Saint of the day August 9: Saint Edith Stein. Catholic Saints

Every August 9, the Catholic Church celebrates Saint Edith Stein, a Discalced Carmelite, philosopher, German Jewish mystic and martyr.

Edith – who would adopt the religious name of Sister Teresa Benedicta de la Cruz – was born in Breslau on October 12, 1891, at a time when said city was still a German province, which would later become part of Poland.

love of wisdom

Edith was born into a Jewish family and was educated as such. However, during her adolescence and early youth she began to gradually question her religion until she ended up embracing atheism.

Years later, becoming a prominent philosophy student at the University of Göttingen (Germany), she came into contact with “phenomenology” – a novel philosophical perspective at that time -, characterized by the basic aim of renewing science and knowledge.

Edith stood out as a student thanks to her intellectual penetration. Aware of this, the philosopher Edmund Husserl – the father of phenomenology – chose her as a teaching assistant. Ella edith held that position even before Martin Heidegger, another of the most important philosophers of the 20th century.

After overcoming the difficulties related to her status as a woman within the academic world of the time, Edith obtained a degree in Philosophy from the University of Freiburg.

The First War and the Red Cross

The young philosopher had a high sense of solidarity. Once World War I broke out, she enlisted in the Red Cross as a nurse and was assigned to a field hospital. The following years were very hard: Edith knew firsthand the tragedy of war and more than experienced what human fragility means.

In the midst of the terrible circumstances that surrounded her, she strove to always be kind, generous and helpful.

The encounter with Christ through Saint Teresa of Ávila

After the war, in 1921, Edith decides to visit a friend who had been widowed, with the purpose of keeping her company. Great was her surprise when she found her with an unusual serenity and resignation: she was shocked by the peace and faith that that woman radiated, despite the pain due to her loss. Her friend then confessed that what sustained her was faith in God. Almost immediately, Edith becomes interested in the source of that spiritual peace she longed for: Christianity. She then reads the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Jesus.

At that time, several of his friends and colleagues in the phenomenological circle were going through similar experiences. More than one had converted to Catholicism, which increased the intensity of his interest.

That intellectual and spiritual approach to the life of Teresa of Ávila profoundly transformed her. A radical questioning about the meaning of one’s own life and the search for truth culminated in the “embrace” of the Catholic faith.

“As a Catholic I feel more Jewish” (Edith Stein)

After a time of personal purification, she asked to be baptized. She sought the help of a priest and, after a stage of preparation, she received the sacrament of initiation in 1922. Edith had finally found what she had always sought from the depths of her being.

It was not unusual to hear her say – already being religious – that having become Catholic, in a very peculiar way, “she felt more Jewish”: the Jewish people had waited for a messiah, and she had found him. Jesus Christ was now the meaning of her faith and life.

religious vocation

Gradually another question arose: vocational concern. Edith continues her personal itinerary accompanied by a spiritual director. She began working as a teacher at the Santa Magdalena Dominican teacher training school; She lectures, translates books, excels professionally, and, whenever she can, she escapes to find the peace she needs. Her favorite place was the Benedictine Abbey of Beuron.

Meanwhile, the political situation in Germany worsens – these are years of moral deterioration in his country. The National Socialist regime identifies it and prohibits the teaching of it. Despite this, Edith is not discouraged. Her faith has matured and she discovers herself called to religious life: she enters Carmel in Cologne as a postulant. With that step, she definitively breaks with her past, and she renounces the prestige and fame of the academic world. On April 15, 1934 she took the Carmelite habit and changed her name to Teresa Benedicta de la Cruz.

A world without God

By then, the situation of the Jews had become dramatic and Edith asked to be transferred from the monastery so as not to put the lives of her companions at risk. She is sent to a community in Holland along with her sister Rosa de ella, who had also converted to Christianity and served as a lay sister. The Nazis threaten to deport the Jews of Europe, including converts.

The course taken by the party was already generating rejection from the free world and international condemnation. The Catholic Church, through the efforts of Pope Pius XII, becomes a bastion of defense for the Jewish people. Despite the innumerable pressures he received, Pius XII remained firmly on the side of the persecuted and mistreated.

The way of the Cross

The Nazi occupation forces in Holland declare all Jewish Catholics as “stateless”, so they must be detained and deported. Thus, a Nazi military contingent enters the Carmelite convent where Edith and Rosa live and takes them away.

Both are transferred to the Westerbork concentration camp (Netherlands). Edith, in the midst of that extreme situation, worries about helping and comforting her fellow prisoners. The conditions in which they live include humiliation, torture and, of course, death.

Weeks later, Edith and Rosa are sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp (occupation territory in Poland). They are part of a group of about a thousand Jews. The Stein sisters arrive on August 9, 1942. Then only the inevitable happens: the newly arrived prisoners are organized to be taken to the gas chamber. Saint Edith is executed in one of the groups. She dies offering her life for the salvation of souls, the liberation of her people and the conversion of Germany.

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Saint Edith Stein, was canonized by Saint John Paul II in 1998. The Pope conferred on her the title “Martyr for love.”

A year later, in October 1999, the saint was declared co-patron of Europe.

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