St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Jewish Convert, Nun, Martyr, Order of the Discalced Carmelites (1891 - 1942)
Feast / Memorial Day: August 9
Patronage: Europe, loss of parents, converted Jews, martyrs, World Youth Day
Also known as Edith Stein, Teresia Benedicta, Teresa Benedicta a Cruce

+ BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:

"Only the fool says in his heart that there is no God" - the truth of this old saying was evident in the life of this most illustrious of Jewish converts to Christianity. Teresa Benedicta, formerly Edith Stein, suddenly in her early teens stopped believing in God and declared herself an atheist in the year 1904. In time, however, is not foolish but highly intelligent, this youngster became a covert not only to believe in God but to believe in Him as taught, propagated, and practiced by the Catholic Church.

Edith Stein was born the youngest of 11 children to Siegfried and Augusta Stein, a deeply devout Jewish couple in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw in Poland) on 12 October 1891. Significantly, her birth amidst the observance of that most important of Jewish festivals, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, made her very precious to her mother.

Having lost her father when she was barely 21 months old, Edith grew up to be a headstrong girl and showed much promise first as a student and later as a lecturer. An avid seeker of the truth, she had so brilliant an intellect that she could take and put together sets of opposing ideas or philosophies - as regards how life works - in a way that made perfect sense (as two of her works, Finite and Eternal Beings and The Science of the Cross, both of which she wrote when at Echt, testify). It was obviously this intelligence that led her, in the autumn of 1921 to be captivated by the story of the life and times of the great mystic, St Teresa of Avila. Providentially, the saint had opened Edith's heart to the grace of a spiritual journey in a serious study of the Catholic faith that culminated in her baptism as a Catholic on 1 January 1922. It was the feast of the Circumcision of Jesus when Jesus entered into the covenant of Abraham. It was not long before her sister Rosa also became a Catholic and a devout one like her.

Edith's conviction of the truth in her newfound Faith was so deep that even her steady progress in it did not deflect her from reverencing her mother’s Jewish beliefs. It scaled new heights when she entered the Carmelite Cloister at Cologne on 14 October 1933, and later at her investiture on 15 April 1934 took the name Teresa Benedicta a Cruce, which literally meant Teresa blessed by the cross.

In 1937 Nazi hatred for the Jews had reached alarming proportions, expressing itself as it did in the burning of the synagogues in Cologne. Through the media, the Nazis brainwashed the general populace of Germany into increasingly detesting the Jews as a sub-human race. Fearing for the safety of the Stein sisters, their superiors had them dispatched to the Carmelite convent at Echt, Holland. In 1940, however, The Netherlands was invaded by the Nazis. This action was openly denounced by the Dutch bishops, as a result of which the persecution was broadened to cover Jewish converts to Christianity as well. Teresa, Rosa, and several such converts were thus arrested and dispatched to the concentration camps at Auschwitz. It was on 9 or 10 August 1942 that the Stein sisters were marched to their deaths in the gas chamber.

Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, worthy "daughter of Israel." was raised to the honors of the Altar by Pope John Paul II who declared her Blessed on 1 May 1987 when he visited Cologne, West Germany, and later as a Saint on 11 October 1998.