As a young girl, Edith’s intellectual gifts were quite evident, but by her teenage years, she became a self-proclaimed agnostic. Maybe some of you here can relate. Critical thinking and the desire for the truth led Edith to study philosophy. She became a pupil and assistant of the renowned philosopher Edmund Husserl. In the course of her studies Edith met several Catholics whose intellectual and spiritual lives she admired.
In 1921, while visiting friends, Edith spent an entire night reading the autobiography of the 16th century Carmelite nun St. Teresa of Avila. “When I had finished the book,” she later recalled, “I said to myself: This is the truth.” She was baptized into the Catholic Church on the first day of January, 1922. 10 years later, she entered the Carmelite Convent. 1932. Adolf Hitler is named Chancellor of Germany.
Though the Jews were the principle victims of the Nazi’s in World War II, millions of Catholics, including bishops, priests, and nuns were murdered in the concentration camps. In 1942, the Nazi’s arrested Sister Teresa Benedicta. She and her sister Rosa, also a Catholic, were transported to Auschwitz in Poland by boxcar. One week later, Sister was murdered in a gas chamber. She is celebrated as a virgin martyr.
In 1998, the german nun was canonized by the Polish Pope Saint John Paul II, who also proclaimed her a co-patroness of Europe the following year.
At her canonization, Saint John Paul said, “For a long time Edith Stein was a seeker. Her mind never tired of searching and her heart always yearned for hope. She traveled the arduous path of philosophy with passionate enthusiasm. Eventually she was rewarded: she seized the truth. Or better: she was seized by it. Then she discovered that truth had a name: Jesus Christ. From that moment on, the incarnate Word was her One and All.”
I think these words of holy Father Pope St. John Paul give us great hope. Like young Edith Stein, so many young people are searching for the truth. They want lives full of meaning—more than their parents in some respects. They are rejecting the rampant materialism and perversion and promiscuity of the sexual revolution and banal emptiness offered by the internet culture. Like so many of you, they are turning to the true, good, and beautiful of our Catholic faith.
St. John Paul named St. Theresa Benedicta co-patroness of Europe because she is a needed example for the young people of Europe, as a model to emulate in always remaining a seeker of the Truth. She, no doubt, should be invoked for our own nation, our own people, for the same purpose. That new generations may hunger for something more than the emptiness offered by the culture of death, and seek truth, goodness, and beauty in Christ for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
For all those who wander in atheism, agnosticism, those who are cynical towards Catholicism, for moral relativists, and those who reject the Faith, and all lapsed Catholics, that the Holy Spirit will help them discover the Truth of Christ.
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That the Holy Father, the Bishops and all Clergy and Religious will be shining examples of fidelity to the Truth.
That the love of Christ, the divine physician, may bring healing to the sick and comfort to all the suffering.
For the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, and all the poor souls in purgatory, for deceased priests and religious, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom. We pray.
O God, who know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.
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