Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Virgin and Martyr

Edith Stein was born in Breslau on 12 October 1891, the youngest of eleven children in an observant Jewish family. That day was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a fact that made her especially dear to her devout mother. Her father, a timber merchant, died before she turned two. Her mother, strong in faith and will, raised the family and ran the business, yet could not keep a living faith alive in all her children. In full consciousness and free choice, Edith stopped praying and became an agnostic.

She completed her secondary studies brilliantly in 1911 and began university work in German studies and history at Breslau, though her true passion was philosophy. She also engaged the women's question and joined the Prussian Association for Women's Suffrage; later she would say she had been a radical feminist as a student, then sought purely objective solutions. In 1913 she went to Göttingen to study under Edmund Husserl, becoming his disciple and assistant. Phenomenology's "return to the things themselves" drew several of his students toward Christian faith. There she also met Max Scheler, who first turned her attention toward Catholicism.

In January 1915 she passed the state examination with distinction. When the First World War broke out she wrote, "Now I no longer have a life of my own." She trained as a nurse and served in an Austrian military hospital, caring for typhus patients and assisting in the operating room, seeing young men die. After the hospital closed in 1916 she followed Husserl to Freiburg im Breisgau and in 1917 earned her doctorate summa cum laude with the dissertation On the Problem of Empathy.

A simple scene marked her: in the Frankfurt cathedral she watched a woman with a shopping basket enter the empty church for a brief, intimate prayer—something she had never seen in synagogue or Protestant services, and never forgot. Deeper still was her visit to the widow of her friend Adolf Reinach, killed in Flanders in November 1917. The Reinachs had become Evangelical Christians. Expecting desolation, Edith met a believer sustained by the Cross: "This was my first encounter with the Cross and the divine power it imparts to those who bear it… It was the moment when my unbelief collapsed and Christ shone forth." She later wrote that what was not in her plans was in God's, and that her whole life, down to the least detail, lay in divine Providence.

In autumn 1918 she left Husserl's assistantship to work independently. She longed for a university habilitation, then nearly impossible for a woman; Husserl praised her highly, yet later her Jewish origin also barred the way. Back in Breslau she wrote, read the New Testament, Kierkegaard, and the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, sensing that such a book must be lived, not merely read.

In the summer of 1921, staying with Hedwig Conrad-Martius at Bergzabern, she found the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Ávila and read it through the night. Closing the book she said, "This is the truth." Looking back she would write, "My longing for truth was a single prayer." On 1 January 1922, the feast of the Circumcision of the Lord, she was baptized, wearing the white wedding dress of her godmother Hedwig Conrad-Martius. She felt herself again truly a daughter of Israel, now belonging to the lineage of Christ. At Candlemas she was confirmed by the Bishop of Speyer. She went home and told her mother, "Mama, I am a Catholic." Both wept.

She desired Carmel at once, but her spiritual directors—the Vicar General of Speyer and Father Erich Przywara, SJ—held her back. Until Easter 1931 she taught German and history at the Dominican sisters' school in Speyer. At the urging of Archabbot Raphael Walzer of Beuron she traveled widely giving lectures, especially on women's vocation, learning that the more one is drawn to God, the more one must go out to the world to bring a divine reason for living. She translated Newman and Aquinas's De veritate, wrote her own philosophical works in the service of God, and drew strength from the Benedictine abbey of Beuron at the great feasts.

After 1931 she again sought habilitation in vain and shaped her study of Aquinas, Potency and Act. The Nazi rise to power and the 1933 Aryan paragraph forced her from teaching. On 14 October 1933 she entered the Discalced Carmelite monastery of Cologne; she received the habit in April 1934 as Sister Teresia Benedicta a Cruce—Teresa in memory of the Ávila reformer, Benedicta in honor of Saint Benedict—and made temporary vows on 21 April 1935 and perpetual vows on 21 April 1938. She understood her vocation under the sign of the Cross and the destiny of God's people.

In 1938, for safety, she and her sister Rosa—also a convert and an extern sister—were transferred to the Carmel of Echt in the Netherlands. There she continued to write, including her study of Saint John of the Cross, The Science of the Cross. After the Dutch bishops' pastoral letter of 26 July 1942 protesting the persecution of Jews, the Gestapo arrested baptized Catholics of Jewish origin on 2 August. Edith and Rosa were taken. On 9 August 1942 they were murdered in the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Pope John Paul II beatified her in Cologne in 1987 and canonized her in Rome on 11 October 1998, holding her up as an eminent daughter of Israel and faithful daughter of the Church, a martyr who had no boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. She is venerated as one of the patron saints of Europe.

May Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross obtain for us the courage to seek truth unto the Cross and to offer our lives in love for God and for His people.

HOLY MASS FOR THE CANONIZATION OF EDITH STEIN

HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER JOHN PAUL II

Sunday, 11 October 1998

1. May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Gal 6:14).

These words of Saint Paul to the Galatians, which we have just heard, fittingly describe the human and spiritual experience of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who today is solemnly inscribed in the register of saints. She too can repeat with the Apostle: May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Cross of Christ! In its constant blossoming, the tree of the Cross always bears renewed fruits of salvation. For this reason, believers look with confidence to the Cross, drawing courage and strength from its mystery of love to walk faithfully in the footsteps of the crucified and risen Christ. The message of the Cross has thus entered the hearts of so many men and women, changing their lives.

An eloquent example of this extraordinary interior renewal is the spiritual journey of Edith Stein. A young woman in search of truth, thanks to the silent working of divine grace, became a saint and a martyr: she is Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who today from heaven repeats to all of us the words that marked her existence: "May I never boast except in the cross of Jesus Christ."

2. On 1 May 1987, during my pastoral visit to Germany, I had the joy of proclaiming this generous witness of the faith Blessed in the city of Cologne. Today, eleven years later, here in Rome in Saint Peter's Square, it is given to me to present solemnly as a Saint before the whole world this eminent daughter of Israel and faithful daughter of the Church.

As then, so today we bow before the memory of Edith Stein, proclaiming the invincible testimony she gave during her life and above all in her death. Alongside Teresa of Avila and Teresa of Lisieux, this other Teresa takes her place among the host of holy men and women who bring honor to the Carmelite Order.

Dear Brothers and Sisters who have gathered for this solemn celebration, let us give glory to God for the work he has accomplished in Edith Stein.

3. I greet the numerous pilgrims who have come to Rome, with a special thought for the members of the Stein family, who wished to be with us for this joyful occasion. A cordial greeting also goes to the representatives of the Carmelite community, which became the "second family" for Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

I then extend my welcome to the official delegation of the Federal Republic of Germany, led by the outgoing Federal Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, whom I greet with deferential cordiality. I also greet the representatives of the Länder of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, as well as the Lord Mayor of the City of Cologne.

An official delegation led by Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek has also come from my homeland. I extend a cordial greeting to them.

I would also like to make a special mention of the pilgrims from the Dioceses of Wrocław, Cologne, Münster, Speyer, Kraków, and Bielsko-Żywiec, present with their Bishops and priests. They join the numerous throng of the faithful who have come from Germany, the United States of America, and my homeland, Poland.

4. Dear Brothers and Sisters! Because she was Jewish, Edith Stein was deported along with her sister Rosa and many other Jews from the Netherlands to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she died with them in the gas chambers. Today we remember them all with profound respect. A few days before her deportation, when someone offered to do something to save her life, the religious sister replied: "Do not do it! Why should I be excluded? Is it not just that I should not benefit from my baptism? If I cannot share the lot of my brothers and sisters, my life is in a certain sense destroyed."

As we henceforth celebrate the memory of the new Saint, year after year we cannot fail to also remember the Shoah, that atrocious plan for the elimination of a people, which cost the lives of millions of Jewish brothers and sisters. May the Lord make his face shine upon them and grant them peace (cf. Nm 6:25-26).

For the love of God and of man, once again I raise a heartfelt cry: may such a criminal initiative never be repeated against any ethnic group, any people, any race, in any corner of the earth! It is a cry that I address to all men and women of good will; to all those who believe in the eternal and just God; to all those who feel united in Christ, the Word of God made flesh. We must all stand in solidarity on this: human dignity is at stake. There is a single human family. This is what the new Saint reiterated with great insistence: "Our love for our neighbor," she wrote, "is the measure of our love for God. For Christians—and not only for them—no one is a 'stranger.' The love of Christ knows no borders."

5. Dear Brothers and Sisters! The love of Christ was the fire that set ablaze the life of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Even before she fully realized it, she was completely captured by it. At the beginning, her ideal was freedom. For a long time, Edith Stein lived the experience of searching. Her mind never tired of investigating, nor her heart of hoping. She traveled the arduous path of philosophy with passionate ardor and in the end she was rewarded: she conquered the truth, or rather, she was conquered by it. She discovered, in fact, that truth had a name: Jesus Christ, and from that moment the incarnate Word was everything to her. Looking back at this period of her life as a Carmelite, she wrote to a Benedictine nun: "Whoever seeks the truth, consciously or unconsciously, seeks God."

Although she had been raised in the Jewish religion by her mother, at the age of fourteen Edith Stein "had consciously and purposely broken the habit of prayer." She wanted to rely solely on herself, anxious to assert her own freedom in the choices of life. At the end of her long journey, she was granted a surprising realization: only those who bind themselves to the love of Christ truly become free.

This woman's experience, which confronted the challenges of a troubled century like ours, becomes exemplary for us: the modern world flaunts the alluring door of permissiveness, ignoring the narrow door of discernment and renunciation. I appeal especially to you, young Christians, particularly the numerous altar servers gathered in Rome these days: beware of conceiving your life as a door open to every possible choice! Listen to the voice of your heart! Do not remain on the surface, but go to the depths of things! And when the time comes, have the courage to make your decision! The Lord awaits you to place your freedom in His merciful hands.

6. Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross came to understand that the love of Christ and human freedom are intertwined, because love and truth have an intrinsic relationship. The search for truth and its translation into love did not appear to her as conflicting; indeed, she understood that they called out to one another.

In our time, truth is often confused with majority opinion. Furthermore, there is a widespread conviction that truth must be used even against love, or vice versa. But truth and love have need of one another. Sister Teresa Benedicta is a witness to this. The "martyr for love," who gave her life for her friends, allowed herself to be outdone by no one in love. At the same time, she sought with all her being the truth, of which she wrote: "No spiritual work comes into the world without great labor. It always challenges the whole human being."

Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross says to all of us: Do not accept anything as truth that is devoid of love! And do not accept anything as love that is devoid of truth! The one without the other becomes a destructive lie.

7. Finally, the new Saint teaches us that love for Christ passes through suffering. Whoever truly loves does not stop before the prospect of suffering: they accept communion in pain with the beloved.

Aware of what her Jewish origins entailed, Edith Stein spoke eloquent words on this matter: "Beneath the cross I understood the destiny of God's people... Indeed, today I understand much better what it means to be the bride of the Lord in the sign of the Cross. But since it is a mystery, it can never be grasped by reason alone."

The mystery of the Cross gradually enveloped her entire life, eventually driving her toward the supreme offering. As a bride on the Cross, Sister Teresa Benedicta not only wrote profound pages on the "science of the cross," but walked the path to the very end at the school of the Cross. Many of our contemporaries would like to silence the Cross. But nothing is more eloquent than the silenced Cross! The true message of suffering is a lesson in love. Love makes suffering fruitful, and suffering deepens love.

Through the experience of the Cross, Edith Stein was able to open a path toward a new encounter with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith and the cross revealed themselves to her as inseparable. Having matured at the school of the Cross, she discovered the roots to which the tree of her own life was connected. She understood how important it was for her "to be a daughter of the chosen people and to belong to Christ not only spiritually, but also through a bond of blood."

8. "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth" (Jn 4:24).

Dearest Brothers and Sisters, with these words the divine Master conversed with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. What he gave to his occasional but attentive interlocutor we also find present in the life of Edith Stein, in her "ascent of Mount Carmel." The depth of the divine mystery became perceptible to her in the silence of contemplation. As she matured in the knowledge of God throughout her existence, worshiping him in spirit and truth, she experienced ever more clearly her specific vocation to ascend the Cross with Christ, to embrace it with serenity and trust, and to love it following the footsteps of her beloved Spouse: Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is pointed out to us today as a model to inspire us and as a protector to turn to.

Let us give thanks to God for this gift. May the new Saint be an example to us in our commitment to the service of freedom and in our search for truth. May her testimony serve to make the bridge of mutual understanding between Jews and Christians ever firmer.

You, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, pray for us! Amen.

RITE OF BEATIFICATION OF SISTER TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS

HOMILY OF JOHN PAUL II

Köln-Müngersdorf Stadium Friday, May 1, 1987

"Blessed are they who have come out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Rv 7:14).

1. Among these blessed men and women we greet today with great veneration and deep joy a daughter of the Jewish people, full of wisdom and strength. Brought up in the hard school of the tradition of the people of Israel, distinguished by a life spent in virtue and self-denial within her own order, she demonstrated her heroic spirit on the way to the concentration camp. United with Christ crucified, she gave her life for "true peace" and "for the people": Edith Stein, Jew, philosopher, nun, and martyr.

Your Eminence, dear brothers and sisters!

With today's beatification, a long-cherished desire is fulfilled, not only for the Archdiocese of Cologne, but also for many Christians and many communities of the Church. Seven years ago, the German Bishops' Conference unanimously submitted this request for beatification to the Holy See, to which other friendly bishops from various countries later added their voices. It is therefore a great joy for us today to be able to grant this request and, in this solemn liturgy before the faithful, in the name of the Church, to declare Sister Teresa Benedetta of the Cross blessed in the majesty of the Lord. From now on we can venerate her as a martyr and invoke her intercession before the throne of God. I therefore rejoice with you, and above all with her Carmelite sisters present here in Cologne and in Echt, as well as with all those who belong to this religious order. It also fills me with joy and gratitude that Jewish brothers and sisters are participating in this liturgy, in particular the closest relatives of Edith Stein.

2. "O Lord, manifest yourself in the time of our affliction, and give me courage" (Est 4:17r).

The words of this plea for help, taken from the first reading of today's liturgy, are spoken by Esther, a daughter of Israel, at the time of the Babylonian captivity. Her prayer, which she addressed to God in the hours when the threat of death hung over her and all her people, deeply moves us:

"O my Lord, our King, / you are the only one! / Come to my help, / for I am alone / and have no other helper / but you, / for danger is near . . . / You, Lord, chose Israel / out of all the nations, / and our fathers from all their ancestors / as your everlasting heritage . . . / As for us . . . save us / by your hand . . . O Lord!" (Est 4:17l-t).

The fear of death, at which Esther trembles, arose when, under the influence of the powerful Haman, a mortal enemy of the Jews, an order of extermination was spread throughout Persia. With God's help and the sacrifice of her own life, Esther contributed decisively to the salvation of her people.

3. This plea for help, dating back more than two thousand years, is today, in this liturgy, upon the lips of the Servant of God Edith Stein, a daughter of Israel of our century. It has become timely once again because here, in the heart of Europe, a plan for the annihilation of the Jews was once again conceived. A mad ideology decreed it in the name of an impious racism and carried it out to disastrous consequ

4. Edith Stein died in the concentration camp of Auschwitz as a daughter of her martyred people. Despite her transfer from Cologne to the Carmelite convent of Echt, she found only temporary refuge there, while the wave of persecutions against the Jews was growing. After occupying the Netherlands, the National Socialists immediately began the extermination of the Jews in those lands as well, from which baptized Jews were initially excluded. But when the Catholic bishops, in a pastoral letter, strongly protested against these deportations, those in power retaliated by bringing about the extermination of Jews of the Catholic faith as well. Thus Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross faced martyrdom together with her beloved sister Rosa, who had also taken refuge in the Carmel of Echt.

Upon leaving the monastery, Edith took her sister by the hand and simply said: "Come, let us go, for our people." In the strength of a follower of Christ ready for sacrifice, even in the moment of her apparent weakness, she discerned a way to offer her people a final service. Already a few years earlier, she had compared herself to Queen Esther in exile at the Persian court. We read in one of her letters: "I trust that the Lord has taken my life for the benefit of all the Jews. I must think more and more of Queen Esther, who was taken from her people to represent them before the king. I am a small Esther, very poor and weak, but the king who has chosen me is great and infinitely merciful."

5. Dear brothers and sisters. Alongside Esther's prayer, we find a passage from the Letter to the Galatians. The Apostle Paul writes: "May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Gal 6:14).

Edith Stein also encountered on her life's journey this mystery of the cross that Saint Paul proclaims to Christians in this letter. Edith met Christ, and this encounter led her, step by step, into the enclosure of Carmel. In the extermination camp, she died as a daughter of Israel "for the glorification of God's holy name" and at the same time as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

The entire life of Edith Stein is characterized by a tireless search for truth and illuminated by the grace of Christ's cross. She had her first encounter with the reality of the cross in the person of a deeply religious widow of a fellow student who, instead of doubting her faith because of the tragic loss of her husband, drew strength and faith from the cross of Christ. She wrote later regarding this episode: "It was my first encounter with the cross and with the divine power that it radiates to those who embrace it... there was a moment when my unbelief was shattered,... and Christ began to shine forth: Christ in the mystery of the cross." Her life and her path of the cross are intimately bound to the destiny of the Jewish people. In a prayer, she acknowledged to Christ the Savior what she already knew: "That it is His cross that is now placed upon the shoulders of the Jewish people," and all those who understood this "should be ready to take it upon their own shoulders in the name of all. I wanted to do so, He only had to show me the way." At the same time, she possessed the inner certainty that God had heard her prayer. The more frequently swastikas were seen on the streets, the higher the cross of Jesus Christ was raised in her life. When she entered the Carmelite convent in Cologne under the name of Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross to participate even more deeply in the mystery of Christ's cross, she knew she was wedded to the Lord in the sign of the cross. On the day of her first vows, it seemed to her, as she herself said, "like the bride of the Lamb." She was convinced that her heavenly spouse would lead her into the depths of the mystery of the cross.

6. Teresa, Blessed of the Cross — this is the name of that woman who began her spiritual journey with the conviction that God absolutely does not exist. In the years of her youth and her studies, her life was not yet characterized by the liberating cross of Christ, yet there was already forming the object of the constant search and study of her sharp intellect. At the age of fifteen, in her native city of Breslau, Edith, born into a home of ancient Jewish tradition, decided "to pray no more" as she herself admitted. Although throughout her life she had always been deeply struck by the robust faith of her mother, she spent her youth and study years with an atheistic spirit. She considered the existence of a personal God incredible.

During her years of studying psychology, philosophy, history, and German studies in Breslau, Göttingen, and Freiburg, there was by no means any room for God in her life. Nevertheless, she professed a very high ethical idealism. In accordance with her great intellectual talent, she refused to accept anything that was not proven, not even the faith of her fathers. She wanted to go to the root of things by herself. Hence her tireless search for truth. Looking back later on these years of spiritual restlessness, she considered them important stages of her inner maturation process, stating: "My search for truth was a true and proper prayer" — a marvelous word of comfort for all those who struggle with faith in the Lord! Thus the search for truth is, most intimately, the search for God.

Under the strong influence of her teacher Husserl and his phenomenological school, the female student turned her research increasingly and decisively toward philosophy. She learned above all "to consider everything without prejudice" and to rid herself of "all blinkers." Through her encounter with Max Scheler in Göttingen, Edith Stein came into contact with Catholic ideas for the first time. She writes herself: "The limits of the rationalistic prejudices in which I grew up, without knowing it, fall away and the world of faith suddenly appears before me; an integral part of it are the people by whom I am surrounded daily and to whom I look with admiration."

Their long struggle for a personal decision to adhere to the faith in Jesus Christ ended only in 1921 when she began to read an autobiographical book, "Life of Saint Teresa of Avila," found at the home of a friend. She was immediately captivated by it and did not stop reading it until she reached the end: "When I closed the book, I said to myself: This is the truth!" She had read it all night until the first light of dawn. In this night she had discovered the truth, not the truth of philosophy, but the truth in a person, the living "thou" of God. Edith Stein had sought the truth and had found God. Without delay, she had herself baptized and welcomed into the Catholic Church.

7. Receiving baptism did not mean in any way for Edith Stein breaking with the Jewish people. On the contrary, she affirms: "When I was a girl of fourteen, I stopped practicing the Jewish religion and for the first time, after my return to God, I felt Jewish." Of this she was always conscious: "belonging to Christ not only spiritually but also by descent." She suffered greatly from the immense pain that her conversion must have caused her mother. She continued to accompany her to the synagogue and recited the psalms together with her. To her mother's firm attitude according to which one could also be a devout Jew, she gave this reply: "Certainly — when one has known nothing else."

Although, ever since her encounter with the writings of Saint Teresa of Avila, Carmel had become Edith Stein's destination, she had to wait more than ten years until Christ indicated to her, in prayer, the way to enter it. In her activity as a teacher and professor, in her school and formative work, mostly in Speyer and subsequently also in Münster, she strove to combine and reconcile science and faith together. In this task she wanted to be solely an instrument of the Lord: "Whoever comes to me, I want to lead to him." Simultaneously with this activity, she lived during this period like a nun, interiorly took the three vows, and became a great and inspired woman of prayer. From an intense study of Saint Thomas Aquinas she learned that it is easy "to exercise science as divine service . . . Only in this way could I decide, in full conscience, to begin scientific work anew (after her conversion)." In this high value of knowledge, Edith Stein recognized ever more clearly that the essence of being a Christian is not knowledge but love.

When finally in 1933 Edith Stein entered the Carmel of Cologne, this step did not signify a flight from the world or from her responsibilities, but rather an even more defined participation in following the cross of Christ. She said to the Mother Prioress of Carmel in their first interview: "It is not human activity that can help us, but the passion of Christ. To be a part of it is my desire." For the same reason, at the time of her habit-taking, she could express no other desire than to be called, within the order, "of the Cross." And on her perpetual profession holy card she had the words of Saint John of the Cross inscribed: "My only duty from now on will be solely to love more.

8. Dear brothers and sisters. Today we bow together with the whole Church before this great woman whom from now on we can call blessed in the majesty of the Lord; we bow before this great daughter of Israel, who in Christ, the Redeemer, discovered the fullness of her faith and of her mission toward the people of God. According to Edith Stein's conviction, whoever enters Carmel is not lost to their own, but is, in fact, all the more found, because our task is precisely that of being before God for everyone. From the moment she began to understand the destiny of the people of Israel "under the Cross," our new blessed embraced Christ ever more deeply in his profound mystery of redemption, to feel herself in spiritual unity with the manifold sorrows of mankind and to help forgive the injustices of this world that cry out for vengeance to the eyes of heaven. As "Benedicta of the Cross" she wished to carry her cross together with that of Christ for the salvation of her people, of her Church, and of the whole world. She offered herself to God as an "expiatory sacrifice for true peace" and above all for her threatened and humiliated Jewish people. After having learned that God had once again placed his hand forcefully upon her head, she was convinced: "that the destiny of this people is also mine."

When Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross began her final theological work in the Carmel of Echt, "The Science of the Cross" - which, however, remained unfinished - she noted, as she was about to undertake her path of the cross: "When we speak of the science of the Cross, we do not mean . . . naked theory, but living, true, and effective truth." At the moment when the mortal threat hanging over the Jewish people like a dark cloud also struck her, she proved ready to testify with her own life to what she had previously learned: "There is a vocation to the passion of Christ and through this one cooperates in his redemptive mission . . . Christ continues to live in his faithful and in them his passion continues to live; the passion lived together with the Lord is his passion, inserted into the great work of redemption and fruitful within it."

Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, together with her sister Rosa, walked the path that led her to extermination with her people and "for" her people. However, she did not accept pain and death passively, but accompanied this awareness with the sacrificial atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. \"Already from now on I accept the death that God has destined for me, with joy and in complete submission to His most holy will,\" she had written a few years earlier in her testament: \"I pray the Lord that He may accept my pain and my death to His honor and glory, for all the needs . . . of the holy Church.\" The Lord listened to these prayers.

The Church offers for our veneration and imitation today, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross as a blessed martyr, an example of heroic discipleship of Christ. Let us open ourselves to her message, to the message of this woman of spirit and science, who in the science of the cross came to know the culmination of all wisdom: a great daughter of the Jewish people and a great Christian among millions of innocent martyred brothers and sisters, she saw the cross approaching inexorably. She did not flee in terror before it, but embraced it in Christian hope in the final surge of love and dedication, and also hailed it in the mystery of the faith in the resurrection: \"Ave crux, spes unica!\" As your eminent Cardinal Höffner said in his brief pastoral letter: \"Edith Stein is a gift, a warning, a promise for our time. May she intercede with God for us, for our people, and for all peoples."

9. Dear brothers and sisters! The Church of the twentieth century lives a great day today. We bow deeply before the witness of the life and death of Edith Stein, an illustrious daughter of Israel and at the same time a daughter of Carmel. Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a personality who carries in her intense life a dramatic synthesis of our century, a synthesis rich in deep wounds that still bleed, but for whose healing, to this day, men and women conscious of their responsibility continue to strive; at the same time the synthesis of a full truth above man, in a heart that remained so long restless and unfulfilled, \"until it finally found peace in God.\"

When we go spiritually to the place of martyrdom of this great Jewish woman and Christian martyr, the place of a terrifying event that today is called \"Shoah,\" we perceive at the same time the voice of Christ, of the Messiah and the Son of Man, of the Lord and the Redeemer.

Like the messenger of the inscrutable mystery of God's salvation who spoke to the woman of Samaria at Jacob's well: \"Salvation comes from the Jews. / But the hour is coming, and is now here, / when true worshippers will worship the Father / in spirit and truth: for the Father seeks such worshippers / God is spirit, and those who worship him / must worship in spirit and truth\" (Jn 4:22-24).

Let Edith Stein, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, be proclaimed blessed—a true worshipper of God in spirit and truth.

Blessed be she! - Amen.

Before taking our leave of this festive Eucharistic communion, I greet in particular you, my dear young friends, who desire to carry this luminous flame in every direction of your country.

It is the light of the Easter Vigil, already a sign of Jesus' resurrection and of reconstruction after the terror caused by destruction and war. Today it is for all of us a sign of the hope placed in you, the new generation, who are preparing to bring the light of Christ into the next century.

It is the light of Altenberg, in that place which, in the difficult times of oppression, gave so many young Christians spiritual guidance and the strength to resist.

It is the light of reconciliation and peace.

It must illuminate the path that we are all called to walk. Together with all men of good will, let us embark upon this path. Let us embark upon it with our gaze turned to Mary, to whom the month of May is dedicated in a special way. The \"Queen of Peace\" accompanies us as a model and as a promise of the \"new man full of grace."

The merciful Almighty, who through us desires to give His love and peace to all men, bless this light and all of you.