August 9, 2011 - ST> TERESA BENEDICTA of the CROSS

Today is the Feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a daughter of Israel who became a Carmelite nun. She was born on October 12, 1891, the youngest of eleven children. Since her mother did not have a living faith, she easily gave up praying. Her major study was on German and History. In 1913, she went to Goettingen University where she had as mentor, Edmund Hussein who expounded a new reality that the world does not merely exist in the subjective perception. This view leld many of his students to embrace the Christian faith. She also met Max Scheller who directed her to Roman Catholicism.

After World War I, she followed Hussein in Germany where she passed her doctoral degree with a dissertation on "The Problem of Empathy." On the death of Hussein's assistant, she vted his widow who was a woman of faith. She wrote, " It was my first encounter with the Cross and the divine power it imparts to those who bear it. Christ began to shine on me. In Christ is the mystery of the Cross." She converted to the Catholic faith and sincerely believed that she belonged to Christ not only spiritually but also by blood since she had Jewish roots. She read the The New Testatment and The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. She read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila and finished it in one night. She wanted to enter the Carmelite Monastery right after conversion but was prevailed upon to teach and to accept extensive speaking engagements. In addition , she translated letters and diaries of Cardinal John Newman, wrote, "Potency", a study of the central concepts developed by St. Thomas Aquinas. Within the Carmelite walls, she wrote, "The Father of Mysteries, St. John of the Cross," "The life of a Jewish Family," "The Science of the Cross" and her own philosophical and theological beliefs in "Finite and Eternal Being."

At that time she said, "I thought leading a religuous life meant giving up all earthly things and having one's mind only on divine things. I learned that the deeper someone is drawn to God, the more he has to get "beyond himself" i e; go into the world and carry divine life into it." She successfully combined scholarship and faith in her work and in her teaching, seeking always to be a "tool of the Lord."

She joined the Carmelite Order in Cologne, Germany and had her investiture on April 19, 1934 as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She had her Perpetual Vows on April 21, 1938.

She was arrested with her sister, Rosa, who also converted in the Carmelite chapel in August 1942 and were gassed among the 087 who came to Auschwitz on August 8, 1942.