Saint Teresia Benedicta a Cruce


Today is the feast of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, known in secular life as Edith Stein. Ten years ago as a beata her day was an optional memorial and appeared only in the Carmelite calendar. Now she has a day in the general Roman calendar ranked as a Feast since she is now the co-patroness of Europe.

A short "life" may be found here. At the same site you can hear Fr. Charles Connor discussing her life. The link is here.

There is an excellent index to material concerning St. Teresia Benedicta here. Note particularly the book review by Evelyn Waugh here:

On Sunday 26 July 1942, the Archbishop of Utrecht issued a pastoral condemning the persecution of the Jews. Retribution was immediate. All Catholic priests and religious with Jewish connections were rounded up by the SS. On 1 August Edith was arrested and driven off with the other victims of the Terror; somewhere, quite soon probably, she was killed in one of the extermination camps in the east. Attempts have been made to sift the various conflicting reports of people who saw her or thought they saw her during her last journey. Nothing is certain except the fact of her death. She disappeared bodily in the total, hellish darkness.

Her spirit shines out, very clear and lonely; a brilliant intelligence; a pure, disciplined will; a single motive power, the Grace of God. The circumstances of her death touch us for they lie at the heart of contemporary disaster. The aimless, impersonal wickedness which could drag a victim from the holy silence of Carmel and drive her, stripped and crowded, to the gas chamber and furnace, still lurks in the darkness. But Edith's death is perhaps an irrelevant horror. Her life was completed in Carmel. She did not sit, waiting on God. She went out alone and by the God-given light of her intelligence and strength of purpose, she found Him

This page is in German. But if you follow all the links you'll find two or three different photographs of St. Teresia Benedicta on each page.

Where her ashes are scattered.