On Aug. 9 the Church remembers St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, also known as Edith Stein. St. Teresa converted from Judaism to Catholicism in the course of her work as a philosopher, and later entered the Carmelite Order. She died in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1942.
Edith Stein was born on Oct. 12, 1891 – a date that coincided with her family's celebration of Yom Kippur, the Jewish "day of atonement." Edith's father died when she was just 2 years old, and she gave up the practice of her Jewish faith as an adolescent.
As a young woman with profound intellectual gifts, Edith gravitated toward the study of philosophy and became a pupil of the renowned professor Edmund Husserl in 1913. Through her studies, the non-religious Edith met several Christians whose intellectual and spiritual lives she admired.
After earning her degree with the highest honors from Gottingen University in 1915, she served as a nurse in an Austrian field hospital during World War I. She returned to academic work in 1916, earning her doctorate after writing a highly-regarded thesis on the phenomenon of empathy. She remained interested in the idea of religious commitment, but had not yet made such a commitment herself.
In 1921, while visiting friends, Edith spent an entire night reading the autobiography of the 16th century Carmelite nun St. Teresa of Avila. "When I had finished the book," she later recalled, "I said to myself: This is the truth." She was baptized into the Catholic Church on the first day of January, 1922.
Edith intended to join the Carmelites immediately after her conversion, but would ultimately have to wait another 11 years before taking this step. Instead, she taught at a Dominican school and gave numerous public lectures on women's issues. She spent 1931 writing a study of St. Thomas Aquinas and took a university teaching position in 1932.
In 1933, the rise of Nazism, combined with Edith's Jewish ethnicity, put an end to her teaching career. After a painful parting with her mother, who did not understand her Christian conversion, she entered a Carmelite convent in 1934, taking the name Teresia Benedicta ac Cruce" ("Teresa Benedicta of the Cross") as a symbol of her acceptance of suffering.
080212-edith-stein-young-woman"I felt," she wrote, "that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take it upon themselves on everybody's behalf." She saw it as her vocation "to intercede with God for everyone," but she prayed especially for the Jews of Germany whose tragic fate was becoming clear.
"I ask the Lord to accept my life and my death," she wrote in 1939, "so that the Lord will be accepted by His people and that His kingdom may come in glory, for the salvation of Germany and the peace of the world."
After completing her final work, a study of St. John of the Cross entitled "The Science of the Cross," Teresa Benedicta was arrested along with her sister Rosa (who had also become a Catholic), and the members of her religious community, on Aug. 7, 1942. The arrests came in retaliation against a protest letter by the Dutch bishops, decrying the Nazi treatment of Jews. Her last recorded words were to her sister: "Come, let us go for our people."
Two days later she was killed in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Blessed John Paul II canonized her in 1998 and proclaimed her a co-patroness of Europe the next year.
—Benjamin Mann, Catholic News Agency
St. Clare was born in 1193 in Assisi to a noble family. Before her birth, her mother received a sign that her daughter would be a bright light of God in the world. As a child she was already very strongly drawn to the things of God, praying fervently, devoutly visiting the Blessed Sacrament, and manifesting a tender love towards the poor.
When she was 18, she heard St. Francis of Assisi preaching in the town square during Lent and she knew at once that God wanted her to consecrate herself to Him. The next evening, Clare left her house at night, ran to meet St. Francis and his companions at the church they were staying in, and shared her desire to follow him in his way of life. He received her, gave her his tunic, cut off her golden locks, and sent her to a Benedictine convent because she could not stay with the brothers. Her younger sister Agnes soon joined her and the two had to resist much pressure from their family to return home.
When Clare was 22, St. Francis placed her in a small house beside the convent and made her superior, a post she would serve for the next 42 years until her death.
The “Poor Clares,” as they came to be known, lived an unusually austere life for women of the time, walking barefoot around the town begging for alms, wearing sackcloth, and living without any possessions, completely dependent for their food on what was given to them. But the emphasis of their lives was, and still is, contemplation.
Many young noble women left all they had to take on the poor habit of Clare and the order grew rapidly, with houses being founded all over Italy, all of whom took St. Clare as their model and inspiration.
Clare’s reputation for holiness was such that the pope himself came to her deathbed in 1253 to give her absolution. He wanted to canonize her immediately on her death, but was advised by his cardinals to wait.
Claire died in absolute tranquility, saying to one of the brothers at her side, “Dear brother, ever since through His servant Francis I have known the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, I have never in my whole life found any pain or sickness that could trouble me.”
She was canonized in 1255, two years after her death.
— Catholic News Agency