Scripture:
Nahum 2:1, 3:3:1-3, 6-7
Matthew 16:24-28
Reflection:
Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein),
a Very Good Professor.
Every August 9th I have a conversation with Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, OCD, (Edith Stein). We never run out of things to talk about. I look in the book with today’s mass prayers and I see under her name the words, “Virgin and Martyr”. So, I’ll ask her, “Edith (less formal) how do you like your titles, virgin and martyr?”
Know that she is a great conversationalist. Intelligent! She earned a doctorate, (diploma finally awarded when women were permitted to receive them). Her mentor was Edmund Husserl, founder of the school of Phenomenology. Husserl chose her over Martin Heidegger to be his assistant. Heidegger would become a great philosopher and influenced the Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner. How interesting, Edith, that your dissertation is on ‘Empathy’. In the rarified air of your philosophical studies, it is us, men and women, that interest you.
Edith is an open, grounded woman; she listens and reads not just books, also people. A married couple who were friends suffered the death of a loved one. Edith witnessed how their faith affected their sorrow, giving them hope and trust. This couple opened the door for you, Edith, and you followed that grace to become a Catholic.
I am going to venture that gratitude is an expression of your Virginity; gratitude to be one of the People of the Covenant, the Chosen People. And gratitude for God’s love calls you to follow Christ in a life of charity and hope. You, of course with gratitude you remember meeting your name sake, Teresa of Avila, OCD, whose writings you devoured and then were consumed by her mystical love. Did you feel an invitation to walk with her? Great thinker that you are, Edith, Teresa must have turned a key to open your heart to the depth of the sea that is full of the feelings of God’s love for you?
“What do you think, Edith, of being among the likes of Agatha, Barbara or Cecilia?” You may not have through about that? Like today’s Gospel, we follow Jesus each day and take up the cross in our daily world. The daily cross was yours in the gender discrimination of your profession, the anti-Semitism that followed you, the pain of your mother when you became Christian, and the infamous Nazi genocide. You told a visitor after you were arrested, “I never knew people could be like this…and I honestly had no idea of how my brothers and sisters were being made to suffer”. You said your security is not to stand firm under your own power, “rather it is the sweet and blissful security of the child that is lifted up and carried by a strong arm.” “What did not lie in my plans, lay in God’s plans.”
Your beautiful intellect leads to your final book, “The Science of the Cross”. The
meaningless horror of the concentration camp led to your martyrdom. In the end we see a heart that embraced God, along with those who suffered with you on your final journey. My conversation ends in reverent silence. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, OCD, Virgin and Martyr. A woman of gratitude, one of the Chosen People, you
abandoned yourself to the mystery of God’s plan. With love as much as intellect gently lead and accompany us more deeply into the mystery of the Crosses we carry daily.
Fr. William Murphy, CP is a member of Immaculate Conception Community in Jamaica, New York.