadly, in 1917 word reached Edith and her friend Anna, that Anna’s husband had been killed in battle. Determined to bring whatever comfort she could to the grieving widow, what Edith encountered in Anna would radically change the direction of her life.

Rather than finding a woman overcome with despair and loss, doubting and hating God, Edith found a committed Christian suffering, but at peace. As Edith herself later admitted: “It was my first encounter with the Cross and the Divine power that it bestows on those who carry it. For the first time, I was seeing with my very eyes the Church, born from the Redeemer’s suffering triumphant over the sting of death. That was the moment my unbelief collapsed and Christ shone forth in the mystery of the Cross.”

Having then read the Autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila in a single sitting, Edith had confronted the face of truth and upon His head was a Crown of Thorns.

She was ready to be baptized a Catholic. Her mother and family were heartbroken, and could not understand how Edith could be so cruel not only to them, but their entire people and history. This misunderstanding on the part of her family, was a Gethsemane for Edith her whole life.

But if her family was heartbroken by her conversion to Catholicism, their devastation was complete when Edith decided to become a Cloistered Carmelite Nun, during of all times, the beginning of World War II.

Edith’s family saw her entry into the convent as the cruelest betrayal: coming at the worst possible time: just when Jewish persecution was intensifying. Christianity was the religion of their oppressors. When Edith’s mom heard of her decision she lamented:

“Why did you have to get to know Him (Jesus Christ)? He was a good man…I am not saying anything against him. But why did he have to go and make himself God?” It was only after her mother’s death that her sister Rosa would likewise convert and become a Nun alongside Edith as well.

Though it appeared that Edith had truly chosen the path of hatred of family and love of Christ and Church, she did so not to harm those who felt abandoned but to give her life for their salvation. When she made her profession, Edith Stein, now Saint Theresa Benedict of the Cross offered her life to Christ for the Jewish People.

As Jesus powerfully reminded us during the night of the Last Supper: “No greater love hath no one, than to lay down one’s life for those one loves.” This promise of love was accepted by Christ in full.

Saint Theresa Benedict and her sister Rosa, now a Carmelite Nun with her, were arrested by the Gestapo and transferred to the killing camp of Auschwitz. Her last recorded words are those spoken to her sister before the doors of the death train had closed: “Come, let us go for our people.” Her Jewish people.

One cannot imagine the suffering inflicted especially upon the Jews, unless one looks to the Jew nailed to the Cross at Calvary who died for all of us. The Final Solution of Hitler was no less the very same solution of Satan to remove from the world that same Jewish Carpenter from Nazareth who is also the Eternal God.

Seeing that same face in the faces of all Jews, Hell would unleash its fury upon an entire race. This is the suffering that Saint Edith Stein desired, accepted and embraced…for she was fully united to the sufferings of her Bridegroom…and with Jesus was redeeming the world from its pollution of faithlessness and violence.

This is the life that is demanded of each and every Catholic. Saint Theresa Benedict of the Cross is not the exception to the rule but whose life is the rule. We cannot maintain the cavalier attitude that other more Saintly people like a Mother Teresa will pick up our slack.

There maybe one Captain to each team, or one General to each army, but without the other players and soldiers on the field, that person will not be much of a captain or general…we must participate in the redemption of this world fully and completely. The more an era is engulfed in the night of sin and estrangement from God, the more it needs souls united to God.

The greatest figures of prophecy and sanctity step forth out of the darkest night. As Christians it is our turn to step into the darkness of our Godless culture as so many lights of heroic faith and hope, love and sacrifice…even to the shedding of our blood…as is happening in many other countries.

The challenge lies before us now…and does so in these concluding words from Saint Theresa Benedict of the Cross: “Therefore, the Savior today looks at us solemnly, probing us, and asks us: “Will you remain faithful to the Crucified? Consider carefully! The world is in flames, the battle between Christ and the Anti-Christ has broken into the open. If you decide for Christ, it could cost you your life. The world is in flames. But high above all flames towers the Cross. They cannot consume it. It is the path from earth to Heaven.”