On this feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, I once again pick up “Edith Stein: a Biography” by Waltraud Herbstrith (Ignatius Press, 1992). It’s a deep and thoughtful book that required my full attention as I read through it for the first time. Now, I can open the book at random and enjoy whatever chapter I find, knowing the full sweep of the conversion story that led Stein into the Catholic Church, a Carmelite vocation, and eventually to martyrdom at the hands of Nazis.
I find her story compelling. I don’t understand the terms and nuances of what she taught as a philosopher, but I know this much: she sought truth within that discipline. That search was integral to her conversion and her religious vocation.
As I celebrate her feast day, I find encouragement in something she wrote, quoted in the Herbstrith biography.
And when night comes, and you look back over
Edith Stein, from Wege zur inneren Stille, ed. W. Herbstrith, quoted in Edith Stein: a Biography by Waltraud Herbstrith (Ignatius Press, 1992).
the day and see how fragmentary everything
has been, and how much you planned that has
gone undone, and all the reasons you have to be
embarrassed and ashamed: just take everything
exactly as it is, put it in God’s hands and leave it
with him. Then you will be able to rest in him
really rest – and start the next day as a new life.
Ellen Kolb 