St. Edith Stein and her Companions

Father Hamans, has undertaken the onerous task of compiling biographies, often accompanied by photographs, of many of the religious and laity who were rounded up from their various convents and monasteries and homes on the same day as Saint Edith Stein, August 2, 1942; most of them were taken to the Amersfoort concentration camp and from there put on trains to Auschwitz, where the majority, soon after their arrival at the camp, were gassed and buried in a common grave between August 9 and September 30, 1942. They were all Catholic Jews, and their arrest was in retaliation for the letter of the Catholic bishops of the Netherlands that was read from the pulpits of all churches on July 26, 1942.  (Foreword by Dr. Ralph McInerny to Auschwitz and Catholic Jews)

Today is the feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), Virgin, Martyr.  She was a German philosopher-convert who entered the Cologne Carmel at the time of Nazi persecutions.  After her profession, she moved to the Carmel of Echt in Holland in 1938 because of the danger to her community of her presence.  Documents produced for Edith Stein's canonization describe the circumstances of the Jewish Holocaust in Holland.

In 1942, the Nazis invaded neutral Holland and began to round up the Jews for deportation.  While the Dutch government hesitated to confront the Nazis, the Christian churches formulated a strong response which included a day of prayer and a statement from the pulpit.  The Nazis offered ostensibly to protect those Jews who belonged to the various congregations, if the churches did not go ahead with their protest.  The Catholic bishops proceeded with reading their declaration on July 26, 1942, which included Jesus' prophecy about the fate of Jerusalem which was understood to refer to the Nazi regime:  "Truly, the days will come upon you, when your enemy will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on all sides. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children and will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you have not recognized the time of your visitation from God."

The response from the Reich Commissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart was unequivocal:  "Since the Catholic bishops interfered in this matter which was not their concern, the entire population of Catholic Jews are to be deported this week. No interventions are to be considered. Commissar General Schmidt will deliver the official reply to the bishops during a party function on Sunday, August 2, 1942."  In all, 4,000 Christian Jews were deported to Auschwitz, 200 of them Catholic, including St. Edith Stein and her sister Rosa. 

Learn from St. Thérèse to depend on God alone and serve Him with a wholly pure and detached heart. Then, like her, you will be able to say ‘I do not regret that I have given myself up to Love’.  (St. Edith Stein)

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross- martyr

I spent the day on Saturday at a local amusement park with my family. Since we rarely get to do something this carefree, we all had a remarkable day. It was truly re-creation-al for me personally, but also for our family. Far from being unimportant, such excursions are important, like CL vacation, which I have yet to experience.

I also let the memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, known to the world as Edith Stein, a Jewish woman who became a Christian. Prior to (and even after) entering the Carmel, she was a brilliant philosopher. She was a student and assistant to the father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl. I am convinced that she would have made at least as big an impact on contemporary philosophy as one of Husserl's other students and assistants, Martin Heidegger. Letting her memorial pass in silence is a cause for a little bit of guilt for me.

This morning, while reading Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko's homily, delivered at Mass during this summer's Spiritual Exercises, I found words fitting to memorialize this holy woman, this courageous woman, who gave herself wholly to Christ, and who means so much to me:

"Martyrs, therefore, charge us with the courage to wager our lives on God. They call us to the incommensurable value of the faith, for which - just as it is for the treasure of the evangelical parable- it's worth giving everything: "Amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui", the love of God, to point of disdaining oneself, as Saint Augustine said (De Civitate Dei). They remind us that being Christian entails radical choices - the salt must flavor and the lantern cast light- and often signifies going against the flow, being a 'sign of contradiction' in the world and in our own sphere of life. The martyrs encourage us to be ourselves, that is, Christians, in the world and not to hide or dilute our identity as disciples of Christ. Their witness is for us a healthy goad, a healthy goad for our faith, often too accommodating to the spirit of the world, watered down, prone to compromises with the culture that dominates the current scene" (This Is the Victory That Conquers the World, pg. 27)

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross- pray for us

St. Catherine of Siena: lay, that is, Christian

I didn't know much about St. Catherine before reading Louis de Wohl's Lay Siege to Heaven. I knew that she was Dominican, but I didn't know that she was a tertiary, a lay affiliate of the Dominicans. She is called a nun throughout the book but she lived most of her life in her mother's house. In her letters especially, she urged people in every part of society to move beyond their own interests and embrace catholic peace. At one point, someone describes her as both a politician and a saint. Now, that's what it means to be Christian, or lay.

Damien of Molokai

I watched the 1999 film based on Father Damien's life the other day in proximity to a provocative post of Deacon Scott's, "The Last Judgment- the decisive image of hope, not terror". It is a reflection on Spe Salvi, and I will just quote his quote from the Pope's most recent encyclical (43), though the entire post is worth reading and thinking over:

God has given himself an 'image': in Christ who was made man. In him who was crucified, the denial of false images of God is taken to an extreme. God now reveals his true face in the figure of the sufferer who shares man's God-forsaken condition by taking it upon himself. This innocent sufferer has attained the certitude of hope: there is a God, and God can create justice in a way that we cannot conceive, yet we can begin to grasp it through faith. Yes, there is a resurrection of the flesh. There is justice. There is an 'undoing' of past suffering, a reparation that sets things aright. For this reason, faith in the Last Judgement is first and foremost hope—the need for which was made abundantly clear in the upheavals of recent centuries. I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favour of faith in eternal life. The purely individual need for a fulfilment that is denied to us in this life, for an everlasting love that we await, is certainly an important motive for believing that man was made for eternity; but only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does the necessity for Christ's return and for new life become fully convincing.

The thirst for justice is evident in the life of someone like Father Damien. He volunteered to go to the island of Molokai, a desperate place where the sick were consigned for the remainder of their lives, without adequate housing and medical care. To be sent there was a death sentence, since the residents were put on permanent quarantine. Not only leprosy, but typhoid and smallpox had scourged the Hawaiian Islands, and up to 20% of the population contracted these life-threatening illnesses.

Once Father Damien arrived and saw the conditions, he spent the rest of his life ministering to his flock of some thousand inhabitants. He tended the sick, built hospitals and constructed coffins with his own hands. He contended with the rogues in the place who stole and kidnapped girls. The priest was able to avail of connections in Europe to get the story out of the needs of these people and was able to persuade the royalty of Hawaii to have compassion on them.

The hardest part to understand is the injustice with which Damien was treated by his own superiors, even more than the local thugs or indifferent government bureaucrats. The Lord promised persecutions, and Damien received these from his own brothers. This didn't stop him from insisting that he needed sisters to take care of the orphans, who lived there like feral cats, practically out of contact with caring adults. He begged for a means to have confession for himself, when he wasn't allowed to return to the mainland, and the film shows him confessing in French from a boat to his bishop. When he became ill with leprosy himself, he asked for a replacement. For all these things he continually prayed, at times thinking he wasn't heard. Most egregiously, he was accused of impropriety with the native women, since some still believed that leprosy was a stage of syphilis. It was Robert Louis Stevenson who came to his defense when some pastors spread accusations against the priest.

The motivations of the superiors can be difficult to fathom, as in the film The Mission. It may be simply jealousy for what one cannot do oneself. A young doctor who visited Molokai admitted to Father Damien that he could not stay and work because he was getting married. But he promised to return, and he did so often. His humility about his capacity allowed him to be a friend rather than a hindrance to the priest's work.

The wheat and tares grow up together; without this, there would be no freedom. Even if a saint can spend his or her life bringing a bit of justice and love to others through adhesion to the suffering Christ, then the promise has to be much greater than this for all those who did not receive good in their lifetimes. This hope points to a complete answer to all the need of humanity.