Dear Friends,
Today we celebrate the memorial (feast) of an extraordinary woman and a convert to Christianity. Her name is Edith Stein. She was born into an observant Jewish family in 1891, in Wroclaw, Poland (it was part of Germany at the time). She professed to being an atheist in her teens. Later she studied philosophy and earned her doctorate. On reading the works of St. Teresa of Avila, she was converted and eventually baptized a Catholic at the age of 31. Having taught for 10 years at university level, she was forced to resign her teaching position because of her Jewish background, during the Nazi take-over of Europe. She then became a Carmelite nun in Cologne and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. For her own safety she was later moved to one of their convents in Holland. However, when the Nazi’s occupied Holland, she was arrested and sent to Aushwitz concentration camp, where she died in the gas chambers in 1942. She is now a martyr of the Church and one of the co-patron saints of Europe. People’s lives are amazing and how God moves people is even more amazing.