St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, born Edith Stein, was born on October 12, 1891, in Breslau, which was then part of Germany but is now Wrocław, Poland. The date of her birth coincided with her family's observance of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, which holds significance in the Jewish faith.
Edith Stein was the youngest child in a large Jewish family, and unfortunately, her father passed away when she was only two years old. As an adolescent, she decided to give up the practice of her Jewish faith.
She was a brilliant student and displayed exceptional intellectual abilities. She delved into the study of philosophy, becoming well-versed in the field and developing a particular interest in phenomenology.
With her significant intellectual gifts, Edith was a young woman who naturally gravitated towards the study of philosophy, enrolling in Edmund Husserl's classes in 1913. During her education, Edith Stein encountered various Christians whose intellectual and spiritual lives left a deep impression on her.
She completed her studies at Gottingen University with the highest honors in 1915, and she worked as a nurse in an Austrian field hospital during World War I. In 1916, she went back to school and completed her doctoral degree after producing a renowned thesis on the phenomenon of empathy. Although she still had not committed herself personally to a particular religion, she continued to be fascinated by the concept.
While visiting friends in 1921, Edith stayed up all night reading St. Teresa of Avila, a Carmelite nun who lived in the 16th century. A turning point in her life resulted from this. On January 1, 1922, at the Cathedral Church in Cologne, Germany, she was baptized into the Catholic Church.
After her conversion, Edith hoped to immediately join the Carmelites, but she eventually had to wait an additional 11 years. Instead, she worked as a teacher at a Dominican school and gave several speeches in public about women's rights. After spending 1931 writing a study on St. Thomas Aquinas, she accepted a teaching position at a university in 1932.
Edith's teaching career came to an end in 1933 as a result of the advent of the Nazi party and her Jewish ancestry. Following a difficult separation from her mother, who did not understand her conversion to Christianity, she entered a Carmelite monastery in 1934 and adopted the name "Teresa Benedicta of the Cross" as a representation of her acceptance of suffering.
After completing her final work, "The Science of the Cross," a study on St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, along with her sister Rosa, who had also converted to Catholicism, and the members of her religious community, were arrested on August 7, 1942. This arrest was in direct response to a protest letter written by the Dutch Bishops condemning the Nazi treatment of Jews.
Tragically, just two days after her arrest, on August 9, 1942, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. In recognition of her extraordinary faith, witness, and sacrifice, Pope St. John Paul II canonized St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross in 1998. He also proclaimed her as a co-patroness of Europe the following year.
St. Teresa Benedicta's life and martyrdom serve as a powerful reminder of the importance of standing up against injustice, as well as the enduring witness of faith even in the face of immense suffering.
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