Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Edith Stein was born on October 12th, 1891, in a Jewish family in Breslau, which was then part of, or which during her whole lifetime, indeed, was part of Germany. That day was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and she would eventually offer her life for her people. The last of 11 children, she lost her father before her second birthday. It was her mother who brought her up in the Jewish faith, but as she grew older, she lost that faith. At 13, she stopped believing in a personal God, and then after that, she deliberately stopped praying. She was a gifted and hard-working student, however. In 1911, she enrolled at the University of Breslau to study German and history, but her real interest was philosophy and women's issues.
This beginning to her life would make it seem that she was not destined for holiness, but for a life lived by the principles of pure rationalism. She met great German philosophers and tried to become a university professor, but academia had trouble with the idea of a woman teaching. Meanwhile, she had become interested in Catholicism and begun to read about it. In the summer of 1921, finding herself alone at the house of friends, she read the whole autobiography of St. Therese of Avila in one night. When she closed the book, she said to herself, this is the truth. She went to a Mass, and after the Mass, she asked to be baptized, but she was told that she would have to be instructed first. After some months of preparation, she was baptized on January 1st, 1922, the feast of the Circumcision.
She wanted to follow St. Therese of Avila into the cloister, but her spiritual guides did not approve of such a radical step by a new convert. It could be just the enthusiasm of the moment. He also felt that such an intelligent and learned woman would be much more useful in the world, where she could teach others. So she kept pursuing a teaching career, and in addition, made long trips to give spiritual talks, especially on women's issues. In addition, she published translations and original philosophical works. An essay she composed for a circle of Catholic women, published under the title The Ways of Silence, bore at the bottom an added note in the place of the date that said, if we try to contemplate silently the path trodden by the Mother of God, and the purification to Good Friday, she will be the one to help us find the ways of silence. Edith, for her part, did contemplate the way trodden by Our Lady. She spent long hours in prayer at the foot of a statue of the Pietà. She was with Christ at all times, but always having Mary, her mother, beside her.
She said Edith can form in her own image those who belong to her. In 1932, she received a teaching post in the Roman Catholic division of the German Institute for Educational Studies at the University of Münster. Finally, she had her university teaching position.
But the following year, Hitler took power, and Jews were no longer allowed to teach.
Deprived of the possibility of apostolate in the world, she finally received permission to become a Carmelite. She took the religious name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
Mary was the secret of this scene, who, even after she found the truth and the peace of a contemplative life, was to live to the full the mystery of the Cross.
The situation of Jews in Germany was getting worse and worse, and the events of Kristallnacht made it clear that it was no longer safe to stay in Germany. On the night between November 9th and 10th, 1938, rioters destroyed synagogues and Jewish businesses and assaulted Jews, killing nearly a hundred of them. The next day, some 30,000 men were arrested, but they were not the perpetrators, they were Jews. Already in the previous year, St. Teresa Benedicta had been preparing herself to share the destiny of the Jewish people and travel along the way of the Cross, but she was in no hurry to die. She had already looked into going to the Jerusalem Carmel, but Palestine was no longer accepting immigrants. America seemed safe, but the German government demanded a sponsor for each person who wanted to emigrate there, so only some members of her family managed to go there. Given the urgency, the priors decided to transfer her to the Carmelite in Holland, and she left for it on the last day of 1938. On June 9th, 1939, she wrote her final testament. Near the end, she wrote, I joyfully accept and advance the death the death God has appointed for me, in perfect submission to his holy will.
May the Lord accept my life and death for the honor and glory of his name, for the needs of his holy church, and she added several specific intentions for the Carmelite order, the Jewish people, the deliverance of Germany, for peace in the world, for her relatives living and dead, and for all those God had given to her. In 1940, after a series of narrow escapes, her sister Rosa, who had also been baptized, reached her and began serving as the prioress of the convent or monastery in Holland. Later that same year, however, the Nazis conquered Holland, but St. Teresa Benedict did not lose her peace. Her life was in the hands of God.
Another change that year was the election of a new prioress, who decided to make more use of St. Teresa's intellectual gifts. One of the ways in which he had her used was by writing a book on St. John of the Cross for the occasion of the 400th anniversary of his birth, which would be in 1942. In the beginning of 1942, by that point, it was clear that she and her sister had to get out of Holland. The persecution of the Jews was increasing there as well. She wrote to a Carmel in Switzerland, but they only had room for her, not for her sister, and it was unacceptable to leave her sister behind, so she had kept looking for a way to get both of them into Switzerland.
On July 26th, in all the Catholic churches in Holland, a letter of protest against the persecution of the Jews was read. But in the following Sunday, August 2nd, the Nazis retaliated by rounding up all the Catholics of Jewish origin, along with other Jews. At 5pm, two SS officers came to the Carmel and told St. Teresa Benedict that she and her sister had to come with them within five minutes, and she said to her sister, come Rosa, we're going for our people.
In captivity, she remained calm, and other religious gathered around her to pray the divine office in the Rosary. A train took 1,200 Jews, including the two sisters, to Westerbork, the central detention camp in the northern part of Holland, where their fates would be decided.
One survivor from the camp said that St. Teresa looked deeply oppressed, like a Pietà without the Christ, and not so much for herself, where she was resigned, but for the others, where she knew better than they did what awaited them and how hard it would be for them. Yet she remained calm and self-possessed, and went about the women like an angel, comforting, helping, and consoling them.
She was a sorrowful mother, and where was the Christ of this sorrowful mother? As you did it to the least of these, our Lord said, you did it to me. On August 7th, the two sisters were packed into a train with other women for their last journey, and they arrived in Auschwitz after two days, on August 9th, 1942, and were probably sent immediately to the gas chambers, because there were no survivors from that train. But the poison gas could not deprive her of eternal life. As poor Christ had said, everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.