From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   The Right Hand of the Father    
      
      "Jesus ascended into heaven. And where is he now? He sits at the   
   right hand of the Father. Do you know what the right hand means?   
      The right hand of God means eternal happiness. It means   
   inestimable, inexpressible, incomprehensible beatitude."   
   --St. Augustine--Sermon 213, 4   
      
   Prayer: Let your right hand save me, O Lord, let it save me, so that I   
   may stand on your right hand. I ask not health of body but that having   
   finished the present life I may be found on your right hand among the   
   sheep.   
   --St. Augustine--Commentary on Psalm 59, 7   
      
      
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   August 9th - St. Edith Stein   
   (1891-1942)   
      
   Not all Jewish victims of the Hitlerian Holocaust were Jews in   
   religion. Some were Jewish converts to Christianity, and in that sense   
   martyrs of both the Old and the New Testaments. Edith Stein was a   
   stellar example. Edith was born into a devout Jewish family of   
   Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland). She was a warm and popular   
   member of the Stein family. Her nephews and nieces still remember her   
   fondly for her reading to them and telling them stories when on   
   vacation.   
      
   Brilliant and promising from childhood on, Stein began the graduate   
   study of philosophy at the University of Goettingen in 1913. Here she   
   became the prize pupil of Professor Edmund Husseri, founder of the   
   modern philosophy called “phenomenonology”. During World War I she   
   interrupted her university studies to serve in a Red Cross hospital.   
   After the war she returned to Goettingen and finished her doctoral   
   studies. Her dissertation was an analysis of empathy.   
      
   After earning her degree, Edith worked as a teacher, counselor,   
   lecturer and writer, growing in prominence as a professional   
   philosopher.   
      
   In an autobiographical memoir she wrote several years later, “Life in   
   a Jewish Family”, Dr. Stein said that she had given up the practice of   
   Judaism by the time she was 15. Her conversion to Catholicism was   
   therefore that of an agnostic rather than a Jew. Her inclination to   
   Catholicism was probably influenced in part by the conversion of Max   
   Scheler, one of several leading phenomenonologists who became   
   Catholics. But what first attracted her attention to Christianity was   
   the inspiration of Frau Adolf Reinach, a devout Protestant woman. Her   
   husband, Adolf Reisach, one of Edith’s university friends, was killed   
   in action in1917. The courage with which his widow accepted the loss   
   impressed Edith with “the cross and the divine strength which it   
   imparts to those who carry it.” “It was the moment when my belief   
   collapsed” she said, “and Christ shone forth; Christ in the mystery of   
   the Cross.” Now she began to study the Catholic Christian faith. Her   
   reading of the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila marked the turning   
   point in her conversion. She was baptized January 1, 1922. Her family   
   were naturally surprised, and her mother and grandmother deeply   
   shocked. But Edith remained loyal to all her kinsfolk, and proud to   
   “belong to Christ not only spiritually but according to the flesh.”   
      
   Although Edith now gave up her job as assistant to Professor Husseri,   
   she continued her teaching, lecturing and writing. She undertook to   
   reconcile the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas with the philosophy of   
   phenomenology. In 1932 she was appointed lecturer at the Catholic   
   Pedagogical Institute at Muenster, a state-funded position.   
      
   Edith held that position for only one year because of ominous   
   political developments. In 1933 the Nazi government issued an   
   anti-Semitic ruling that no non-Aryan could teach in a school funded   
   by the Reich. Actually, this repulsive law was not unwelcome to Dr.   
   Stein in that it helped her to decide to become a Carmelite nun, a   
   long-cherished wish. She entered the Cologne Carmel on October 14,   
   1933, taking the religious name Theresia Benedicta of the Cross. Her   
   Carmelite superiors wisely decided to let her continue her scholarly   
   studies and writing in the cloister.   
      
   For nine years Sister Stein continued her important literary and   
   philosophical labors. In 1938, however, the Nazis began to bear down   
   still more heavily upon religious Jews and people of Jewish ancestry.   
   The Cologne Carmelites decided it would be safer for Sister Theresia   
   to move to the Carmel at Echt, across the border in the Netherlands.   
   So she went there on January 1, 1939. Her sister Rose, who had become   
   a Catholic in 1936 but remained a laywoman, joined Edith at Echt a   
   year later as a monastery guest.   
      
   All went well until mid-1942. The Nazis occupied the Netherlands as   
   early as 1940. They brought with them their mad scheme of ridding the   
   world of Jews, but at first they raised no question about the 1,000   
   Dutch Catholics of Jewish background, ordering only the deportation of   
   Jewish Netherlanders up to December 15, 1942. The Catholic bishops   
   privately protested this measure of the occupying Germans. Failing to   
   get action, they issued a pastoral letter read in all the churches on   
   July 26,1942, denouncing the Nazi persecution of the Jews.   
      
   The Nazis reacted quickly. On July 27, they ordered the immediate   
   deportation of all Catholics of Jewish background. The reason?   
   “Because the bishops interfered.” On August 4, Edith Stein and her   
   sister were arrested at the Carmel of Echt and entrained to Auschwitz.   
   When arrested, Edith said to Rose, “Come, let us go for our people.”   
      
   Two weeks later Edith and Rose Stein were gassed to death at the   
   infamous death camp. The Carmelite fulfilled her religious name:   
   Theresia Benedicta of the Cross.   
      
   Pope John Paul II beatified Edith Stein as a martyr on May 1, 1987.   
   Some have asked whether she is to be considered a Jewish martyr or a   
   Christian martyr. Paradoxically, she could be considered both. But she   
   could qualify equally as a person and as a saintly scholar. Her 17   
   volumes, when they have been translated into English, may identify her   
   as a great intellectual.   
      
   Sister Edith Stein would become even better known after her   
   beatification. In the very year of her beatification a two-year-old   
   girl in Brockton, Massachusetts, named Benedicta McCarthy after   
   Professor Stein, accidentally ingested a lethal dose of Tylenol.   
   Through the intercession of Blessed Theresia Benedicta, she was   
   preserved from death. The Holy See approved the miracle in 1998. Pope   
   John Paul II raised Edith Stein to the rank of “saint” on October 11,   
   1998. A saint for Catholics and a saint for Jesus.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
      
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