Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), Virgin and Martyr – Readings
Commentary on Hosea 2:16-17,21-22; Matthew 25:1-13
The Gospel reading for the feast is the parable of the Ten Bridesmaids from Matthew. It is one of three parables from near the end of Jesus’ public life in a section which deals mainly with the Second Coming of Christ and what is known as the General Judgement. The main theme of the three parables is the importance of being ready to meet Christ at the end of our lives.
The parable of the Ten Bridesmaids (or in some translations, the Ten Virgins) speaks of ten young women who go out to meet the bridegroom as he comes for the wedding ceremony. In our society, it is the groom who waits for the bride, but here it is the other way round. And though, in our time, traditionally brides have had the reputation for unpunctuality, here it is the man who causes the delay.
Each of the bridesmaids was carrying an oil lamp to greet the groom when he arrived. We are told that five of them were ‘wise’ and five were ‘foolish’. The foolish ones neglected to take extra oil with them, but the wise had brought flasks of oil in case of running short.
The bridegroom was long delayed and the young women became drowsy and even fell asleep. Then, at midnight, the cry went up:
Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.
By now, the lamps had all gone out and the foolish young women asked the wise to give them some oil for their lamps. The wise ones refused, saying that they did not have enough for all of them. They told the foolish ones to go and buy some for themselves.
While they were away, the bridegroom arrived and:
…those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet, and the door was shut.
When the foolish young women came back, they asked for the locked door to be opened:
Lord, lord, open to us.
They then hear what are perhaps the most terrible words in the Gospels:
…I do not know you.
The message of the parable is clear. It is an image of our lives. Our life is a journey to our final goal—to be fully united with our Creator and Lord. But on the way we need to prepare ourselves; we need to be ready.
Jesus had said earlier in Matthew’s Gospel that we are to be the light of the world. But there is a danger that our light will go out. What is the oil we need to keep our light shining? The ‘oil’ is our maintaining a close relationship with Christ through steadfast prayer and living our lives in a constantly loving and caring relationship with those around us, especially those in greatest need, whatever that need may be. As long as we live in this way, there will be oil to keep our light shining. And we will know Jesus because we will recognise, love and serve him in our brothers and sisters. And, at the end, he too will know us. It will be a meeting of old friends.
But if we live our lives in self-seeking ways, Jesus will not be part of it, and at the end, he will not know us. Edith Stein, in the earlier part of her life, led a life where God had little or no part. But after her conversion and discovery of Christ, then she was indeed a “wise bridesmaid” in living faithfully her Carmelite vocation. And when the final trial came, she was ready to go in and meet her Lord, to whom she was already well known. Let us learn some of her wisdom.
The First Reading consists of verses from the prophet Hosea. This book uses the prophet’s own unfortunate marriage (where his wife Gomer was unfaithful to him) as an image of the relationship of the faithless Israel with Yahweh. And, just as Hosea felt he could not desert his wife because of her adultery, so Yahweh cannot abandon Israel. In today’s reading, Yahweh speaks of his loving relationship with Israel:
Therefore, I will now allure her
and bring her into the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her…she shall respond
as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
(NRSVue Translation*: Hosea 2:14-15)
Here the text speaks of the Exodus, of Yahweh leading out his people from the slavery of Egypt when they were more faithful to him than now. Then the prophet writes:
I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.
(NRSVue Translation: *Hosea 2:19-20)
This is the promise Yahweh makes, in spite of Israel’s unfaithfulness. Despite her conversion to Christianity, Edith remained a Jew all her life. She could not be otherwise. But as a Carmelite Sister, Edith had become betrothed to the Lord and became the bride of Christ. And she remained unwaveringly faithful, even to the sacrifice of her life for her Spouse.
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*The verses in the Book of the Prophet Hosea are arranged slightly differently in different translations. The First Reading verses cited in the two quotations above are from the NRSVue Translation.
Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), Virgin and Martyr
Edith Stein was born on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement (12 October, 1891), in Breslau, Silesia, (now Wroclaw, Poland). She was the youngest of 11 children in a devout Jewish family. When she was not yet two years old her father died suddenly, leaving Edith’s mother to raise the seven remaining children (four had died in childhood) and to manage the family business. Brought up on the Psalms and Proverbs, Edith considered her mother a living example of the strong woman of Proverbs 31. However, by her teenage years, Stein had lost her Jewish faith and regarded herself an atheist, although she continued to respect her mother’s total openness to God.
One of the first women to do university studies in Germany, Edith moved from the University of Breslau to the University of Gottingen in order to study under Edmund Husserl, the founder of the philosophical study of phenomenology. It was her study of philosophy which led her to acknowledge the existence of a transcendent reality. Under the influence of friends who had discovered Christianity, her atheism began to falter.
During the summer of 1921 at the age of 29 and while on holidays with friends, she found herself alone one evening. Apparently by chance, she happened on the autobiography of St Teresa of Avila, the founder of the reformed Carmelites, and read it in one sitting. The effect of the book was to convince her that truth was with Christianity and the next day she went out to buy a missal and a catechism.
She was baptized on 1 January, 1922 and gave up her assistantship with Husserl to teach at a Dominican girls’ school in Speyer from 1922 to 1932. Her spiritual directors knew that her conversion to Christianity and her seclusion in a contemplative order would be a double blow to her devout Jewish mother. At the same time, they knew the Church could benefit from her ability as a writer and speaker, which would be excluded within the walls of an enclosed convent. In fact, she did become a significant voice in the Catholic Woman’s Movement in Germany. When Hitler rose to power in 1933, Edith was already well known in German academic circles.
With the growing persecution of the Jewish community, she wrote a letter to Pope Pius XI denouncing the Nazi regime and asked the Pope openly to condemn the regime, “to put a stop to this abuse of Christ’s name”. However, for reasons that are unknown, a response to her request did not materialise.
By March of 1933, her colleagues at the Educational Institute in Muenster, aware that they could no longer protect her, offered her a teaching position in South America. However, if she accepted, she would not see her 84-year-old mother again, so she felt it was now time for her to enter the convent. In that same year, she was deeply moved by a homily she heard during a Holy Thursday service at the Carmelite convent in Cologne. She decided that as someone who understood that a cross was being placed on the Jewish people, she wanted to take it up in their name. But she did not yet know what carrying the cross would entail.
So, on 15 October, the feast of St Teresa of Avila and just after her 42nd birthday, Edith entered the Carmel of Cologne and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Her family, and especially her mother, felt it was a betrayal of her people just at a time when persecution of the Jews was being intensified by what they regarded as Christian oppressors (although Nazism was atheistic). They wondered how she could do such a thing, how she could believe in a man who could call himself God. Yet, after the mother’s death in 1936, Edith’s sister Rosa also became a Catholic.
Edith stayed in Cologne for five years, happy in her vocation and still engaged in her scholarly studies. However, after the terrible Kristallnacht of 9 November, 1938, there were fears for Edith’s safety and she was sent secretly to a Carmelite convent in Echt in The Netherlands. Her converted sister Rosa joined her there as a Third Order Carmelite, serving as the convent portress. When Holland was overrun by the Nazis, there was a plan to move the two sisters to Switzerland. However, before this could be done, a strongly worded encyclical from the Dutch bishops on 20 July, 1942 against anti-Semitism resulted in all convert Jews being arrested to be sent to the death camps.
Edith and Rosa Stein were arrested on 2 August, 1942. As they were led away, Edith said to her sister:
Come, Rosa…We go for our people.
The sisters were brought to Auschwitz and died in the gas chambers only a week later. Edith Stein was just 50 years old. During those final days, Edith showed great inner strength and gave encouragement to her fellow prisoners and even helped look after small children when their mothers were too distressed to do so. One woman who survived the war wrote:
Every time I think of her sitting in the barracks, the same picture comes to mind: a Pieta without the Christ.
Like her Master, she died with him and, like him, she died for her people and for their persecutors. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 1 May, 1987 and canonised as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (her Carmelite given name) on 11 October, 1998. She is also one of the five Patrons of Europe.
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