“If anyone comes to me, I want to lead them to Him.”
Edith Stein was born in Breslau, Poland, on October 12, 1891, to an observant Jewish family. She was the youngest of 11 children. and a very gifted child in a home where her mother encouraged critical thinking. She greatly admired her mother’s unwavering religious faith.
Her father, who ran a timber business, died when she was still young. Her mother, who was hard working and strong willed, fended for her family and their large business but became laxed in living her faith. Edith in turn lost her faith and gave up praying.
Her mother sent her for a thorough education at the University in Breslau.
Her studies were interrupted with WWI and she served as a volunteer wartime Red Cross nurse. A year later, she moved to the University of Freiburg to complete her education and received a doctorate in philosophy with honors. She taught at the university as an aid, wanting to become a professor, but she was rejected as they were not open to women.
At the age of 30, while visiting with friends during summer break, she picked up the Autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila and read it through the night. “When I had finished the book,” she later recalled, “I said to myself: This is the truth.” She converted to Catholicism and immediately sought the life of a Discalced Carmelite Sister but was dissuaded by her spiritual mentors.
She continued teaching, but at a Dominican Sister’s school. During this time she was able to reflect on how to go into the world while carrying divine life into it. She was encouraged to write her own philosophical works to pursue scholarship as a service to God.
In 1931 she left the convent school, combined faith and scholarship, and later taught in the Roman Catholic division of the University of Münster, seeking to be a “tool of the Lord.”
2 years later, darkness broke out in Germany. Her spiritual mentors no longer prevented her so she said goodbye to her family, journeyed to Cologne, and entered the Carmelite convent. Separation from her mother was painful as she could not understand her conversion. She experienced profound peace and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
Her sister Rosa had also converted to Catholicism and to avoid the growing Nazi threat, the both relocated to the Netherlands. Theresa became more devout, believing she would not surpass the war.
It was then that she completed her final work, “The Science of the Cross.”
In 1942, the Nazi Official of the Netherlands ordered the arrest of all Jewish converts. Teresa, along with 243 others, including her sister, were arrested and imprisoned and taken to Auschwitz. On August 9, 1942, she was killed in a gas chamber.
Her feast day is August 9.
For God’s Glory.
