“Take everything exactly as it is, put 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.” – St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
She was born Edith Stein in Poland in 1891, to a hardworking and loving Jewish family. After the death of her father, when she was two, her mother had to help keep the family timber business operational. Prayer and faith became obsolete in the family. The need to survive and succeed prevailed.
She was an excellent student earned a doctorate in philosophy with a thesis on “The Problem of Empathy.” In it she would declare that empathy is an instinct of being human – a ‘direct perception account’ – we do not need to have had the same experiences of those we encounter we just know and sense that they are feeling scared, happy, or upset, because we encounter their ‘spirit.’”
Scholars have argued the use of the word “spirit.” However, they cannot debate the spiritual awakening she had.
She read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, then would tell others, “When I had finished the book, I said to myself: ‘This is the truth.’”
Months later she took Holy Orders in 1922 with the Carmelites nuns. However, tensions on all fronts discouraged her and she left to teach philosophy. In 1933, because of anti-Jewish laws Stein was no longer able to teach. Her heart led to go back to the Carmelite monastery, where she took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Her mother was devastated, feeling as if she was victimized by the Nazis and abandoned by her daughter. However, St. Teresa did not abandon her love of her mother or the foundation of her faith – the same faith of the Holy Family.
Saint Teresa wrote a letter to Pope Pius XI, pleading for him to denounce the Nazis and the attacks on Jews, and to join faithful Catholics who were “waiting and hoping for the Church of Christ to raise its voice to put a stop to this abuse of Christ’s name.” She never heard back. When the Church in the Netherlands formerly denounced the actions of the Nazis, she was arrested for being a Jewish convert to Catholicism. A few days later she was martyred in Auschwitz.
