ON THE WAY TO AUSCHWITZ

“There is a difference between a good work and an anointed work. God can use a good work, but He inhabits an anointed work.”

-      Babsie Bleasdale, Trinidad

As we celebrate All Saints Day today in the Catholic Church, I consider the quote above and my mind goes to a woman who saw beyond the hopelessness of unspeakable human suffering caused by the Nazis in western Europe to perform good works which could only be characterized as anointed.  Edith Stein, known today as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross,

had the gift of grace and the eyes of faith to minister into the hearts and minds others – even to her fellow passengers on the train to Auschwitz. 

Edith Stein watched her mother raise 11 children as a single mother, and her takeaway lesson was to see the world through the prism of feminine strength.  As an intellectual studying philosophy in Germany, she visited a cathedral and encountered a woman who stopped to pray in the middle of a day of shopping. Edith’s reaction to the woman’s moment of reverence was that it was “as if she was visiting a friend.” Her takeaway lesson in observing such a phenomenon was that the Catholic faith had an everyday spirituality which connected believers to their God in a way she had never seen… but immediately knew she wanted for herself.  She committed herself to her religious vocation as a consequence of her intellectual and philosophical passion for the pursuit of truth, as she stated “Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

Saints are prophets for our day and time, and if we can learn their lessons we can transform ourselves to live lives of courage and inspiration.  The transformation of Edith Stein was a progression of the seeker whose encounters systematically opened her heart to the service of righteousness.  She was born into a large Jewish family in Poland in 1891, delving deep into philosophy as an active and intelligent student, turning toward the Catholic faith by baptism at age 31, and entering the Carmelite religious order at Echt, Holland at age 42 (yet being excused from the order’s characteristic requirement of solitude because her Superior did not want to deprive the world of the influence of her writing). She was arrested because of her Jewish background when the Nazis conquered Holland and, along with her sister Rose, sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz at age 51. When she was canonized as Saint Teresa Benedicta in 1987, it was in recognition of her willingness to be martyred for her intense, committed, and well-articulated faith.

Who are the saints among us today?  What characteristics do they highlight which we wish to emulate?  What transformation do they inspire in us?

Can we, like Edith Stein, develop the eyes of faith to seek and find the gift of grace to follow a path of spiritual evolution?  Can we follow our hearts with courage and bravery of word and action?  Can we stand for our beliefs, our convictions, and our value system?

Although we are not likely to be martyred for our commitment to such development of our own character, we may face opposition ranging from derision to exclusion.  Would such suffering be too much of a personal hurdle?

I take courage in the thesis posed by Babsie Bleasdale… that if our works are inhabited by Him, ours is an anointed grace, and our journey will thus be buoyed and blessed.

https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=179