#st. edith stein

[struckbylightningorsomething]

It is not a question here of a sovereignty of man over woman. She is named as companion and helpmate, and it is said of man that he will cling to her and that both are to become one flesh. This signifies that we are to consider the life of the initial human pair as the most intimate community of love, that their faculties were in perfect harmony as within one single being; likewise, before the Fall, all faculties in each individual were in perfect harmony, senses and spirit in right relation with no possibility of conflict. For this reason, they were also incapable of inordinate desire for one another. This is revealed in the words “They were naked and were not ashamed.”

Edith Stein. The Separate Vocations of Man and Woman According to Nature and Grace

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINT OF THE DAY (August 9)

On August 9, the Catholic Church remembers St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, also known as St. Edith Stein.

St. Teresa converted from Judaism to Catholicism in the course of her work as a philosopher and later entered the Carmelite Order.

She died in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1942.

Edith Stein was born on 12 October 1891 – a date that coincided with her family's celebration of Yom Kippur, the Jewish “day of atonement.”

Edith's father died when she was just two years old, and she gave up the practice of her Jewish faith as an adolescent.

As a young woman with profound intellectual gifts, Edith gravitated toward the study of philosophy and became a pupil of the renowned professor Edmund Husserl in 1913.

Through her studies, the non-religious Edith met several Christians whose intellectual and spiritual lives she admired.

After earning her degree with the highest honors from Gottingen University in 1915, she served as a nurse in an Austrian field hospital during World War I.

She returned to academic work in 1916, earning her doctorate after writing a highly-regarded thesis on the phenomenon of empathy.

She remained interested in the idea of religious commitment but had not yet made such a commitment herself.

In 1921, while visiting friends, Edith spent an entire night reading the autobiography of the 16th-century Carmelite nun St. Teresa of Avila.

“When I had finished the book,” she later recalled, “I said to myself: This is the truth.”

She was baptized into the Catholic Church on the first day of January 1922.

Edith intended to join the Carmelites immediately after her conversion but would ultimately have to wait another 11 years before taking this step.

Instead, she taught at a Dominican school and gave numerous public lectures on women's issues.

In 1931, she spent her time writing a study of St. Thomas Aquinas and took a university teaching position in 1932.

In 1933, the rise of Nazism, combined with Edith's Jewish ethnicity, put an end to her teaching career.

After a painful parting with her mother, who did not understand her Christian conversion, she entered a Carmelite convent in 1934, taking the name “Teresa Benedicta of the Cross” as a symbol of her acceptance of suffering.

“I felt,” she wrote, “that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take upon themselves on everybody's behalf.”

She saw it as her vocation “to intercede with God for everyone, but she prayed especially for the Jews of Germany whose tragic fate was becoming clear."

“I ask the Lord to accept my life and my death,” she wrote in 1939, “so that the Lord will be accepted by his people and that his kingdom may come in glory, for the salvation of Germany and the peace of the world.”

After completing her final work, a study of St. John of the Cross entitled “The Science of the Cross,” Teresa Benedicta was arrested along with her sister Rosa (who had also become a Catholic) and the members of her religious community on 7 August 1942.

The arrests came in retaliation against a protest letter by the Dutch Bishops, decrying the Nazi treatment of Jews.

Teresa Benedicta of the Cross died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz on 9 August 1942.

Pope John Paul II beatified her as a martyr on 1 May 1987 and then canonized 11 years later on 11 October 1998.

She is one of the six patron saints of Europe, together with Benedict of Nursia, Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena.

[daughter-of-mary]

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint Edith Stein

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

1891 - 1942

Feast Day: August 9

Patronage: Europeans, students, professors, philosophers, against the death of parents, for conversion to the fullness of the faith, for courage in living out the faith.

Edith Stein was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and nun. Born into a devout German Jewish family, Edith Stein has baptized a Roman Catholic on January 1, 1922. In 1934 she entered the Carmelite Convent, where she took the name of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.  In 1942 she was caught by the Gestapo, arrested wearing her habit and killed within weeks in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

[weil-weil-lautre]

The presence and apparent absence of God are felt in the heart, giving blissful happiness or a most painful longing. [...] God takes hold of the soul both in faith and in contemplation. Revealed truth is not simply accepted by a natural decision of the will. The message of faith comes to many who do not receive it. this may also be due to natural motives, but there are cases in which there is a mysterious incapacity: the hour of grace has not yet come. The indwelling by grace has not yet begun. But in contemplation the soul meets God himself who takes hold of it.

Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross, 138

[pink-fiat003]

“‘O Lord God, take me away from myself and give me completely to you alone,’ the ancient German prayer says. […] To speak to Him thus is easier by nature for woman than for man because a natural desire lives in her to give herself completely to someone.”

- Essays on Woman: The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 2

[signum-crucis]

"Edith teaches us that to be chosen for the Cross is to be drawn into the deepest intimacy with Christ. She did not flee her path but followed Him to the end, trusting that authentic love is proven on the Cross, not abandoned."

[pamphletstoinspire]

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross - (Edith Stein) Feast Day: August 9

[catholic-saint-tournament]

Modern Saint Bracket Announcement

Instead of waiting until Sunday, the modern bracket will open immediately after the post-schism bracket is over. This is the modern bracket, which will be followed by a final four, and then there will be even MORE polls (losers' brackets, Marian apparitions, we're going all summer baby.)

Catholic Saint Tournament Modern Bracket Round 1 Pairings:

St Therese of Lisieux vs St Elizabeth Ann Seton

St Padre Pio (of Pietrelcina) vs St Charles de Foucauld

St Maximilian Kolbe vs St Benilde Romancon

St John Bosco vs St John Neumann

St Mother Teresa (of Calcutta) vs St Arnold Janssen

St Jacinta Marto vs St Edith Stein

St Maria Goretti vs St Marianne Cope

St Charles Lwanga (& co) vs St John Vianney

St Oscar Romero vs St Josemaria Escriva

St Bernadette vs St Damian of Molokai

St Faustina vs St Catherine Laboure

St Mary MacKillop vs St Katharine Drexel

St Gemma Galgani vs St Frances Xavier Cabrini

St John Henry Cardinal Newman vs Pope St John Paul II

Pope St John XXIII vs St Mark Ji Tianxiang

St Francisco Marto vs Sts Louis & Zelie Martin (package deal)

You can still submit nominations for beatified folks, propaganda for your favorite saints, or other thoughts in the ask box! Or suggestions for future polls, questions, etc.

May the best saint win!

[proud-spaniard]

Saint Edith Stein

[struckbylightningorsomething]

“But no helpmate corresponding to him was found for Adam.” 5 The Hebrew expression used in this passage is barely translatable 6—Eser kenegdo— which literally means “a helper as if vis-à-vis to him.” One can think here of a mirror in which man is able to look upon his own nature. The translators who speak of a “helpmate suitable to him” perceive it in this way. But one can also think of a counterpart, a pendant, so that, indeed, they do resemble each other, yet not entirely, but rather, that they complement each other as one hand does the other.

Edith Stein. The Separate Vocations of Man and Woman According to Nature and Grace

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINT OF THE DAY (August 9)

On August 9, the Catholic Church remembers St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, also known as St. Edith Stein.

St. Teresa converted from Judaism to Catholicism in the course of her work as a philosopher and later entered the Carmelite Order.

She died in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1942.

Edith Stein was born on 12 October 1891 — a date that coincided with her family's celebration of Yom Kippur, the Jewish “day of atonement.”

Edith's father died when she was just two years old, and she gave up the practice of her Jewish faith as an adolescent.

As a young woman with profound intellectual gifts, Edith gravitated toward the study of philosophy and became a pupil of the renowned professor Edmund Husserl in 1913.

Through her studies, the non-religious Edith met several Christians whose intellectual and spiritual lives she admired.

After earning her degree with the highest honors from Gottingen University in 1915, she served as a nurse in an Austrian field hospital during World War I.

She returned to academic work in 1916, earning her doctorate after writing a highly-regarded thesis on the phenomenon of empathy.

She remained interested in the idea of religious commitment but had not yet made such a commitment herself.

In 1921, while visiting friends, Edith spent an entire night reading the autobiography of the 16th-century Carmelite nun, St. Teresa of Avila.

“When I had finished the book,” she later recalled, “I said to myself: This is the truth.”

She was baptized into the Catholic Church on the first day of January 1922.

Edith intended to join the Carmelites immediately after her conversion but would ultimately have to wait another 11 years before taking this step.

Instead, she taught at a Dominican school and gave numerous public lectures on women's issues.

She spent 1931 writing a study of St. Thomas Aquinas and took a university teaching position in 1932.

In 1933, the rise of Nazism, combined with Edith's Jewish ethnicity, put an end to her teaching career.

After a painful parting with her mother, who did not understand her Christian conversion, she entered a Carmelite convent in 1934, taking the name “Teresa Benedicta of the Cross” as a symbol of her acceptance of suffering.

“I felt,” she wrote, “that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take upon themselves on everybody's behalf.”

She saw it as her vocation “to intercede with God for everyone,” but she prayed especially for the Jews of Germany whose tragic fate was becoming clear.

“I ask the Lord to accept my life and my death,” she wrote in 1939, “so that the Lord will be accepted by his people and that his kingdom may come in glory, for the salvation of Germany and the peace of the world.”

After completing her final work, a study of St. John of the Cross entitled “The Science of the Cross,” Teresa Benedicta was arrested, along with her sister Rosa (who had also become a Catholic) and the members of her religious community, on 7 August 1942.

The arrests came in retaliation against a protest letter by the Dutch Bishops, decrying the Nazi treatment of Jews.

Teresa Benedicta of the Cross died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz on 9 August 1942.

Pope John Paul II beatified her on 1 May 1987 and canonized on 11 October 1998.

She is one of the six patron saints of Europe, together with Benedict of Nursia, Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena.

[siamkram]

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint Edith Stein

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

1891 - 1942

Feast Day: August 9

Patronage: Europeans, students, professors, philosophers, against death of parents, for conversion to the fullness of the faith, for courage in living out the faith.

Edith Stein was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and nun. Born into a devout German Jewish family, Edith Stein was baptized a Roman Catholic on January 1, 1922. In 1934 she entered the Carmelite Convent, where she took the name of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.  In 1942 she was caught by the Gestapo, arrested wearing her habit and killed within weeks in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

[patron-saint-of-lesbeans]

A Chaplet of Divine Mercy for Palestine, as said meditating on the five wounds of the crucified Christ.

Begin as usual; Our Father, Hail Mary, the Creed.

First decade: Eternal God, I offer this decade of divine mercy for the children of Palestine. I do so while meditating on your pierced side, and the blood and water that flowed from the wound. Hold the children of Palestine close to your Sacred Heart, as I pray Eternal Father, I offer the body and blood, soul and divinity… [continue as usual]

Second decade: Eternal God, I offer this decade of divine mercy for the women of Palestine. I do so while meditating on your pierced right hand, nailed to the cross. Keep the women of Palestine under the safety of your wing, protect them with your strong right arm as I pray Eternal Father, I offer the body and blood, soul and divinity… [continue as usual]

Third decade: Eternal God, I offer this decade of divine mercy for the men of Palestine. I do so while meditating on your pierced left hand, nailed to the cross. Give the men of Palestine the strength and resolve to sit at your left hand as righteous men as I pray Eternal Father, I offer the body and blood, soul and divinity… [continue as usual]

Fourth decade: Eternal God, I offer this decade of divine mercy for those committing acts of horror and terror against the people of Palestine. I do so while meditating on your pierced left foot, nailed to the cross. You were promised to crush the skull of the serpent beneath your heel. Drive the enemy from their midst, break their stony hearts, and open their eyes that they may make penance for their sins, as I pray Eternal Father, I offer the body and blood, soul and divinity… [continue as usual]

Fifth decade: Eternal God, I offer this decade of divine mercy for peace throughout the world, with special intention for Palestine. I do so while meditating on your pierced right foot, nailed to the cross. The whole of the world sits at your feet, where you reign in co-eternal Trinity. Prince of peace, show mercy and pour out the graces of peace across our world to firmly establish justice throughout the land of the living as I pray Eternal Father, I offer the body and blood, soul and divinity… [continue as usual]

Finish as usual, with special intention for the intercession of Mary, the Queen of Peace, St. Faustina of the Divine Mercy, and St. Elizabeth of the Cross (Edith Stein) for the salvation of the Jewish people and victims of genocide.