“For whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).
Today we celebrate the feast of Edith Stein, otherwise known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross: a Jewish German who as a young student became a convert to Christianity in the 1920s, and then in the 1930s, under the influence of the writings of St. Teresa of Avila, entered the Carmelite order as a religious sister. In the face of the antisemitic laws introduced by the Nazi party, and racial violence directed against Jews, the order moved her to a Carmelite community in the Netherlands for her own safety.
The Germans occupied that country in 1940, during the Second World War; and in 1942, in response to the Dutch bishops’ pastoral letter denouncing Nazi racial violence, Jewish Christians in the Netherlands were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau for extermination. That’s a great example of the exercise of cynical and malevolent spite, if you can imagine that. Sr. Teresa Benedicta was deported and killed there, along with others including her sister Rosa, on August 9, 1942. In 1998, she was canonized by Pope John Paul II.
It’s an evocative story: think in terms of cinema of the movie Schindler’s List or (more current, more menacing, and actually set at Auschwitz) the 2024 film The Zone of Interest. The genocidal tyranny of German Fascism remains the epitome of modern evil, though other murderous authoritarian regimes during or since that time have done as much. In short, when we want to summon up the reality of evil, we still go to the Nazis.
But before she became a Carmelite or was murdered by the Hitler regime, Edith Stein was a graduate student: a full-bore intellectual in the great tradition of the German universities. She was a student of the philosopher Edmund Husserl, and under his guidance wrote a doctoral thesis on empathy. Husserl was a phenomenologist, who was interested in the investigation of subjective experience (“how does the external world appear to me”), looking for the common foundations of knowledge in our individual experience apart from any preexisting theoretical framework.
But Husserl didn’t think that a focus on subjective experience meant that “you have your truth and I have mine.” A key consideration for phenomenologists was how, in a world of subjective experience, to hold on to objectivity: that is, reality and the truth of things. You might say it’s a kind of Joe Friday philosophy: “Just the facts, ma’am.”
For Stein, empathy was the way in which we attain a shared understanding between persons: a kind of objectivity. Empathy touches the heart and creates, not only an openness to others but an openness to God. Carmelites are known for mystical experience and for the desire to draw near to God. For Stein the philosopher, and for Sr. Teresa Benedicta the monastic, the search had a single goal, and that was God.
Let’s bring this back, however, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and to our reading from St. Paul. As the Apostle writes, “For whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). If we are looking for a picture of weakness, and deep vulnerability, then the arrival of the victims at the end of the line in the extermination camp would be a prime example: demoralized, brutalized, under threat of death. The rail line led into the station, but it did not lead out. But for St. Paul, appearances can be deceiving, as it is precisely at these points of weakness, of brutalization, demoralization, and of death, that we are most strong, most in touch with God.
For Paul, this is a hard truth, but a truth that is shown forth in the cross of Christ. As he writes elsewhere, the weakness and foolishness of the cross is God’s truth for us (1 Cor. 2:2). It’s the way that God forgives our sins and mends the world, and our own hearts as well. It is the supreme sign of God’s love for us and for our fellow creatures. It is the sign that in a world of dead ends, at the end of the line, there is hope for new life, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Here’s a quote from Stein’s writings, “The innermost essence of love is self-offering. The entryway to all things is the Cross.” Jesus’ self-offering for us shows us a better way. The darkness of evil cannot overcome the light that flows from the cross. On this day of commemoration, in the face of the evils of our own time, may we never forget the truth of God that Edith Stein lived out in her own life.