When the St. Edith Stein, the "Blessed of the Cross" for the first time the cross met. By Barbara Wenz.
Cologne (kath.net / elsalaska.twoday.net ) On most photos of Edith Stein is looking towards us an austere beauty, hair severely parted, hardly a smile, with deep and penetrating dark eyes. A face that closes the viewer strangely. On the last two photos, which are received from her - she wears the dress and the veil of the Secular Carmelite - is strikingly different.
It seems, from the moment when they brought up, an atheist, but in the Jewish faith, the first encounter with the cross and made in the Caramel learned to embrace it more resistant to radiation to their whole being began. The two images by touching the apparent unconditional love and the light that the hl. Teresia Benedicta broadcasts. They are in terrible contrast to the way in which they had come to death, either in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, or "medical" experiments - such as hypothermia experiments - which have taken place.
We may imagine that Sister Teresia Benedicta still in the final minutes of their lives other condemned man stood by praying and comforting, with that confidence in the resurrection, out of her face appears and has the certainty that Jesus Christ himself his bride by the hand and led to him.
Many converts like St. Edith Stein can see in retrospect a pivotal moment that gave the impetus to set out and the way that opens up there, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes brave, go on. At this moment of her life Edith Stein, the meeting with Anna Reinach is deeply devout Protestant Christian, in the war 1917. Anna Reinach had become a very short, very happy marriage with her husband, Adolf, lecturer in philosophy, to war widow.
They then asked Edith Stein, to come to Göttingen to the sighting of the scientific legacy of Professor Reinach to assist. Edith Stein wanted to do a lot but like probably most people in such a situation they feared an encounter with a desperate widow. What you can do, say, how should one react in the face of such tragedy? Is it in the face of such loss ever give comfort?
Edith Stein made in the expectation of having to Göttingen to find a completely broken Anna Reinach, who, moreover, could be as non-believers, not much human intervention. But it should come completely different. opened in Göttingen a brilliant and incredibly confident - because believing in the cross and the resurrection - and strong woman her the door. The hl. Edith Stein wrote later, shortly before her death, very clear-sighted about this moment.
"It was my first encounter with the cross and the divine power that informs his sources I saw for the first time in the redemptive suffering . Christ was born church in their victory over the sting of death palpably before me It was the moment that broke my disbelief faded Judaism and Christ there shone: Christ in the mystery of the cross so I could say even with my garb no other desire. as named in the Order 'of the Cross' to be. "
came three years later during a stay in Bergzabern in the house Conrad-Martius, the all-important experience. The couple's friends from home and takes from the Edith . "That is the truth" bookcase, the autobiography of Teresa of Avila and read, then handed the book in one night all the way it should have declared - and this set is all the more remarkable because he was a trained philosopher and atheist Jewish woman has spoken.
Edith Stein buys a catechism and a missal and studied the Catholic faith, they decided in that particular August night to accept. When she asks Bergzabern priest to baptize them, which however, is reluctant because he believes it would take before that lesson, she asks him to examine it too easy on the spot. Edith Stein, accustomed to the study, has prepared well and he has no answer. On 1 January 1922 she received the holy sacrament of baptism in the church of St. Martin in Bergzabern, shortly there her first Holy Communion.
Source: kath.net
0 comments:
Post a Comment