Pints With Aquinas - Why I Love Edith Stein | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Fr. Pine Talks about the life of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein). What can she teach us? How did she live and How did she die? 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd We get a small kick back from affiliate links

Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and I work as an assistant director for the Thomistic Institute. And this is Pines with Aquinas. I think you can tell a decent bit about somebody on the basis of how they manage difficulties, okay, or how they react in the midst of difficulties. Some people bear it up beautifully, other people not so much. So it might be small difficulties, or relatively small difficulties, like somebody pours a glass of wine on your white cashmere sweater, or you lose your luggage en route to some vacation destination. Or it might be a big thing, like somebody in your family gets a cancer diagnosis,

or you get in a terrible car accident and you're worried that your back is never going to be the same. So, in those situations, how do you, how does anyone, handle the stress? Do we lose our temper and accuse God? Do we get sullen and ugly? Or are we able to bear it up with patience, with magnanimity, with courage, with gentleness, with compassion? It's not always clear. Like, it's not always straightforwardly, ah yeah, this person is definitely living in that way, and that person is definitely living in this way. Sometimes we're surprised. Or sometimes we rely upon those moments of difficulty to reveal or make manifest a character which we did not suspect lay hidden within so

Yeah, difficulty will often reveal cracks or fissures in character But sometimes it reveals a certain grandeur and when it does it's especially wonderful, especially beautiful And I think it's most wonderful or most beautiful when you see that Difficulty give rise to a kind of generosity or a kind of solicitude. At that time when the pain is most acute and when we are most tempted to turn inward, to think only of ourselves, sometimes you'll notice people who are broken open to God in a new way or broken open to the other in a new way.

And that's awesome. So one of the people for whom this is decidedly the case is St. Edith Stein or St. Teresa Benedict of the Cross. So I thought that together we might meditate on her life but especially on her death. You have probably heard of St. Edith Stein. I first became interested in her when reading The Priority of Christ by Bishop Robert Barron. I think that's right. I think there's a little bit on her at the end of that book.

But then she's, you know, her feast day or her memorial comes up in the month of August under that second title, St. Teresa Benedict of the Cross. For those of you who don't know, she was born in the late 19th century. She was known as an able philosopher. She was one of the best students of Edmund Husserl. She was also born Jewish or she was born into a Jewish family

and later converted to Catholicism in part because of an encounter with the writings of St. Teresa of Avila. And so, no surprise here, she entered a Carmelite monastery and that's where she took the name St. Teresa Benedict of the Cross. But I think the the details that are most telling, or the details that most reveal or make manifest her depth of character, her strength of character, come at the end of her life. So leading up to World War II, she knew that her Jewish background would endanger the nuns with whom she lived in Cologne. Cologne is in Germany, you know that, but it's like close to the border with the Netherlands and Belgium. Alright, so it's in the west of Germany, kind of like west central, nevermind, who cares, stop talking about geography.

So she asked to be transferred to another monastery on the other side of the border in what is the Netherlands or Holland? And she had been living there then for like three years when her final days approached But during this time the German persecution of Jews escalated and the Dutch bishops wrote against German anti-semitism and The Nazis responded by arresting Catholics of Jewish extraction. So the Gestapo came to her monastery on the 2nd of August in 1942 while she was in the chapel with the other sisters. And so she was to report to her captors within minutes. It wasn't like she was like giving the heads up so that she could escape.

But she was to report to her captors together with her sister Rosa, who had also converted to the faith. So she complied with composure, and her last words to be heard in Act were to her sister Rosa. She said, come, we are going for our people. There's some debate as to what our people means in that context, but we're just going to pass over that. So from X, she was taken to one of these transit camps where they kind of staged people en route

to the concentration camps or extermination camps. So she was taken to Westerbork transit camp. And at one point, the barracks manager who recounted his conversations with her later said, like, what are you going to do now? And she responded, so far I have prayed and worked from now on. I will work and pray. So like a clear sense, you know, she she had every right to feel sullen, to feel

sad, depressed, you know, gripped by fear. But instead, she saw she saw it as an opportunity to, you know to enter into a new stage of her vocation. So she had prayed and worked, and now it was time for her to work and to pray. This same barracks manager later wrote more details describing her response to the stress and the difficulty. He says this, among the prisoners who were brought in on the 5th of August, Sister Benedicta stood out on account of her great calmness and composure. The distress in the barracks and the stir caused by the new arrivals was indescribable.

Sister Benedicta was just like an angel going around among the women, comforting them, helping them and calming them. Many of the mothers were near to distraction. They had not bothered about their children the whole day long, but just sat brooding in dumb despair. Sister Benedicta took care of the little children, washed and combed them, looked after their feeding and their other needs. During the whole of her stay there, she was so busy washing and cleaning as acts of loving kindness that everyone was astonished." I found this especially beautiful because it represents coming to fruition of her philosophy

or I suppose you could say her theology on certain subjects. You may have heard her name mentioned apropos of whether or not men and women have different souls. Okay, so that question comes up in her writings. There's a collected volume in ICS Publications just has the title Woman, and it's a collection of her various kind of like lectures or yeah, just like essays on the theme. And this idea of like the feminine Gestalt is she has this sense that every woman is in some shape or form, you know, a mother, a wife, a daughter, or I should say a daughter, a wife, a mother, that that's part of the kind of feminine soul,

the feminine spirit, and that will entail a kind of sensitivity to the interior or to the heart of the other, and a kind of capacity to elicit from the interior or the heart of the other, a kind of native excellence, right, to help the other to come into possession of as her, her vocation. But this sense of like motherhood, she says, even though she didn't have any children, and even though the order that she joined is a contemplative order. And so does she doesn't have like, you know, patients that she's taking care of in a hospital or she doesn't have students. I mean, she hadn't had students for some time since her entry whom she's taken care of in a hospital or she doesn't have students, I mean she hadn't had students for some time since her entry, whom she's taken care of in school,

she had taught previously. You see this, yeah, maternal instinct, this maternal capacity come to the fore as a kind of perfection of her character, as a kind of perfection of her vocation. Okay, during this same time, she scribbled a note to send to her prioress and in it

she asked for the next volume of the Breivary and remarked, So far I have been able to pray gloriously. I love this for many reasons, but I love the fact that her obedience, her simple obedience, extends to the volume of the Breivary, you know, because there are elements in these different volumes which are proper to the time or to the season, and she wants to be obedient to that. She wants to follow faithfully the life that's been prescribed to her, even though it's been radically upset by this change which will end in her death. And then this description, so far I have been able to pray gloriously, because according

to her spiritual master, Saint Teresa of Avila, what is prayer but the simple gaze of the soul upon the God by whom she knows herself to be loved. So even in these straightened circumstances, she is able to be with God, right? And it's like, that's it. That's her life. That's her vocation. Okay. Later two men came from her Carmel with provisions and met with her briefly and they wrote, quote, In her eyes shone the mysterious radiance of a saintly Carmelite. Quietly and calmly, she described everyone's troubles but her own. Her deep faith created about her an atmosphere

of heavenly life. And I think, yeah, this aspect, right, so we talk about religious life on the one hand as the beginning of beatitude or as a kind of forecourt to the palace of heaven, which is cool. But you see it especially in the saints, like what that entails, because as St. Catherine of Siena teaches, all the way to heaven is heaven. And for those who welcome the indwelling trinity, heaven dwells within and you're born up by that indwelling so that you abide with God in heaven even before you pass from this earth. So this earth is a passing thing, right? It's a kind of evanescent or otherwise transient thing. It's not a place in which we can rest, it's not a place in which we can repose. And so you see the tendency, the

trajectory, the kind of dynamism of sanctity that it's all the way to heaven is heaven. This idea of, yeah, her deep faith created about her an atmosphere of heavenly life. Okay, after two days at Westerbork, the prisoners were loaded onto trains and shipped to Auschwitz. Uh, the route passed through Breslau where she was born. Uh, but when the train stopped at Schifferstadt, Edith noticed a former student of hers on the platform. She asked her to give a message to the sisters to tell them, quote, I am

on my way to the East. Um, so this line has also been commented on with some frequency. I suppose it's obvious you know that she was going to the east I don't know that she wanted to recount that to her sisters to give them some indication of her eventual destination because I mean if you go west from the Netherlands you end up in the ocean. I suppose you could go southwest you know the Iberian Peninsula or just like south to Switzerland and France, but obviously the German force, the German power lay to the east.

So she's going to go to the east. So then what she's saying, well, the east is a place in which many wonderful things lie. St. Thomas will comment upon this when asking why it is that churches are oriented to the east. So on the one hand, I'll say the Garden of Eden lies to the East, in which was our creation, but also our primordial sin for which we now atone and offer sacrifice, or apply the atonement and sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It's also the place of the rising sun. You can think in a natural sense, it's the place of the rising sun, which we associate with a kind of hope and a kind of recreation or dawning day. But it's also the place from which Christ is supposed to come, you know, riding in the clouds at the end of the age. And so it's the place from whence comes our deliverance, from whence comes the final reckoning of all things. And so, yeah,

there are like a lot of beautiful things in this kind of liturgical gesture that she's headed to the East. So eventually she arrived at Auschwitz and two workers on the platform at Auschwitz later noted that among those who arrived, she was the only one who did not appear completely crazed right before the face of death. She was solid, steadfast, firm because she was fixed and rooted in Christ, right? Because her faith gave her access to what lay beyond the grave and helped her to abide there already.

And upon arrival, she was promptly stripped and from what we understand, marched to the gas chamber and murdered with Prussian gasset. Right, so it ends brutally and suddenly. But in the worst of circumstances, we see in her an incredible strength, right? We see in her an incredible strength. Rather than fissures and cracks in her character, we see the nobility, the grandeur, the excellence of her character. So we might ask, you know, as Christians, from whence

did it come? Clearly it comes from Christ. It's not insignificant that her last published work was entitled The Knowledge of the Cross because it was from the knowledge of the cross that she derived the strength to live with equanimity and generosity from the knowledge of the cross. She learned to live cruciform. So I think that, you know, in our own lives, we adopt a similar posture before the Christian mystery. We behold the pierced one who, with his last breaths, shows the utmost

and highest of generosity and solicitude. You can think about the way that he, you know, provides his last breaths, shows the utmost and highest of generosity and solicitude." You can think about the way that he, you know, provides for his mother, the way that he provides for St. John and the Church, the way that he provides for his torturers, the way that he provides for the good thief, the way that he provides for everyone, the way that he provides for the salvation of the whole world. So, though, you know, Christ's Spirit could never have been broken, yet he goes through the salvation of the whole world. So, though Christ's spirit could never have been broken, yet he goes through the most acute pain and suffering, and it reveals the strength of his character, like the grace and virtue told forth in his sacred humanity, which we are meant thereby to receive, which is commended to us, right, and by its manifestation and communication, so that we

can recognize it and receive it, lay hold of it, and enter into the mystery. Because Christ has shed every drop of blood, He has expended every ounce of love, He has provided for our spiritual need, and so His saints are able to partake of that generosity, of that solicitude, and tell it forth unto ages of ages. So I especially love Edith Stein, St. Teresa Benedict of the Cross, because I think that she is an icon of this deep, profound Christian mystery, which affords us hope and affords us entry into the divine life with a greater freedom, with a greater joy. So that is what I was hoping to share with you. This is Pines with Aquinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel, push the bell, and get sweet

email updates when other things come out. Also I contribute to a podcast called God's planning and a father Bonaventure and I did an episode about women's souls, largely based on the thought of Edith Stein, St. Teresa Benedict of the cross. So you might enjoy that and check that out. And then lastly, uh, we're announcing some cool one day events, uh, for God's planning, which you might profit from. So, uh So in Lincoln,

Nebraska we're going to have a day of recollection on the 16th of March and in Columbus, Ohio we're going to have a day of recollection on the 6th of April. So you'll find details about those things populating on our website with like little registrations and other notes besides. So hope to see you at one of those. Alright, now over my prayers for you please pray for me and I look forward to chatting with you next time on Pines with Aquinas.