Yet once this personal martyrdom had been achieved — in ways hidden from the world and hardly understood by her own family — she could dedicate herself to the needs of others and share the suffering of the world through prayer and contemplation.
She often wrote of the peace and tranquility of convent life and wished for nothing more than to spend her day in prayer. This was Edith Stein’s beloved and glorious cross, at rest with the Lord, rejoicing in his love, and in empathy with the world.
Even in the deportation camp on her way to Auschwitz, she was not given to surrender but sent a final plea to the Swiss consulate for a visa. She knew that the final cross would come, if God so willed. In the meantime, she remained a fighter, who loved life and snubbed evil. This was Edith Stein’s approach to the cross: Trust in God’s ultimate love and wisdom yet never simply surrender to the outer limitations of humanity’s frail existence. Such surrender to external circumstances would be like accepting the shackles of a cross of death, of defeatism and despair.
Instead, the cross leads to glory, to the resurrection, the overcoming of all death and suffering through divine love. By realizing that the cross calls us to action and joy rather than surrender, we may hope to transcend the boundaries imposed by a world built on human limitations.
To share in the glory of the cross, our actions and choices must be oriented toward increasing our personal closeness to God, to nurturing an ongoing love affair hidden in the innermost core of our being. Like Edith Stein, we must find ways to create an inner, private space to cultivate our relationship with God and enter into a mystical union of love with him. At the same time, we must find ways to bear joyful witness, to realize our potential, and to engage actively in the world as imitators of Christ and children of God. In “Science of the Cross,” she wrote that Christians in wartime Germany would act differently if “Christian doctrine and the mighty deeds of God … [were] the content of [their] life.”
The cross is a call to a living faith and fearless action. It is not for us to remain standing beneath it, grief-stricken and paralyzed by pain, embracing suffering for the sake of suffering. In Christ on the cross, God has given us all the answers. It is up to us to act on them.
According to St. John of the Cross, on whose writing Edith Stein based her own science of the cross, St. Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews, said: “Let it be understood that God has remained, as it were, mute, and that he has nothing more to say, because what he was saying in fragments by the prophets, he said in its entirety, by giving us the Whole who is his son” (SMC, No. 4, p. 201).
This “Whole” is the realization of God’s love through his Incarnation, and it is our guide for growing closer to him. On our own journey of faith and facing life’s challenges, let us remember Edith Stein’s words: “Be patient with yourself; God is.”
This article was originally published by CNA on Aug. 9, 2014.
Tina McCormick has a doctorate in history from Harvard and is based in Massachusetts.