St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
Edith Stein
(1891 – 1942)
Edith Stein was born in Germany in 1891 to Jewish parents who were well respected in their community. She grew up practicing her faith, but later abandoned her Jewish roots and turned to atheism. Intellectually gifted, she was a brilliant student and philosopher with an interest in phenomenology. She earned her doctorate at age 25. During her studies, she came in contact with Catholic friends whose beliefs made a deep impression on her. After studying the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and reading the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, she converted to Catholicism. Shortly afterwards, she became a teacher at a Catholic girl’s school.
At the age of 43, Edith entered a discalced Carmelite monastery and took the name St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was arrested by the Nazis and taken as a prisoner to the death camp at Auschwitz, where she died at the age of 51 in August of 1942. Her feast day is August 9.
Messages From St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
"The love of the Cross in no way contradicts being a joyful child of God. Helping Christ carry His Cross fills one with a strong and pure joy, and those who may and can do so, the builders of God’s kingdom, are the most authentic children of God."
"Learn from St. Therese 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 open before me, and I shall meet it with peace."
"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 looks back and you 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 to Him – really rest – and start the next day as a new life."
"Whatever did not fit in with my plan did lie within the plan of God. I have an even 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."
"One cannot desire freedom from the cross when one is especially chosen for the cross."
"God Himself teaches us to go forward with our hand in His by means of the Church’s liturgy."
"The more lofty the degree of loving union to which God destines the soul, so much more profound and persistent must be its purification."
"There is a state of resting in God, an absolute break from all intellectual activity, when one forms no plans, makes no decisions and for the first time really ceases to act, when one simply hands over the future to God’s will and ‘surrenders himself to fate’."
~ Excerpt from Gold In the Fire Copyright 2003 Jean M. Heimann
Edith Stein
(1891 – 1942)
Edith Stein was born in Germany in 1891 to Jewish parents who were well respected in their community. She grew up practicing her faith, but later abandoned her Jewish roots and turned to atheism. Intellectually gifted, she was a brilliant student and philosopher with an interest in phenomenology. She earned her doctorate at age 25. During her studies, she came in contact with Catholic friends whose beliefs made a deep impression on her. After studying the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and reading the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, she converted to Catholicism. Shortly afterwards, she became a teacher at a Catholic girl’s school.
At the age of 43, Edith entered a discalced Carmelite monastery and took the name St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was arrested by the Nazis and taken as a prisoner to the death camp at Auschwitz, where she died at the age of 51 in August of 1942. Her feast day is August 9.
Messages From St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
"The love of the Cross in no way contradicts being a joyful child of God. Helping Christ carry His Cross fills one with a strong and pure joy, and those who may and can do so, the builders of God’s kingdom, are the most authentic children of God."
"Learn from St. Therese 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 open before me, and I shall meet it with peace."
"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 looks back and you 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 to Him – really rest – and start the next day as a new life."
"Whatever did not fit in with my plan did lie within the plan of God. I have an even 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."
"One cannot desire freedom from the cross when one is especially chosen for the cross."
"God Himself teaches us to go forward with our hand in His by means of the Church’s liturgy."
"The more lofty the degree of loving union to which God destines the soul, so much more profound and persistent must be its purification."
"There is a state of resting in God, an absolute break from all intellectual activity, when one forms no plans, makes no decisions and for the first time really ceases to act, when one simply hands over the future to God’s will and ‘surrenders himself to fate’."
~ Excerpt from Gold In the Fire Copyright 2003 Jean M. Heimann
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