9 August 2021
Optional Memorial of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, virgin and martyr
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was known earlier in life as Edith Stein. Edith was born into an observant Jewish Polish family in 1891. She had a tremendous intellectual acumen and was a gifted student of philosophy, even studying under the famous phenomenologist Edmund Husserl. During her teenage years, Edith drifted away from her Jewish faith and became agnostic. She found a spiritual mentor in St. Teresa of Avila, the 16th-century Spanish mystic. She desired to convert to Catholicism and join the same order of Discalced Carmelites as Teresa. Upon taking vows, Edith received the name St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. The cross that she was to carry was nothing less than the cross of Christ amidst the horrors of the Shoah (the Holocaust).
If we take our Gospel reading in two parts, we see that Jesus and Edith were subject to parallel realities. Jesus discusses the temple tax on the whole nation of Israel to maintain the Temple cult in Jerusalem. While Jesus thinks he and those who do the will of his Father are exempt, he does not want to give offense. He complies with their request, albeit miraculously it would seem with the coin in the mouth of the fish. Jesus recognizes that citizens are treated differently from foreigners. The Jewish people were subject to a process of “othering,” to be made foreigners in their home countries through Nazi propaganda and scapegoating.
Edith encountered the first part of the Gospel reading where Jesus explains that the Son of Man will be handed over to death. Even though she was Catholic, her Jewish ancestry made her a target for the Nazi regime. Her religious superiors moved her to the Netherlands so that she might be safe. After the Dutch bishops stood against Nazi racism, the occupying Nazi force retaliated by rounding up all Catholic converts with Jewish ancestry. Edith had an opportunity to escape her fate when a Dutch official was impressed by her calm disposition. Long before her arrest, Edith began training for life in a concentration camp, realizing that she likely would not survive the war. She decided not to leave and to die with her people. Edith eventually boarded a train to the Auschwitz concentration camp and died in a gas chamber.
In a letter that Edith wrote to Pope Pius XI, she offers us a reminder of the Christian responsibility to defend the “other” in our society: “For years the leaders of National Socialism have been preaching hatred of the Jews. … But the responsibility must fall, after all, on those who brought them to this point and it also falls on those who keep silent in the face of such happenings. Everything that happened and continues to happen on a daily basis originates with a government that calls itself ‘Christian.’ For weeks not only Jews but also thousands of faithful Catholics in Germany, and, I believe, all over the world, have been waiting and hoping for the Church of Christ to raise its voice to put a stop to this abuse of Christ’s name.”
Let us pray we have the courage to speak and cast our lot with the disenfranchised in our world.