Edith Stein: A Vocation to Intercede for Everyone

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
   and you will not listen?
Or cry to you ‘Violence!’
   and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrongdoing
   and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
   strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack
   and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous—
   therefore judgement comes forth perverted. (Habakkuk 1: 1-4)

Saint Teresa Benedicta a Cruce (Edith Stein)

             

On August 9, we celebrate the memorial of a great woman, Edith Stein, who died in Auschwitz on August 9, 1942. She was born into an observant Jewish family on Yom Kippur, 1891. As a teenager, she gave up the practice of her Jewish faith and became an atheist. In the course of her studies, she met several Christians whose intellectual and spiritual lives intrigued her. She was converted to Catholicism as a result of reading the writings of Theresa of Avila. “When I had finished the book,” she later recalled, “I said to myself: This is the truth.” Eventually, she entered Carmel, taking the name: Teresa Benedicta a Cruce (Theresa Blessed by the Cross) as a symbol of her acceptance of suffering. “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. In 1939 she wrote: “I ask the Lord to accept my life and my death 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.” 

           Her martyrdom and the horror of the Holocaust can serve as a backdrop for our consideration of a reading from the prophet Habakkuk. No matter how bad things get, God is still the Holy One and Master of the Universe. The prophet calls to mind God’s fidelity to the covenant He made with His people. This sure hope is echoed in the words of Edith Stein: “Things were in God’s plan which I had not planned at all.  I am coming to the living faith and conviction that — from God’s point of view — there is not chance and that the whole of my life, down to every detail has been mapped out in God’s divine providence and makes complete and perfect sense in God’s all-seeing eyes.” 

            The Beloved Son of God has come into the world. The Living Word has become flesh, taking to Himself all our pain and suffering. The scars He bears in His glorified body are the pledge of our salvation and a promise of our adoption as Children of the Kingdom. Edith Stein's entry into the Carmelite Order was not escapism. "Those who join the Carmelite Order are not lost to their near and dear ones, but have been won for them, because it is our vocation to intercede to God for everyone." In particular, she interceded to God for her people: "I keep thinking of Queen Esther who was taken away from her people precisely because God wanted her to plead with the king on behalf of her nation. I am a very poor and powerless little Esther, but the King who has chosen me is infinitely great and merciful. This is great comfort." (31 October 1938) I will close these reflections with a prayer she wrote: "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 prospect will open before me, and I shall meet it with peace.” 

--Fr. Jerome Machar, OSCO