Today, August 9, is the memorial of Saint Edith Stein (Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross).
Carmelite martyr.
Born in 1891, Edith was the youngest of seven children in a Jewish family. She lost interest and faith in Judaism by age 13.
She was a brilliant student and philosopher with an interest in phenomenology. She studied at the University of Göttingen, Germany and in Breisgau, Germany. She earned her doctorate in Philosophy in 1916 at age 25.
When she witnessed the faith of her Catholic friends, this led her to an interest in Catholicism, which then led to studying a catechism on her own, which led to “reading herself into” the Faith.
When friends invited her to spend the night at their house, Edith looked for something to read in her friends’ library. She picked up the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. She could not stop reading it that she finished the entire book overnight. Closing the book hours later, she told herself, “This is the truth.” She immediately wanted to be converted to Catholicism.
Thus she converted to Catholicism in Cologne, Germany; and was baptized in 1922.
Edith entered the Discalced Carmelite Order as a postulant in 1934. She was able to produce many profound spiritual writings.
Then came the Nazis. Both Jewish and Catholic, she was smuggled out of Germany, and assigned to Echt, Netherlands in 1938. When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, she and her sister Rose, also a convert to Catholicism, were captured and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz where they died in the gas chambers like so many others.in 1942.
Pope St. John Paul II beatified (1987) and canonized (1998) Edith.
She is one of the six patron saints of Europe, together with Saint Benedict of Nursia, Saints Cyril and Methodius, Saint Bridget of Sweden, and Saint Catherine of Siena.