The history of saint Teresa Benedicta of the Crosswhose name was Edith Steinis a luminous testimony of how the sincere search for truth leads, in the end, to an encounter with Christ. Her life, marked by intelligence, dedication and martyrdom, continues today to challenge many women who feel the call to consecrate themselves to God, body and soul.
From the CARF Foundation, which also supports the formation of religious, we remember her example as a model of fidelity, spiritual depth and unconditional love.
Edith Stein was born on October 12, 1891 in Wroclaw, a city that then belonged to the German Empire. She was the youngest of eleven children in a practicing Jewish family. Her mother, a woman of firm faith and strong character, was for her an example of strength and responsibility. However, during her adolescence, Edith stopped praying and declared herself an atheist. She was a young woman of brilliant intelligence, dissatisfied with easy answers and determined to find the truth for herself.
She moved to Göttingen to study philosophy, where she became a disciple and collaborator of the famous philosopher Edmund Husserl, founder of phenomenology. Her philosophical research was not a mere academic activity: she sought to understand the deep structure of the human being, his dignity, his freedom and his relationship with the world. Edith was also interested in suffering, compassion and the inner experience of people.
Intellectual honesty led her to open herself to the witness of the Christian faith. The example of believing friends, her contact with Thomistic thought and, above all, reading the lives of the saints, began to move her heart. In particular, she was deeply struck by the serenity with which a Christian friend of hers faced the death of her husband, which led her to ask herself where this firm hope came from.
The turning point came in the summer of 1921, during a stay with friends. He randomly picked up a book from the shelf: it was the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Jesus. She read it in one sitting during the night, and when she finished she said: "This is the truth". That encounter with the Spanish Carmelite saint was for Edith an interior revelation. In it she discovered not only the truth of Christianity, but also a spiritual path that filled her thirst for meaning and fulfillment.
Shortly after that decisive reading, Edith Stein asked to be baptized. She received the sacrament on January 1, 1922, at the age of 30, in the church of the Dominicans in Speyer. Since then, she lived a deep, serene and coherent faith. He radically changed his way of life: he began to attend Mass every day, to pray with intensity and to place his knowledge at the service of the truth revealed in Christ. A new Edith was born inside her: a free woman, grateful and in love with God.
During the following years, she combined her spiritual life with her intellectual vocation. She worked as a teacher in a Catholic school, translated works of St. Thomas Aquinas into German and wrote philosophical essays with a Christian outlook. Everything that she had previously sought only with reason, she now understood from faith. For her, philosophy and theology were complementary paths to the full truth.
In her intimate relationship with Christ, she began to feel that it was not enough to live "for Him" from the outside: she felt that the Lord was asking her for a total surrender, a consecrated life. Years before, she had expressed the desire to become a Carmelite, but her family and professional commitments had held her back. However, with the arrival of the Nazi regime and the growing persecution of the Jews, she understood that her place was with Christ crucified, interceding for all.
In October 1933, she entered the Carmelite monastery in Cologne. There she took the name of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. It was a radical step, but a deeply desired one. She had found her definitive place: silence, prayer and sacrifice were now the center of her life. What the world could not offer her, she found in God's love. He had fully responded to his vocation.
For years, Edith felt growing within her the desire to give her life completely to God. Although she initially continued her activity as a teacher, writer and lecturer, she finally took the step she had matured in prayer: in 1933 she entered the Carmelite monastery in Cologne, where she took the name of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
There he lived in silence, prayer and penance, intensifying his union with Christ and offering his life for the salvation of souls. He was aware of the danger he was in for being of Jewish origin in the midst of Nazi persecution, but he did not retreat. He knew that his place was at the foot of the cross.
In her Carmelite cell, Teresa Benedicta wrote some of her most profound works. In them, she spoke of the cross as a school of love, as a place where the soul is united to Christ in his redemptive self-giving. "To accept the cross," she wrote, "means to find Christ in it.
His vocation was not an escape from the world, but a radical immersion in the mystery of human suffering, based on love. In Carmel, he prayed for his people, for the Church, for the whole world. His consecration was not isolation, but intercession.
In 1942, she was arrested together with her sister Rosa, also a convert. On August 9, both were murdered in Auschwitz. She had fulfilled her desire: to offer her life, as an oblation of love, for Christ and for humanity.
The life of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is a source of inspiration for many women today who feel called to religious life. She teaches that vocation is nothing other than a response of love to a Love that calls first. And that it is worth leaving everything when the treasure is Christ.
Edith Stein was not a saint of easy life or instant answers. She searched, doubted, suffered, was formed, worked, thought... and in the midst of all that, she heard a voice that told her: "Come and follow me". And he left everything for Him.
Their testimony encourages many young women who, from different corners of the world, ask themselves if God is calling them to consecrate themselves, to serve Him in a community, to live in prayer, to give themselves completely. These are women who today form part of religious congregations and whom the CARF Foundation helps to form so that they can respond with generosity and preparation to this divine call.
Canonized in 1998 by St. John Paul IIand proclaimed co-patroness of Europe the following year, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is a profoundly contemporary saint. A woman who did not renounce reason, but placed it at the service of faith. A martyr who did not hate, but forgave. A nun who did not hide, but offered herself.
Her life is a hymn to truth, love and dedication. And she continues to remind us, even today, that God continues to call. That there are brave women who leave everything for Him. And that it is worth supporting them.
At the CARF Foundation we support with joy and hope women's vocations like St. Teresa Benedicta's. We know that their dedication changes the world, even if they do it in silence. We know that their dedication changes the world, even if they do it in silence. That their prayer sustains the Church. That their consecration is fruitful.
Therefore, we want many more women to follow the path that Edith Stein walked. May they listen to that voice that calls. May they respond. And may they find, like her, fullness in the total gift of themselves.
