Edith Stein and her intercession for peace in the Holy Land
P. Vojtěch of St. Hedwig, OCD
Last August, we commemorated the sixtieth anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein). On this occasion, the General Superior of the Discalced Carmelites, Father Camillo Maccise, called upon all communities of his order to join in prayer for peace in the Holy Land. The following contribution was created as a written adaptation of a sermon delivered by the author during the liturgy celebrated on August 9, 2002, at St. Benedict's Church (the church of the Discalced Carmelite nuns) in Prague's Hradčany district.
“May the Lord bless you and keep you,
may the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you,
may the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and grant you peace.”
The words of this biblical priestly blessing (cf. Num 6:24–26) serve as a fitting introduction to the following reflection for several reasons:
First, because it is a text used in both Christian and Jewish liturgies, and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) is simultaneously "a great daughter of Israel and a faithful daughter of the Church," as expressed by Pope John Paul II during her canonization on October 11, 1998.
Furthermore, because it is a blessing that reveals God's fundamental attitude toward the individual and humanity as a whole, as we understand it in the entirety of Revelation. The Old Testament Lord, the God of mercy, goodness, and generosity toward Israel, is identical to Jesus' Father, who causes His sun to shine on both the evil and the good (cf. Mt 5:45). The blessing (beraká) is also understood in Jewish thought as an effective prayer, one that acts according to what it expresses, thus coming close to the Catholic understanding of sacraments as effective signs.
Lastly, it is appropriate to begin from this blessing also because it is a prayer for peace, shalom. And this is precisely what we seek; more specifically: a lasting and just peace in the Holy Land...
Biblical peace, however, is not just any peace; it is not merely a contradiction of war (cf. Eccl 3:8), but rather an essential element of the covenant between the Lord and His people, a fundamental content of God's everlasting blessing. It is the greatest gift God can give to man; shalom, as biblical scholars point out, has a wide range of meanings: from peace and well-being to health and salvation (cf. G. von Rad).
It is precisely this gift of peace for the Holy Land, long tested by violence, that we wish to entrust to the intercessory prayer of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Why her in particular? From a worldly perspective, a skeptical question intrudes: who is Edith Stein that she can intervene against the spiral of violence, assassinations, and ensuing reprisals? From the perspective of the Church and the Carmelite community, the same question can be framed differently: why should we associate her with this intention?
Perhaps the following reflection will help us find a satisfactory answer to these questions.
A woman of deep intercessory prayer
St. Teresa Benedicta was primarily a woman of deep intercessory prayer. This assertion might seem somewhat strange to those who know that Edith, at the age of fifteen, consciously and intentionally decided to put an end to her prayers.
However, this decision was driven by a passionate quest for truth, and while it initially led her away from an inherited but not very personally accepted belief in God, later it would bring her back to it, though Edith would have to make an immensely significant transition from Judaism to Christianity, through a detour of atheism. When she later reflects on this period of her search, she writes: “The desire for truth was my only prayer.” In connection with her teacher, the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, she further explains: “God is truth, and whoever seeks truth seeks God, even if they may not be fully aware of it.” In another place, she clarifies this thought even further: “Whoever seeks truth is living at the very heart of rational inquiry; if they are truly concerned with truth (and not just with the accumulation of knowledge), then they are certainly closer – without realizing it – to God, who is truth and therefore to their own innermost being.”
With Edith, we thus find from the very beginning something that is not a given with others and that sets her apart from so many doubting believers or those who have already lost their faith. There is in her a kind of inner spark, a passion for truth, which, at the moment of her conversion, receives its specific name and face: Jesus of Nazareth, Lord and God. It is no coincidence that after God touches her with His grace while reading the autobiography of St. Teresa of Jesus— which she reads in one breath on that August night in 1921— she exclaims: “This is the truth!”
In this context, her subsequent transformation is easier to understand, so profound that it even impacts her own mother, who, as a Jewish woman, suffers immensely from Edith's decision to become a Catholic. When she observes her daughter praying in the synagogue, Augusta Stein must admit: “I have never seen anyone pray like Edith.”
The Benedictine father Damas Zähringer also testifies compellingly in this regard: “When I first met her at the entrance gate of the Beuron monastery, her appearance impressed me so much that I can only compare it to the impression made by ancient Christian art in the catacombs, depicting the Church at prayer (ecclesia orans).”
Edith Stein, from the very beginning of her Christian life, finds herself in two outstanding schools of spirituality, each in its own way teaching her to pray: in the environment of Benedictine liturgy at the Beuron monastery and in the intimate friendship of contemplative meditation with the spiritual daughters of St. Teresa, the Discalced Carmelites.
She herself gives us little insight into the mystery of her prayer, especially since entering the Carmel in Cologne in 1933, but I believe that her following text, written in more general terms, actually reflects her own spiritual experience: “Every genuine prayer is the prayer of the entire Church. In each prayer, something happens in the Church. Every prayer is made by the Church itself, for it is the Holy Spirit who intercedes for each individual soul with sighs too deep for words (Rom 8:26). Such is true prayer, for no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord!', except by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3). What can prayer of the Church be but dedication of those who love God, who is love, above all else? Total dedication to God and, in return, the divine gift, full and eternal unity – that is the highest elevation of the heart. That is the highest degree of prayer that is available to us. Souls that have reached this point are the heart of the Church.”
Thus, it is certain that Edith Stein, the later Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, lived a life of very deep prayer. Precisely because of this, there is undoubtedly a reason to ask her for intercession for peace, for tranquility in the Holy Land.
The power and wisdom of the cross
However, there are other reasons why she is the suitable intercessor for peace in the Holy Land. Edith Stein recognized the power and wisdom of Christ's cross from the very beginning of her faith.
For the first time, as she herself testifies, she encountered it in November 1917, even before her conversion, when she was to organize the written estate of the widow of Adolf Reinach. She feared meeting the desperate woman immersed in her own grief, yet discovered an immensely suffering, but unexpectedly balanced and peaceful person: “It was my first encounter with the cross and the divine strength that the cross grants to those who bear it,” she wrote. “For the first time, I saw with my own eyes the Church born from the suffering of the Redeemer in her victory over the sting of death. It was a moment in which my disbelief collapsed, and Christ shone forth, Christ in the mystery of the cross.”
Here begins the hidden process of her conversion, and the cross of Christ would never again leave her throughout her life. In fact, she later chose it as her religious surname (“of the Cross”), and she understands her entire new name in this way: Terezie blessed (= benedicta) by the cross. As we will see further, it is indeed a perfectly realized program!
Edith Stein from the very beginning perceives the cross not unilaterally as a source of suffering and death, but as a power that conquers death. It could be expressed differently: paradoxically, the cross carries those who bear it! She writes: “Whoever embraces it with faith, love, and hope will be lifted up into the bosom of the Triune God (...) In the power of the cross, you can be on all fronts, in all places of need; everywhere it will carry you with its merciful love...”
During her novitiate (in 1933), Sister Teresa Benedicta also understood, presumably on the basis of a special mystical grace, that the shadow of the cross would fall upon the Jewish people, and she was called to accept a part of this cross upon herself for the salvation of Israel. She later stated: “In what the bearing of that cross would consist, I did not yet know.”
Only at the time when persecution fully broke out in Germany and she was preparing to flee to the Dutch town of Echt, was she able to fully comprehend it: “Under the cross, I understood the cross of God’s people, which then (i.e., in 1933) began to be announced. I believed that those who understood it was the cross of Christ must take it upon themselves on behalf of all. Today I certainly know more about what it means to be betrothed to the Lord under the sign of the cross. Of course, a person can never fully understand it, for it is a mystery.”
St. Teresa Benedicta, however, did not offer to bear the cross exclusively for her people. Just before the outbreak of World War II, she wrote to her superior: “Dear Mother, please allow me to offer myself to the Heart of Jesus as an expiatory victim for true peace: that the reign of the Antichrist, if possible, may collapse without a new world war and that a new order may be established. I would like to do this today, for the hour is striking. I know that I am nothing, but that is what Jesus desires, and He is certainly calling many others to this in these days.”
And in her will, she stated: “Even now I joyfully accept the death that God has appointed for me, in complete submission to His most holy will. I ask the Lord to accept my life and death for His honor and glory, I plead for all urgent requests of the Heart of Jesus and Mary and the Holy Church, especially for the Carmel in Cologne and Echt, for reconciliation, for the unbelief of the Jewish people, and that those who belong to Him may accept the Lord and that His kingdom may come in glory; I pray for the salvation of Germany and peace in the world...”
Edith Stein, born on the feast of Yom Kippur (“Day of Atonement”) – when Israel is cleansed from its sins to become reconciled with the Lord – offered herself for peace. Her sacrifice was seemingly ineffective, for it did not prevent the new war; yet we must recognize that it was accepted. Despite all “security measures,” including her transfer to the Dutch Carmel in Echt, she was ultimately deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was, presumably immediately upon her arrival on August 9, 1942, killed. But if her sacrifice was accepted, it also had a profound meaning...
Through her death, Teresa Benedicta perfectly attained that which she considered the center of the teaching of her spiritual master, St. John of the Cross, and what she also chose as the title of her unfinished book about him: The Science of the Cross.
Teresa Benedicta knows that she can plead, that it makes sense to intercede, even to offer herself – despite the fact that she is merely a “tiny nothing” – because the cross of Christ is God’s power and God’s wisdom (cf. 1 Cor 1:18–24). And this is also the reason why it is good to invoke her help when we ask for peace in the Holy Land, afflicted by the seemingly hopeless situation of a long-standing conflict.
Little Esther and peace for the Holy Land
When Edith matured in the awareness of her own unique calling, she wrote: “I firmly believe that the Lord will accept my life for all. I must constantly think of Queen Esther, who was taken from her people to intercede for them before the King. I am very poor, a little Esther, but the King who has chosen me is infinitely powerful and merciful.”
Saint Teresa Benedicta is certainly not merely this “little Esther” during her earthly life. She is much more so now, for she does not cease to intercede, and her intercession holds power. She pleads for her people, for the Church, for the world, and for peace within it...
If we return at the end to the priestly blessing with which this reflection began, we find that true biblical peace can be obtained, or more precisely received, only “before the face of God,” that is, in God’s presence, in an intimate relationship with Him. As a model in this can serve Moses, with whom the Lord spoke face to face, as someone speaks with a friend (cf. Ex 33:11), or St. Teresa of Avila, who “defines” contemplative prayer as “a relationship of friendship, frequent solitary contact with Him whom we know loves us” (The Book of Her Life 8:5).
Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is “before the face of God.” She invites us as well to strive for the same and to pray alongside her... The more trust we place in this intercessory prayer, the more we will be able to receive from God as a gift.
I would therefore like to conclude these lines with a prayer, specifically a Jewish prayer, namely one of the blessings of the prayer Amidah, also known as Shemoneh Esrei (“Eighteen,” meaning: Eighteen blessings). This is a prayer that implores peace for Israel, but due to its very special character, it should be understood as a universal prayer for peace for all human hearts:
“Spread Your peace, goodness, and blessing, patience, grace, and mercy upon us and upon all Israel, Your people. Bless us, our Father, as one with the light of Your face, for in the light of Your face You have given us, Lord our God, the Law of life and faithful love, justice and blessing, mercy, life, and peace. It is good in Your eyes to bless Your people Israel at all times and every hour with Your peace. Blessed are You, Lord, who blesses Your people Israel with peace.”
