Julén Urkiza, OCD
On this day of spirituality1, I have the task of pointing out the relationships between The Book of Life and Edith Stein, or Teresa Benedicta of the Cross; and particularly on the presence of Teresa's Life in her conversion and in the course of the further life of the Prussian saint.
On one side, we have Teresa before us, an extraordinary social, religious, and literary figure of the 16th century, and on the other side, Edith Stein, another remarkable woman of the 20th century. And in those two centuries, we find both women, Teresa and Edith, fully integrated, deeply engaged in the search for the truth that gives life meaning.
1. The Path of Search and Conversion
Edith's journey to that evening in early summer 1921, when she took Teresa's Book of Life into her hands and experienced her conversion, was long and arduous.2 When Edith reached her university studies, she had completely lost the Jewish faith of her mother, received in childhood. Indifference and religious emptiness reigned within her. In her search for truth, she embarked on the path of philosophy. From her early years of study in Göttingen, Edith found a group of phenomenologists, providing her with suitable ground for religious reflections.
The first impulse for her to open up to the world of religion was mediated by Max Scheler. He came from Munich and was a phenomenologist who captivated Edith; she was fascinated by him. As a convert from Judaism, his sense of values opened Edith's eyes to discover the fullness of being; in a special way, the gates of Christian thought opened to her.3
The second important ray of light for Edith was her relationship with the Reinach couple. Adolf Reinach and his wife Anna were baptized in the Protestant church during the world war. At the end of 1917, Edith received the tragic news that Adolf Reinach had died at the front. Suddenly, Edith had to face the problem of pain and death. And she was surprised that Anna Reinach was not crushed by pain and death, but overcame them with the thought of Christ's death and the hope of resurrection. This made a deep impression on Edith, who did not share this perspective of faith.
And nearly six months after this experience, she wrote to her friend Roman Ingarden: “I do not know if you have already gathered from my previous messages that I have worked my way more and more towards a completely positive Christianity”.4 Edith's journey to the grace of conversion, however, will continue for another three years...
2. Reading Teresa's Book of Life (1921):
Edith Finds Truth in “True Faith”
2.1. Encounter
God had already touched Edith. Only the last, definitive prompt to a great decision in her life was missing. In recent years, she increasingly valued the growing conviction of the worth of Christianity, but she still needed one final grace for its full acceptance.
And the hour of grace and Edith's encounter with the truth took place in the home of her friends, the philosophers Theodor and Hedwig Conrad-Martius, in Bergzabern. Edith arrived in Bergzabern in May and spent several months there.
One day, Theodor and Hedwig had to leave, and Edith was left alone in their house. At that moment, she approached the couple's library and took from the shelf the Book of Life of Saint Teresa in German translation.5 She began to read it and became absorbed in the reading with such intensity as if she were reading her own human and spiritual experiences in relation to God during her pilgrimage towards conversion. Thus, she did not put the book down until she had read it completely. She glimpsed the long-awaited light; here was the TRUTH. She completed her long journey in search of truth. She herself later confessed: “In the summer of 1921, I received into my hands the Life of our holy mother Teresa, thus ending my long search for true faith”.6 The long distance to this encounter, especially since 1913, had been overcome. Edith found the light she needed, found the truth; grace was definitively imprinted into her. From this moment, she would begin a new stage.
Surely, Edith sought truth very sincerely. She once wrote regarding her teacher Husserl: “God is truth. Whoever seeks truth, seeks God, whether he is aware of it or not.”7 Now, however, she had encountered this God, encountered "true faith."
During that night of reading, something extraordinary happened to Edith. Her life changed, her intellectual activity took a different direction, her religious expression found a safe harbor in the Catholic faith.
Immediately, she went into town and bought two books: the Catholic catechism and a missal. She studied and absorbed their content; subsequently, she sought out the local priest and requested baptism. On January 1, 1922, she was baptized as Edita Teresa Hedvika. Teresa's name would henceforth remain linked with hers throughout the remainder of her life, in its second phase, in the life with God. She also took the name of her close friend Hedvika, who [with her] intensely experienced the months surrounding her conversion and who was her baptismal sponsor, despite being a member of the Protestant church.
2.2. Edith's Empathetic Perception of Teresa's Description of the Inner Life
Between Teresa and Edith, these two great women, there certainly occurred a substantial sharing of souls and lives. Edith intuitively entered Teresa's inner world; moreover, she could recognize herself in Teresa's Book of Life. A foreign experience, that is, Teresa's experience, became close to her, as if it had become her own to a certain extent.
In this context, it is appropriate to recall the testimony of Gertrude Kuznitska, about whom Edith stated: she was my “very close friend and shared my conversion very deeply, even though she remained a Jew.”8 Gertrude attests that Edith used to read Teresa “aloud; rather than reading, it was as if it were a prayer. This lasted for several months.”9 Edith would tell her that what she encountered in Teresa's writings was not found in Jewish religion.
The impression that the reading of Teresa's Book of Life left on her was such that she already felt she was part of the Teresian community. She confesses: “When I was baptized on New Year's Day 1922, I thought that it was only preparation for entering the Order.”10 However, the confessor held back these her desires, as it was advisable for her to be present as a woman in the church of those years through her external activity. When she finally enters the Carmel in Cologne, she writes: “For almost twelve years, Carmel had been my goal.”11
2.3. The Book of Life as a Mirror of Edith's Search for God
What exactly did Edith see in Teresa's experiences in the area of prayer? A personal and loving God who wanted her to surrender to Him in prayer, in which there occurred that exchange of friendship, that exchange of love and self-giving. Edith recognized those moments of Teresa's prayer in which the soul immersed itself in love, moments in which Teresa appeared to be cast aside in the truth of her being, in prayer that was ultimately love.
These moments of internal eruptions in Teresa's soul moved Edith. She too began to feel a longing for solitude and silence, a thirst for authenticity and truth, for an encounter (with God) in the silence of Carmel; thus she desired to enter where Teresa had infected her with that fire of truth and love through her Book of Life.
2.4. Edith's New Philosophical Activity
The months from May to October were a period of intensive philosophical and religious activity for Edith; at the beginning of summer 1921, the definitive encounter of Edith with Teresa occurred through the reading of her Book of Life. We have found that two of Edith's manuscripts correspond precisely to the year of conversion, that is, 1921. Edith had already previously informed her friend Ingarden of the change that was occurring within her. What she encountered was so valuable to her that going forward, Edith would not have such a desire to engage in phenomenology as she had until then. And a month later, she would be even more specific with her friend Ingarden: “I am preparing to enter the Catholic Church. What led me to this, I have not written to you. And it is difficult to say and even more difficult to write it. In any case, I have lived much more in recent years than I have philosophized. My works are merely a summary of what has occupied me in life, for I am already built in such a way that I must reflect.”12
To this new way of thinking probably belong two writings from 1921: “Nature, Freedom, and Grace” (where we find two references to Teresa) and “Truth - Spirit - Word”.
3. Edith Tells the Life of Teresa
Edith finally entered Carmel in Cologne on October 14, 1933, on the eve of the feast of Saint Teresa. And she received the Carmelite habit on April 15, 1934. This year corresponds to two of the three works she wrote directly about Teresa's life and work: “Love for Love...” and “Teacher of Education and Upbringing: Teresa of Jesus”. The third work, “The Interior Castle”, was probably written at the beginning of 1936.
3.1. “Love for Love” (Liebe um Liebe)
This is the first book that Edith wrote in Carmel, at a time when she was still a postulant; and she dedicated it to Teresa's life: Liebe um Liebe. Leben und Werk der heiligen Theresia v. Jesus (“Love for Love. The Life and Work of Saint Teresa of Jesus”).
One aspect that attracts attention is one that Edith emphasized in the introduction and is precisely the core of The Book of Life: inner prayer, union with Christ. Edith refers to the historical moment in which she wrote, to the act of night adoration of the Cologne community, “while outside the carnival revelry leads people to drunkenness and exaltation, while political struggle divides spirits”. She is aware of the significance of those hearts that offer warm love to the Lord; and she highlights the reconciling aspect, for those hearts “by their persistent prayers attract God's grace and His mercy to those who are in sin and suffer various needs”; and notes that in the face of the poor social situation, there has awakened in [people] “a new understanding of the power of prayer, reconciliation, and vicarious atonement.”
What she had already experienced in the summer of 1921, when she read The Book of Life, she would express on another occasion with the following words: “I longed to bring to our time something of the spirit that flooded this great woman, who built an amazing structure in an age of struggles and upheavals.”
Upon entering Carmel, Edith had within her the desire to unite herself with Christ on the cross. And in her life in Carmel, she made something spiritually very exceptional, she came to a fundamental decision, which gradually matured within her, to vicariously dedicate herself to the merciful Heart of Jesus. In 1939, she strongly felt that God was calling many souls to devote themselves to Him with full love in atonement [as an opposite value against the sins of the world], and she herself, that she was one of them.13
When Edith narrates Teresa's life, she titles her text “Love for Love”. In doing so, she summarizes the essence of Teresa's life and wants at the same time for her (Edith's) own life to be full of love and self-giving.
This little book of Edith is divided into sixteen chapters, in which she discusses the central moments of Teresa's life. It is a very simple narrative, and Edith primarily draws from The Book of Life, although in the last chapters she also uses The Book of Foundations.
I would like to emphasize here only the sixth chapter (entitled In the School of Suffering. The Inner Life) and the seventh chapter (Infidelity), in which Edith [to Teresa] interestingly comments, especially regarding prayer. Edith takes this moment to discuss prayer; her beautiful commentary begins by adopting Teresa's definition of prayer, blending together what she received from Teresa with what is already her own conviction regarding prayer and regarding God, who is love:
“Prayer is the contact of the soul with God. God is love, and love is the good that gives itself; it is the fullness of being that does not close in on itself but shares itself with others, desires to give itself to others, and make them happy. All creation owes its being to this overflowing love of God. (...) Prayer is the noblest act that the human spirit is capable of. It is not merely a human act. Prayer is like Jacob's ladder, up which the human spirit climbs toward God, and God's grace descends upon people.”14
Edith sees in Teresa's definition (“inner prayer is, in my opinion, nothing else than the contact of friendship, frequent company with the one we know loves us”15) the Gospel message of the Our Father prayer, that is, a loving relationship with the Father, a familial harmony with God; and she complements it from her side by expressing the following philosophical-anthropological reflection: Prayer is the noblest act that the human spirit is capable of.
3.2. “Teacher of Education”
Edith began her novitiate on April 15, 1934, the day she donned the Carmelite habit. And likely at the end of the same year, she wrote a long article “Teacher of Education and Upbringing: Teresa of Jesus” (“Eine Meisterin der Erziehungs- und Bildungsarbeit: Teresia von Jesus”). The treatise is based on several of Teresa's works, primarily on The Book of Life.
It consists of an introduction and three chapters (1. Natural Leadership; 2. Expert in Education; 3. Teacher of Human Education) and was primarily intended for women, as the magazine that published it was focused on Catholic education for women in Germany.16 Edith Stein offered German Catholic women the example of Teresa of Jesus as a model of the art of educating.
She presents Teresa as a natural leader, from her childhood. However, this natural leadership is elevated by grace. Expert in Education Teresa becomes, according to Edith, when she begins her work of building communities and educating [an entire] generation of nuns.
Teresa had a clear educational goal: it was a life ideal she carried in her heart, and a type of person resonating with this ideal; Edith explains it as follows: “The ideal of Teresa's life was what drew her since the moment she experienced what it means to have an inner contact of the soul with God. A lifestyle that gives central importance to inner prayer and removes from its path all obstacles, against which she had to struggle for twenty-six years of her life in the convent.”17
In the education of a common life, Edith considers Teresa's saying: “Humility means walking in truth,” to be important, and comments: “It was the basic principle of the holy mother.”18
4. Devotion to Saint Joseph in Edith's Experience
Teresa's testimony of her personal devotion to Saint Joseph, as can be read in the sixth chapter of The Book of Life, must have made a big impression on Edith. From what Edith states regarding the importance of Saint Joseph in Teresa's life, and from what she recounts about the same significance in her own life, it can be inferred that Edith not only admired Teresa's trust in Saint Joseph, but also adopted this great trust for herself.
4.1. Edith's Own Experience
[Future] German martyr remarks that Teresa led the girls in the convent of Saint Joseph in Avila to trust themselves into the hands of this saint, and comments on it in a very interesting way. She expresses what happened to her: “the girls turned to Saint Joseph to be able to dedicate themselves to the Lord in humble obedience, in a generous sacrifice without limits, and to rid themselves of all their possessions.”19 And about Teresa herself, she says that she had a deep desire to live in secrecy from the world “in silent familiarity with Saint Joseph.”20
Edith composed two poems in honor of Saint Joseph, verses full of biblical and theological, but primarily autobiographical content; the first entitled “Song to Saint Father Joseph” (Lied zum hl. Vater Joseph), written in March 1936; and the second “Saint Joseph, take care of us!” (St. Joseph, sorg!) on March 19, 1939. The second poem is a prayer to Saint Joseph in the face of the great storm and social calamity caused by National Socialism. Here, Edith's significant autobiographical and spiritual data emerge.
In this immensely difficult socio-political and religious situation, which greatly affected her personal level as well, she composes the mentioned poem to Saint Joseph. Edith views Saint Joseph as a ray of light, “a shining star” that approaches friendly and distributes goodness and tenderness paternalistically; for Edith, it is a ray of hope. In the second stanza, she presents Saint Joseph as a model of obedience and faith, like a new Abraham who listens to God's promise and walks the path of hope and faith.
And in the third stanza prevails the image of a journey, associated with looking for a dwelling and finding a home. Saint Joseph will become the home for the persecuted Jewess: even if it should be in a foreign land or in Egypt, in Bethlehem or Nazareth, in Cologne or Echt... her home will be Saint Joseph.
Translated from Spanish by Father Wojciech of Saint Hedwig, OCD.
The translation has been editorially revised.
