On St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

"I even believe that the deeper one is drawn into God, the more one must 'go out of oneself'; that is, one must go to the world in order to carry the divine life into it."

On August 9, we celebrated the feast of Edith Stein, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (1891-1942), a Polish philosopher who converted to Catholicism and joined the Discalced Carmelite Order. Saint Teresa wrote extensively about the unique and God-given feminine vocation, as evidenced by the life of Our Blessed Mother. Despite her noted philosophical writings, as well as her conversion and service to the Lord as a religious, Saint Teresa was killed at Auschwitz along with millions of other Jews during the second world war. Her life and writings remain, inspiring us to find hope in the Lord, even in times of great struggle and suffering.

Born in Breslau, Poland, Edith was the youngest child of a large observant Jewish family. From an early age, she was a gifted child who enjoyed learning and demonstrated great academic promise. She greatly admired her mother's strong faith. However, as her studies progressed, Edith had difficulty reconciling her phenomenological beliefs with that of faith. By her teenage years, she had forsaken Judaism and proclaimed herself an atheist—much to her parents’ disappointment.

Prior to the first world war, Edith attended the Universities of Breslau and Göttingen, studying philosophy. After the war ended, she continued her advanced studies at the University of Freiburg, and was awarded her doctorate in philosophy Suma Cum Laude. Despite her brilliant philosophical mind, Edith continued to struggle with what she termed her “search for the truth.” One evening, while at the home of some Catholic friends, Edith read the Life of Saint Teresa of Avila, and when she finished it she said happily: "This is truth." Her discovery of the life of Saint Teresa paved the way for her exploration of Catholicism and eventual conversion.

After her conversion, Edith spent her days teaching, lecturing, writing, and translating, and she soon became known as a celebrated philosopher and author. She spoke frequently of the vocational call of women, and the special and unique role they served in the Catholic life. For example, at a convention of Catholic Academics in 1930, Dr. Stein said: “Many of the best women are almost overwhelmed by the double burden of family duties and professional life-- or often simply of gainful employment. Always on the go, they are harassed, nervous, and irritable. Where are they to get the needed inner peace and cheerfulness in order to offer stability, support, and guidance to others?...To have divine love as its inner form, a woman's life must be a Eucharistic life. Only in daily confidential relationship with the Lord in the tabernacle can one forget self, become free of all one's wishes and pretensions, and have a heart open to all the needs of others.”

Edith presented the Blessed Virgin Mary as being the role model for all women, saying: “Whether she is a mother in the home, or occupies a place in the limelight of public life, or lives behind quiet cloister walls, she must be the handmaid of the Lord everywhere. So had the Mother of God been in all the circumstances of her life....Were each woman an image of the Mother of God, a Spouse of Christ, an apostle of the Divine Heart, then would each fulfill her feminine vocation no matter what conditions she lived in and what worldly activity absorbed her life.”

Herself, Edith was especially devoted to Our Blessed Mother, writing extensively about both her strength and her suffering. One such poem, beautiful and simple, follows:

JUXTA CRUCEM TECUM STARE

Today I have stood with you beneath the Cross
And felt more certainly than ever before,
That you became our Mother beneath the Cross.
How faithfully an earthly mother strives
To fulfill her dying son's last wish.
But you were the handmaid of the Lord,
Subduing wholly your own life and being
To the life and being of God incarnate.
You have taken your own to your heart
And with your heart bleeding from bitter sorrow
Have purchased for each one of us new life.
You know us all, our wounds and our defacement,
But you know also the heavenly radiance
In which your Son's love eternally bathes us.
And so you carefully direct our footsteps.
You find no pain too great to bring us to our goal,
So those whom you have chosen for companions,
To stand beside you at the eternal throne,
Must stand beside you here beneath the Cross
And with hearts bleeding from bitter sorrow
Purchase heavenly radiance for the precious souls
With whom the Son of God entrusted you.

Despite her prolific writing and speaking engagements, Edith felt called to a different life—a life of quiet contemplation of the Lord as a member of the Carmelite community. When her position as a teacher at the Educational Institute of Munich was terminated due to growing pressure from the Nazis, Edith’s spiritual director have his approval for her to enter the Discalced Carmelite Nuns’ cloistered community at Cologne-Lindenthal. The following April, Edith received the Habit of Carmel and the religious name of "Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.”

When the Jewish persecution increased in violence and fanaticism, Sister Teresa Benedicta soon realized the danger that her presence was to the Cologne Carmel, and she asked and received permission to transfer to a foreign monastery. In December 1938, she secretly crossed the border into Holland where she was warmly received in the Carmel of Echt. There she wrote her last work, The Science of the Cross, an exploration of suffering she would soon experience firsthand.

Soon after her arrival, Holland ceased to be a refuge. The country was invaded by the Germans, and persecution of the Jews began in earnest. In response, the Dutch bishops protested the Nazi mistreatment and deportation of the Jews by publishing a public letter, read at all Masses. The Nazis retaliated and on August 2, all Catholics of Jewish descent were arrested, including Sister Teresa Benedicta and her sister Rosa Stein.

When the Gestapo came to the Carmel of Echt, Saint Teresa, taking Rosa by the arm, said: "Come let us go for our people." In her cell, the sisters found, written on the back of a small picture, her last will and testament: “May the Lord accept my life and death for the honor and glory of his name, for the needs of his holy Church - especially for the preservation, sanctification, and final perfection of our holy Order, and in particular for the Carmels of Cologne and Echt - for the Jewish people, that the Lord may be received by his own and his Kingdom come in glory, for the deliverance of Germany and peace throughout the world, and finally for all my relatives living and dead and all whom God has given me; may none of them be lost.”

Beaten and half-starved, the sisters were deported first to Westerbork prison camp in Northern Holland. Sister. Teresa was able to send a message to her superior that she was still wearing her Carmelite habit, and planned to keep wearing it as long as she could. However, a yellow Star of David had been sewn to the outside of the simple brown habit.

At the camp, Saint Teresa Benedicta comforted and cared for frightened mothers and their little children. Before her arrival in Auschwitz, she managed to smuggle one last message to her mother prioress: "I am content now. One can only learn the Scientia Crucis 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: Hail, Cross, our only hope."

It was not long after that the work camp was emptied, and those kept prisoner there put on cattle trains headed to Auschwitz. Reports from those who were close to Sister Teresa Benedicta in those final days show her to have been a woman of remarkable interior strength, giving courage to her fellow travelers and helping to feed and bathe the little ones when even their mothers had given up hope and were neglecting them. One woman who survived the war has written a description of Stein during the time their group was awaiting transportation to “the East.” She wrote, “Maybe the best way I can explain it is that she carried so much pain that it hurt to see her smile...In my opinion, she was thinking about the suffering that lay ahead. Not her own suffering — she was far too resigned for that — but the suffering that was in store for the others. Every time I think of her sitting in the barracks, the same picture comes to mind: a Pieta without the Christ.”

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross died in the gas chambers upon arrival at Auschwitz on August 9, 1942. Out of the unspeakable human suffering caused by the Nazis in western Europe in the 1930's and 1940's, her life blossomed into a beautiful example of dedication, consecration, prayer, fasting, and penance. Even though her life was snuffed out by the evil of genocide, her memory stands as a light undimmed in the midst of evil, darkness, and suffering. "One can only learn the science of the Cross by feeling the Cross in one’s own person."

From the Homily of Pope John Paul II in October 1998, on the event of her Canonization:
"God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth" (Jn 4:24).


Dear brothers and sisters, the divine Teacher spoke these words to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. What He gave His chance but attentive listener we also find in the life of Edith Stein, in her "ascent of Mount Carmel". The depth of the divine mystery became perceptible to her in the silence of contemplation. Gradually, throughout her life, as she grew in the knowledge of God, worshipping Him in spirit and truth, she experienced ever more clearly her specific vocation to ascend the Cross with Christ, to embrace it with serenity and trust, to love it by following in the footsteps of her beloved Spouse: Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is offered to us today as a model to inspire us and a protectress to call upon.


We give thanks to God for this gift. May the new saint be an example to us in our commitment to serve freedom, in our search for the truth. May her witness constantly strengthen the bridge of mutual understanding between Jews and Christians.


Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, pray for us! Amen.”

Selected Quotations of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
“As for what concerns our relations with our fellow men, the anguish in our neighbor's soul must break all precept. All that we do is a means to an end, but love is an end in itself, because God is love.”

”Every true prayer is a prayer of the Church; by means of that prayer the Church prays, since it is the Holy Spirit living in the Church, Who in every single soul 'prays in us with unspeakable groanings.”

”If anyone comes to me, I want to lead them to Him.”
”In order to be an image of God, the spirit must turn to what is eternal, hold it in spirit, keep it in memory, and by loving it, embrace it in the will.”
”On the question of relating to our fellowman - our neighbor's spiritual need transcends every commandment. Everything else we do is a means to an end. But love is an end already, since God is love.”

”The limitless loving devotion to God, and the gift God makes of Himself to you, are the highest elevation of which the heart is capable; it is the highest degree of prayer. The souls that have reached this point are truly the heart of the Church.”

”Those who join the Carmelite Order are not lost to their near and dear ones, but have been won for them, because it is our vocation to intercede to God for everyone.”
"The way of faith gives us more than the way of philosophical thought: it gives us God, near to us as person, who loves us and deals with us mercifully, giving us that security which human knowledge cannot give. But the way of faith is dark.”

“Whatever did not fit in with my plan did lie within the plan of God. I have an ever deeper and firmer belief that nothing is merely an accident when seen in the light of God, that my whole life down to the smallest details has been marked out for me in the plan of Divine Providence and has a completely coherent meaning in God’s all-seeing eyes. And so I am beginning to rejoice in the light of glory wherein this meaning will be unveiled to me.”

“God is there in these moments of rest and can give us in a single instant exactly what we need. Then the rest of the day can take its course, under the same effort and strain, perhaps, but in peace. And when night comes, and you look back over the day and see how fragmentary everything has been, and how much you planned that has gone undone, and all the reasons you have to be embarrassed and ashamed: just take everything exactly as it is, put it in God’s hands and leave it with Him. Then you will be able to rest in Him — really rest — and start the next day as a new life.”

“Learn from Saint Thérèse to depend on God alone and serve Him with a wholly pure and detached heart. Then, like her, you will be able to say ‘I do not regret that I have given myself up to Love’.”

“O my God, fill my soul with holy joy, courage and strength to serve You. Enkindle Your love in me and then walk with me along the next stretch of road before me. I do not see very far ahead, but when I have arrived where the horizon now closes down, a new prospect will prospect will open before me, and I shall meet it with peace.”

Lord, God of our fathers,
you brought Saint Teresa Benedicta
to the fullness of the science of the cross
at the hour of her martyrdom.
Fill us with that same knowledge;
and, through her intercession,
allow us always to seek after you, the supreme truth,
and to remain faithful until death to the covenant of love
ratified in the blood of your Son
for the salvation of all men and women.
We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen.