Spiritual Maternity
On October 12, 1891 Edith Stein was born in Breslau. As is well-known she was a brilliant student of the philosopher, Edmund Hussserl. She was attracted by the phenomenological method and the quest for the truth of things in themselves. But secretly she sought God.
Visiting friends in the summer of 1921, she came upon a book in their library, Teresa of Avila’s Life. She read through the night and, upon finishing it, she announced simply that she had found the Truth. She was baptized in the Catholic Church on January 1, 1922. Twelve years later she entered the Cologne Carmel and took the name Teresa Benedicta a Cruce.
The liturgical calendar celebrates in the month of October the great Carmelite saints and Doctors of the Church: Therese of Lisieux (October 1st) and Teresa of Avila (October 15th). This year both feasts fall on Sunday and thus we may neglect to honor these remarkable women.
Today’s recollection of the birthday of Edith Stein allows us to pay tribute to the fecund spiritual heritage that passed from one to the other over the span of five centuries. As we struggle to discover ways of contemplation in the midst of our overly frenzied lives, we can learn in the school of Carmel, from the different, yet inspired and always truthful voices of these mothers in the Spirit.
Teresa Benedicta left Cologne and joined the Carmel at Echt in Holland to escape the growing Nazi madness. There, after the Dutch bishops’ Pastoral Letter condemning Nazi racism, she was arrested and deported with her beloved sister, Rosa. They died in Auschwitz on August 9, 1942, the day her liturgical feast is celebrated.
During her last Pentecost in Echt, Teresa Benedicta composed a Pentecost Novena in “Seven Poetic Beams of Light.” I quote the first stanza from the book Edith Stein: Selected Writings, translated by her niece Susanne Batzdorff and published by Templegate.
Who are You, sweet light that fills me
And illumines the darkness of my heart?
You guide me like a mother’s hand,
And if you let me go, I could not take
Another step.
You are the space
That surrounds and contains my being.
Without You it would sink into the abyss
Of nothingness from which You raised it into being.
You, closer to me than I to myself,
More inward than my innermost being –
And yet unreachable, untouchable,
And bursting the confines of any name:
Holy Spirit —
Eternal Love!
Heiliger Geist –
Ewige Liebe!
Thank you for reminding us of Teresa Benedicta. But I wish to quibble just a little bit with your characterization of her as “desiring God” during her studies with Husserl. In fact, she was a quite content atheist during this period. It wasn’t until her friendship with the Reinachs and her discovery of Teresa of Avila that she grew interested in God. Her conversion was fairly rapid. (She was not the only high profile convert from among Husserl’s student. Deitrich von Hildebrand preceded her.)
Alisdair MacIntyre has recently published an odd, but illuminating study on her spiritual and intellectual development which I heartily recommend.
Fr. Imbelli,
Thanks for reminding us all of Edith Stein. I first became aware of this remarkable woman through the Fr. Oesterreicher in the 1950s. I acquired the book by Alasdair MacIntyre recently, but have not had a chance to read it yet.
mlj,
I know the book MacIntyre ends with Stein’s conversion and at least one reviewer suggested he might have gone on. Is that what you also found odd? Just curious. I always enjoy reading MacIntyre.
Dear mlj,
Thanks you for your comment. I may have “packed” too much into that adverb “secretly.” I was thinking of her single-minded quest for truth, the pre-condition of her being found by the Truth of Christ.
Like Joseph Gannon, I have not yet read MacIntyre’s study, but look forward to doing so once the semester is over!
I thought some might appreciate a reference to a fine collection of essays, edited by Keith Egan, Carmelite Prayer: A Tradition for the 21st Century (Paulist: 2003). In his opening essay, “Carmel: A School of Prayer,” Egan writes: “Everywhere and always God seeks to come alive in the human heart. Carmelite contemplative prayer is a response to God’s desire to be the dynamic energy of human existence.”
Mr. Gannon,
You will have to decide for yourself what to make of MacIntyre’s book. It is at once exceedingly strange and wonderful. Here’s my hunch: this is MacIntyre’s attempt to narrate something of his own intellectual autobiography. The question he takes up–the relation between Stein’s philosophical training and devopment and her conversion–has so many obvious parallels with MacIntyre’s life; i.e., the rejection of idealism, the return to “the things themselves,” a relational anthropology. Anybody who’s met or red alot of AM’s work knows that he is nearly incapable of speaking about theology in the first person. Perhaps this is as close as we will get. These were my immediate thoughts on the book, though I’ve not given it much thought.
Another thing: It is evident that AM put an extraordinary amount of research into the book. So it is odd that he left off the book where he did. I suspect this is not the last thing we will see from him on Stein (?).
mlj says: Here’s my hunch: this is MacIntyre’s attempt to narrate something of his own intellectual autobiography.
Jean observes: Interesting discussion.
In the dear, dim past, I studied hagiography and biography in graduate school. (I think I did a paper called “Boswell and Bede” that I thought was extremely clever at the time.)
At any rate, every hagiography and biography (and even autobiography) has an “understory” which reveals as much about the author as it does about the subject.
Thanks for the notes on MacIntyre’s book. I look forward to reading it.
mlj: What’s the name of AM’s book?
mlj and Joseph: What, besides “After Justice,” is worth reading? AM wasn’t a hot topic in the philosophy departments of Columbia and the New School (where I did graduate and undergraduate work, respectively) (neither was Stein, for what it’s worth; but Robert mentions an intro text above, obviating a request). So, I’m unfamiliar with him and would appreciate a tip.
“Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue.”
Almost anything of MacIntyre can be read. After Virtue should be read and re-read and re-re-read. It is one of the great pieces of moral philosophy of the 20th century. Perhaps the greatest?
Mr. Kerr,
I have read the three books that amont to a trilogy: After Virtue, Whose Justice? Which Rationality, and Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry. Each is very worth reading.
Let me follow on Joseph’s posting. I too have read the three MacIntyre books he mentions. I haven’t yet read the Edith Stein book, though I did hear a lecture of his at Emory University about Edith Stein.
I agree that the three books Joseph mentions are all fine works. The main reservation I have about MacIntyre’s work is that he apparently thinks in terms of moral traditions, each of which has resources peculiar to it, as well as its own problems of more or lesser significance. As I see it, MacIntyre treats these traditions as competitors, none of which has much of worth to gain from any other tradition. I happen to think that even the strongest tradition (using MacIntyre’s own criteria to determine strength) is unlikely to be so well formed that its adherents have little or nothing to gain from looking for assistance from some other tradition or traditions.
Perhaps there is no less need for “ecumenical” openness on the part of adherents of a philosophical moral tradition than there need for some ecumenicism in ecclesial matters.
mlj and Joseph: thanks!
mlj: “read and re-read and re-re-read” is high praise, indeed.