P. Vojtěch of St. Hedwig, OCD
One evening (April 30, 1933), the university professor entered the cathedral in Münster with a radical decision: „I will not move from here until I clearly know whether I am allowed to enter Carmel.“ At the end of the Eucharistic adoration, when the priest blessed the faithful, the Good Shepherd told her: „Yes.“ In this amazing way, the religious life of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross began; a life that can be fully characterized as a life of intercessory prayer.
I.
She was born on October 12, 1891, in Wrocław to Siegfried Stein and Augusta Courant, devout practicing Jews, as the youngest of eleven children. When her father died two years later, little Edith was raised by her energetic mother and older siblings. She soon excelled with her exceptional intelligence and began studying German studies, history, and the psychology of thought simultaneously at the University of Wrocław at the age of twenty. Two years later, in 1913, she transferred to the University of Göttingen to attend the courses of the renowned Edmund Husserl. After obtaining a doctorate in philosophy in Fribourg (1916) and becoming an assistant to her admired teacher, it seemed that nothing stood in the way of her career.
But Edith was not satisfied. When she delved into her studies at the age of fifteen and found the faith inherited from her ancestors useless, she „consciously and voluntarily ended her prayer and religious practice“. She publicly declared herself an atheist. Yet her deep inner self, where endless desires are born, could not be filled with just anything, and she felt a terrifying emptiness. Regarding this period, when she appeared very composed to others, she said: „I could not even cross the street without wishing to be run over by a car.“ What helped her move forward, which she later called her „only prayer“ of that time, was the search for truth.
However, it would take three very important events to decisively change her life. The first was her encounter with Max Scheler, a famous philosopher who converted to Christianity. At that time, Edith wrote: „The boundaries of the rationalistic prejudices in which I grew up without knowing it are dissolving, and a world of faith unexpectedly appears before me; its members include the individuals I am surrounded by daily and whom I admire.“
Among these individuals mentioned by the saint was Adolf Reinach, who, along with his wife, became a Catholic at the beginning of World War I. And when he fell at the front in 1917, Edith was struck by the second significant event: her meeting with a young widow. She meets a broken being, yet finds a strong and composed woman despite her suffering. „It was my first encounter with the cross and the power of God that radiates towards those who meet it... it was the moment when my disbelief shattered into pieces... and Christ began to shine: Christ in the mystery of the cross.“
The decisive moment, however, came in 1921 when she happened to visit her friends, the Conrads-Martius, who had to leave for some urgent matter. Mrs. Hedwig took Edith to the library and said, „Choose whatever you like. Everything here is for you.“ And Edith recounts: „I randomly reached into the library. I pulled out a rather unremarkable book. It was titled ‘The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila as she herself describes it.’ I started reading. The book captivated me. I finished it in one sitting. When I closed it, I said to myself: This is the truth!“
On January 1 of the following year, she was baptized and received her first Holy Communion. In the following years, she taught first in Speyer and later in Münster, and since 1928 she has been a frequent guest at the Benedictine Abbey in Beuron, where Abbot Rafael Walzer became her spiritual director.
Edith's conversion is associated with a strong calling to the life of prayer in Carmel; however, she would have to wait until the aforementioned day in 1933 when she entered the Münster cathedral to seek knowledge of God's intentions during Eucharistic adoration...
II.
The prayer that decided this woman's further fate was not just a moment of spontaneous piety. It seems that Edith was inspired by the story of Saint Teresa of Jesus, who writes in the ninth chapter of her Book of Life (the book that completed Edith's conversion) about a remarkable moment of grace she received while gazing at a statue of Christ scourged. We read: „I greatly venerated St. Mary Magdalene and often thought about her conversion, especially when I went to Holy Communion. I was aware that Jesus was now with me, so I threw myself at his feet and imagined that my tears did not deserve to be completely despised... It seems to me that I told him that I would not get up until he granted me what I was asking for. He must have heard me, as since then I have improved a lot“ (V 9,2.3).
For Edith, the description of the reformer of Carmel was all the more powerful as it reflected a rather common New Testament image of prayer ad pedes Domini (“at the feet of the Lord”). Examples include the Samaritan healed from his leprosy (cf. Lk 17:16), Mary, Lazarus’s sister (cf. Lk 10:39), the synagogue leader Jairus, and the Syrophoenician woman, both asking for healing for their daughter (cf. Mk 5:22 and 7:25), but especially the anonymous sinner, identified during Teresa's reform of Carmel with Mary Magdalene (cf. Lk 7:36–50).
The decision to pray until receiving a clear answer was therefore for Edith neither „tempting God“ nor „childish stubbornness“, but rather a manifestation of deep trust and especially fervent love (cf. Lk 7:47). Moreover, this prayer „at the feet of the Lord“ is undeniably part of the Western monastic (and thus Benedictine!) tradition, within which Edith Stein moved for a longer time after her conversion. Many texts testify to this: from the so-called Regulae Magistri (which became the basis for the later Benedictine order), through Saint Bernard or Aelred of Rievaulx, to Dom Marmion.
The prayer „at the feet of the Lord“, as already indicated from the mentioned New Testament excerpts, can have any content: it can be about thanksgiving, praise, but most often about requests or intercession.
On that April day, it was primarily a request „for herself“, but the prayer of Edith Stein, who receives in Carmel in Cologne the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, will soon increasingly become an intercessory prayer.
III.
This conviction is confirmed by the testimony of Beuron monk P. Damas Zahringer, referring to his meeting with Edith before her entrance to Carmel: „When I first met her at the entrance gate of the Beuron abbey, her appearance affected me in such a way that I can only compare it with the impression created by early Christian art in the catacombs that depicts the church praying (ecclesia orans). She did not have her arms raised, but everything about her appearance reminded me of this proto-Christian type. And it was not just my bizarre idea. She is indeed the image of the church, standing in the present and lifting it up. She was closely connected with Christ, experiencing our Lord's words: ‘For them, I sanctify myself, that they also may be truly sanctified’ (John 17:19).”
Edith Stein did indeed enter the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites with the desire to pray for others, especially for her nation, with which she felt a new bond after her conversion. The first dramatic manifestations of the persecution of Jews in Germany at that time contributed to her departure to the monastery not so much to hide there, but to offer herself as a sponsa Agni (Bride of the Lamb) for others. A few days after her vows, she was visited by a certain professor who testified: „I told her that she was well hidden here among the Carmelites. To which she quickly replied: ‘No. I don’t believe that. They will definitely get me out of here. I by no means expect them to leave me in peace.’ It was clear to her that she was meant to suffer for her nation. That her task was to bring many of them home.”
As alarming news about the spreading persecution increasingly penetrated the walls of the Cologne Carmel, Sister Teresa Benedicta reacted in her way: „I turned to the Redeemer and told him that I clearly know what his cross should be, which is laid at that moment on the shoulders of the Jewish nation. Its greater part did not understand; but those who received the grace to understand it should accept it with full commitment of will on behalf of all. I felt prepared and only asked the Lord to show me how I was to do this.”
Several years before her arrest, she wrote: „From now on, I accept the death God has determined for me with joy and complete submission to his will. I ask the Lord that I may accept my suffering, my death, and my honor and glory for all the needs of the Holy Church.”
It is also significant that when she was asked to write a work reflecting on the teaching of Saint John of the Cross, whose four-hundredth anniversary the Teresian Carmel was then celebrating, she discussed in it the science of the cross. Among other things, we can read in this unfortunately unfinished work: „When we speak of the science of the cross, we do not mean... mere theory, but a living, real, and effective truth. There is a calling to Christ's suffering, and through it, one collaborates in his redemptive mission... Christ continues to live in his believers and through them continues to experience his suffering: suffering lived together with the Lord is his suffering, incorporated into the great work of redemption, which overflows with fruit in him.”
Perhaps the most compelling is the biblical image that attracts Saint Teresa Benedicta during this time: Esther interceding at the cost of her own life before the king for the salvation of her people! In one of her letters, she wrote about this: „I trust in the reality that the Lord took my life for the sake of all Jews. I must think more and more of Queen Esther, who was taken from her own people to represent it before the king. I am a little Esther, very poor and weak, but the King who chose me is great and infinitely merciful.”
Sister Teresa Benedicta truly resembles this biblical figure perfectly, and through her martyr's death, she shows us what true intercessory prayer entails: it is an unconditional willingness to step out of line, to stand before the one who has power, and to plead for others, even if it means risking one’s own life. That this was not merely a romantic ideal for her is evidenced by her words to her biological sister Rose at the moment of deportation, August 2, 1942: „Come, let us go for our nation.”
Her intercession is not a pose of suffering; on the one hand, although she feels that she will not escape the Nazi tyranny, she obeys her superiors’ call and moves to the Carmel in the Dutch town of Echt. On the other hand, she does not hesitate to write to the Pope, requesting that he issue an encyclical in defense of the chosen nation.
Her intercession is not dull resignation; on the way to Auschwitz, she cares for the children of those mothers who are unable to cope with the psychological situation and cannot care for them themselves. And a Jewish merchant who met her in the concentration camp and survived his stay there received from her a laconic answer to his question: „What will happen to you now?“, „So far, I could pray and work; I hope I can pray and work a little longer.”
The example of the intercessory prayer of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is a challenge for us in two ways:
- First and foremost, it is an encouragement for us to trust our needs to this woman; the one who was a true “Bride of the Lamb” and “little Esther” on earth was precisely raised to the honor of the altar so that we can today confidently invoke her.
- It is also an invitation for us to learn to become more and more ecclesia orans (a praying church) ourselves by following her example. Therefore, let us fall at the Lord's feet and, like Edith Stein, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, let us be inspired by the words of the Saint of Avila and linger before him until we are heard. Because „everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened“ (Lk 11:10).
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