18th Week, Saturday, August 9: Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)
Deut 6:4-13 / Matthew 17:14-20
Moses recites the Shema Israel; "Love the Lord with all your heart."
The Jewish writer Herman Wouk is best known for his play The Caine Mutiny. In This Is My God, another of his writings, Wouk mentions the prayer that Moses recites at the start of today's reading, the Shema Israel. Wouk says this is the first prayer a Jewish child learns and the last prayer dying Jews pray. Wouk admits wondering if he would have the presence of mind to recite the Shema at the moment of death. Then one day he was on board a ship in the pacific during a tropical typhoon. Suddenly a mountainous wave knocked him across the ship’s deck. He thought for sure it was the end of his life; and he remembered thinking, “Well, it I drown, let me say the Shema as I go.” Luckily, he caught a lifeline just as e was going overboard.
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What words would we like to pray at death? “ ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’; and when Jesus had said this he breathed his last (Lk 23:46)
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Deuteronomy 6:4 begins like this: Listen, O Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. That exhortation is also called "The Shema". It is almost equivalent to our prayer of the "Our Father". "Shema" means "listen". It calls for every Jew to listen to God and to love Him totally. The aspect of listening is important not just for interpersonal relationships but also in management skills.
Because it is with good listening skills that productivity and efficiency can be achieved. But what is important for us is that "The Shema" reminds us that listening is necessary in order to be loving. When we really listen to someone, we will begin to feel with that person, we begin to understand that person deeper, and that would also lead us to love that person.
Similarly, when we take time out to enter into the prayer of listening in silence, we enter into the prayer of love. It is only when we are silent, then we are ready to listen, then we are ready to love.
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The beautiful first reading of today is the Shema Israel, “Hear, O Israel,” named after the opening words. It is a text recited three times a day, or at least once in the morning, by every pious Jew, even up to this day. It tells how God is a liberating God, who has gratuitously done much for his people. What else should the people, the object of God’s love, do than respond with their love and express this by faithfulness, loyalty, and obedience to his commandments? Though affection is not yet much a part of it, at least we cannot say that the OT is an age of only law and fear.
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St Thomas Aquinas has given us the five ways by which we can get an idea of God. We come to get an idea of the creator, his almighty power, his infinity, and his wisdom in what he created. None of them, however, shows us God as the merciful, loving God. This is revealed to us only by Jesus. It is only faith that reveals the mercy of God. Sorrow, death, and the malice of man, the fear and terror of natural forces, earthquakes, storms, typhoons, floods, epidemics, etc. would suggest rather a cruel God who punishes the good and the wicked. Only Jesus is the incarnate mercy of God. Through him, God is near. He healed the body and soul of the sick. He was the friend of all in need. He fought against the self-righteousness of men, against hypocrisy. He forgave the guilty. He feeds men on excessive care for the need of the day and gave men eyes for the needs of others and promised to all men of goodwill a sure home in the love of God.
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Prayer
Lord, you alone are our God. Through your Son, Jesus Christ, you have led us out of the slavery and darkness of sin to give us a share in your own life and love. Thank you, Lord God, for your generosity. Help us to share ourselves freely without demanding any return and inspire all we do with the love that you have shown us in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen
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(Edith Stein)
Feast Day August 9
As she was growing up, Edith prayed at home with her family and went to religious services. While this could be said about many Catholic saints, Edith’s family was a little different. She was from a devout Jewish family. Then when Edith was about 13 years old, she gave up faith in God altogether. Edith grew up in Breslau, Germany, the youngest of seven children. Her father died when Edith was young, so she became very close to her mother. Edith was a very intelligent girl. She was so smart that the teacher sent her home from kindergarten; there was nothing for her to learn there. Edith didn’t just study when there was going to be a test in school. She studied because she loved to learn. She always got high marks in everything except math. Edith continued her studies at the university, where she earned a doctorate degree in philosophy.
Then as an inquisitive young woman, she picked up the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Ávila. Edith was so captivated that she couldn’t put the book down, and she completed reading it in one night. The next day she bought a Catholic catechism and read it. Edith felt she had finally found the truth she had been looking for since she was 13.
When Edith was baptized, her mother cried. Edith did not have the heart to tell her mother that she also wanted to be a Carmelite nun. So she waited. She taught school, translated books, and gave lectures—and she prayed. Finally, in 1934, she entered the convent and received the name Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She shared in the domestic work of the nuns, but also continued to write about philosophy. In 1938 the persecution of Jews became so intense in Germany that it became dangerous for the rest of the sisters in the convent. They could be killed simply for giving shelter to a Jewish person. Edith and her sister Rosa, who had also become Catholic, went to Holland.
Four years later Holland was occupied by the Nazis, and one day, without warning, soldiers came to the convent door. They gave Edith and her sister 10 minutes to pack before they put them on a train to Germany. From there they were sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland. Two days later, on August 9 or 10, Edith and Rosa died in a gas chamber. Edith was canonized in 1998. One of her favorite sayings was “Far be it from me to glory except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Edith found her glory in the cross.
