Faith-Love-St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

 

HOMILY WEEK 18 05 – Year I

Faith Lived Out Through Love –

Memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

(Dt 4:32-40; Ps 77; Mt 16:24-28)

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A theologian was asked what he thought would be a simple summary of faith everyone would understand. He responded with the children’s hymn, “Jesus loves me, this I know, ‘cause the bible tells me so.” That, he said, is the foundation from which all else flows.

The readings today invite us to appreciate how much God has and does love us, and to respond in two ways: obeying God by keeping God’s commandments, and following Jesus even to the cross.

In the first reading from Deuteronomy, Moses earnestly exhorts the people to remember God’s mighty deeds, how much God loved them in delivering them from slavery.  God’s plan was that they would actually be icons of God in the world and reveal God’s true self to the pagan nations around them as God’s chosen people.

Their response was to obey God by keeping God’s statutes and commandments. That would be the Ten Commandments, with special attention to the first commandment Moses points out: they were to believe in the one true God and to have no other false gods or idols in their lives. Those false gods, since time immemorial, have been the abuse of wealth, fame and power. History over and over has shown that the Israelites, from the beginning, fell for those false gods and failed to keep the commandments.

In the gospel, we see Jesus, the one sent by the Father, the Father’s only Son, who would reveal to humanity the true nature of God on the Cross – mercy, humility, compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness and total non-violence. As St Paul tells us, Jesus is the image of the unseen God, and now we are to believe in him and follow him.

To follow Jesus is to obey his commandments summarized as: love God with our whole being, love our neighbor as we love ourselves, love one another as Jesus himself has loved us, and above all, love our enemies by forgiving them from the heart.

Jesus then sets the bar even higher – we are to take up our cross and follow him. That is to accept some inconvenience and suffering in our lives the way he did – without resentment or bitterness. That makes our suffering redemptive, connected to his, and gives our suffering profound meaning and purpose.

Step 11 of the 12 Step program of A.A. captures the essence of all this teaching: “Sought to improve our conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation, seeking only the knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out.” In two words, God’s will for is faith and love – we are to believe in Jesus and love others as he loved us.

The Church honors today someone who certainly lived this gospel – St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Born Edith Stein in Breslau, Germany (present-day Poland) on October 12, 1891, the youngest child in a large Jewish family, she ultimately gave her life away out of faith in Jesus. Always seeking the truth, she studied philosophy with Edmund Husserl and received her doctorate at age 25.After reading St. Teresa of Avila’s Autobiography,shefamously said, “That is the truth.” Drawn to Catholicism, Edith was baptized in 1922 and spent the next 12 years teaching at Catholic institutions.

In 1934 she joined the Carmelites in Cologne, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. By 1938 anti-Semitism was widespread, and her prioress helped Edith flee the Nazis, escaping to the Netherlands. True to her nature, she refused to go into hiding, since the Dutch were themselves often heroic in resisting Nazism. She continued her writing and studies until August 2, 1942, when she and her sister were arrested by the Gestapo. On August 7, 987 Jews were deported to Auschwitz, and on August 9, Edith Stein, her sister and others died in the gas chambers.

Although a convert to Catholicism, Edith always acknowledged her Jewish heritage. Pope John Paul II declared at her canonization: “A young woman in search of the truth has become a saint and martyr through the silent workings of divine grace. Edith Stein’s youthful work in the field of philosophy is breathtaking. She writes, interestingly, of “empathy,” for example, something that, she points out, we find only in human beings but had almost never been noticed in philosophy. She also launched some serious early critiques of Heidegger’s highly influential Being and Time, remarking that, for all its brilliant analysis, it operates as if we are beings without bodies. She is was a living witness to faith and reason who stayed true to the very end, and warrants being remembered today. Canonized on October 11, 1998, she is co-patron of Europe with Saints Benedict, Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Sienna.

The Eucharist is a wonderful way to believe in Jesus, to love him and to obey him, for he commanded us to do this in memory of him. As Ron Rolheiser wrote, this is our one great act of fidelity throughout the ages – the one thing we have consistently done.

As we celebrate today, let us pray for the faith to not only remember how much God has loved us, but to also respond to that love by keeping the commandment to love as Jesus has loved us, and to follow him to the Cross, as did Edith Stein.