Saturday 9 August 2025
St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
Deuteronomy 6:4-13. I love you, Lord, my strength – Ps 17(18):2-4, 47, 51. Matthew 17:14-20.
Inspired by the life of Teresa of Avila
Today is the 83rd anniversary of the execution of Sr Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. She was 50 years old and had been a fully professed Carmelite for four years. Edith was born into a large Jewish family and learned the daily Jewish prayers echoed in Deuteronomy today. After a period of teenage agnosticism, she studied the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and joined him in academia. Edith was inspired by the life of Teresa of Avila to convert to Christianity in 1922. New Nazi regulations forced her to quit her academic life in 1933, and she entered the novitiate of the discalced Carmelites. With the growing Nazi menace, her Order moved her to Holland, but Catholics of Jewish origin were even hunted there. She was arrested on 2 August and murdered a week later in Auschwitz. Pope John Paul II canonised this servant of God in 1998.
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