Blog by-the-Sea

Lord, Make Me Grace-ful

This is the second of three posts on my reflections on virtuous topics suggested to me by other people this Lent.  The first was Lord, Make Me Faithful.

The word "graceful" is defined by Merriam-Webster online as "displaying grace in form or action : pleasing or attractive in line, proportion, or movement." The linked definition for "grace" offers several meanings, and the first of them is "a: unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification b: a virtue coming from God c: a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine grace."  Then, even as the dictionary defines the word, "graceful" could mean displaying in form or action God's divine assistance, virtue, and sanctification.

To distinguish the word here from other meanings of "graceful," such as "attractive in line or proportion," I hyphenated the word into "grace-ful," meaning full of grace.

The meanings of the Greek word translated as "grace" in the New Testament, as shown in Strong's online, include that which affords joy, sweetness, loveliness; good will, loving-kindness, favour (including God's merciful kindness by which He turns souls to Christ and strengthens them in faith and the exercise of virtues); and the spiritual condition of someone who is governed by the power of divine grace.

St. John of the Cross wrote of grace as one of the means of God's presence, mentioned in a post a few weeks ago titled Nature, Contemplation and the Beauty of God:

In The Spiritual Canticle, 11:3, St. John of the Cross described three forms of God’s presence:

(1)    Presence by essence is God’s presence in all creatures.  “With this presence he gives them life and being.  Should this essential presence be lacking to them, they would all be annihilated.”

(2)    Presence by grace is God’s presence indwelling the faithful who do not fall into mortal sin.

(3)    Presence by love is God’s presence to devout souls in ways that refresh, delight and gladden them.

That earlier post talked about God's presence by essence, as He is omnipotent, omnipresent, and by Him all things hold together.  This post talks about God's presence as He indwells us by grace.  In it, according to St. John of the Cross, God "abides in the soul, pleased and satisfied with it."

Holy Week turns our thoughts of grace to Easter.  The price of God's grace was the Crucifixion.  It is in taking up our crosses and following Him that we become more like Him, acting in grace toward others: "displaying grace in form or action," to apply the Merriam-Webster definition of "graceful."  We reflect upon that Trinitarian grace that indwells us, and ponder the love of Christ who went to the cross to give us that grace.

St. Teresa of Avila also wrote about God's indwelling us by grace in Interior Castle, and St. Edith Stein drew from both St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila in her chapter on the presence of God in The Science of the Cross.  Applying what they wrote, St. Edith Stein said, "The indwelling by grace is possible only in personal-spiritual beings, for it requires the free acceptance of sanctifying grace by the recipient."  We can be grace-ful only by the free acceptance of sanctifying grace.  This is seen in the baptism of infants, where the parents freely accept God's grace for their child, and the child later ratifies that free acceptance by a life of faith.  The "life of grace and virtue," she says, is an effect of God's life within us. 

The entire Trinity indwells us in grace, according to those three saints. The love within the Trinity, as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit love each other in eternity, thus exists within our souls.

We might think of that indwelling by grace particularly as it relates to the union with God in prayer.  However, we should think too of how that indwelling works in our "lives of grace and virtue," as St. Edith Stein put it.  We live grace-ful lives in relationship with others when we freely accept God's sanctifying grace toward us and then, in turn, show grace freely offered to those around us.

Jesus showed grace to the thief on the cross.  He showed grace by dying for us while we were sinners.  He showed grace by appearing to His disciples in the Resurrection, even to Thomas who doubted, and to Peter who had denied Him.  Grace shows kindness to those who have not shown kindness to us.

St. John of the Cross' life and letters provide an example of how that grace can be lived out in our lives with those around us.  During his suffering later in life, he wrote to a Carmelite nun that she should not let what was happening to him cause her grief, for it did not cause any for him (Letter 26).  "Think nothing else but that God ordains all, and where there is no love, put love, and you will draw out love," he wrote to her.  The love that we can be sure to draw out is God's love.  He did not mean to suggest that we would get other people to like us better if we try to treat them well -- that may happen, or it may not, and it was not his point.  For love given in grace is not given in neediness for something in return from the one loved. 

St. John gave love where there was no love, and was thus the source of the light of Christ in the lives of others in their, and his, dark nights of the soul.  He was Christ's grace for them, full of grace, in that he gave love drawing from God's presence indwelling him in grace.  He sought thereby to gain a fuller indwelling of God's grace and to draw out more of God's love within himself. 

We too are grace-ful when we live toward others in grace, following Christ's example of love, where there is or is not love among people, where other people do or do not love us, knowing that the love of the Trinity is within the innermost part of our being, and that we will draw out love from the Trinity as we live grace-ful lives.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

August 9 is the memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (her name as a Discalced Carmelite nun), also known as St. Edith Stein. 

This year, it seems particularly touching to me that her memorial falls on the day before the funeral Mass of Cardinal Lustiger.  Both of them were European Jews who lived during the Holocaust of World War II.  Both became very influential Catholics who never lost their sense of their Jewish identity and their love for the Jewish people.  St. Edith was born in Breslau, which was then part of Germany and now is part of Poland.  She died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau, probably on August 9, 1942.  Cardinal Lustiger's mother was a Polish Jew living in France, who died at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943.

This blog has a biographical post about St. Edith Stein and several quotations from her in the category Carmelites: St. Edith Stein. 

One of the major sources of biographical information used in that biographical post is the 2005 publication of the biography Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, by Teresia Renata Posselt, O.C.D., with extensive editing and notes from more recent historical research by Susanne M. Batzdorff, Josephine Koeppel and John Sullivan (ICS Publications).  Teresia Renata Posselt was the Novice Director and then Mother Prioress of the Cologne Carmel when Edith Stein was there.  One of the editors of America Magazine devoted an editorial to his review of the book earlier this year, most of which was included in the Spring, 2007 news page of the ICS Publications website.  ICS also publishes English translations of a number of books by St. Edith Stein.

More online information about the saint is available at carmelite.com. There is also a Vatican biography online.

Photo: Picture of St. Edith Stein in the chapel at El Carmelo Retreat House, taken by me at night, October, 2006.

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

August 9 is the memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein).

Edith Stein was born on October 12, 1891 in Breslau, Germany, the youngest of seven children.  Her father, Siegfried Stein, was an observant Jew who owned a lumber business.  Her mother, Auguste, lived by careful Jewish observance.  Edith was in fact her eleventh child, but four of Auguste's and Siegfried's children had died in the early days of their marriage, so that there were seven when Edith was born.

Edith was less than two years old in July, 1893, when her father died of sunstroke.  Her mother took over the struggling lumberyard and was successful in the work.  Auguste took Edith’s oldest brother into the business, while Edith’s oldest sister, Else, took care of the youngest children.  The school the children attended provided a religious education, but of poor quality.  Edith later wrote that during her teens, she gave up praying until she was 21 years old.  Some people have construed that to mean that she became an atheist, although others think it more likely that she simply became indifferent to her Jewish faith for a time.

She then attended two years at the university in Breslau and then went to the University of Gottingen.  In 1905, Edmund Husserl arrived at Gottingen, and other phenomenologists followed, beginning the “Gottingen School” of phenomenology.  Several of the phenomenologist philosophers were returning to their faith, and Edith began to pray again.  Her longing for truth, she later said, was “a prayer in itself”.

In 1916, Husserl was called to a full professorship at the University of Freiberg.  Edith, who had received her doctorate from him summa cum laude, became his assistant.  She spent her time organizing Husserl’s manuscripts and notes, while longing to do her own work.  After 1-1/2 years, she resigned, but maintained her academic friendships.

Around the age of 30, she read The Life of St. Teresa of Avila and was captivated by it.  She began to study the Catechism and a missal.  Only after she had mastered those, she went into a Catholic church for the first time and asked a priest to baptize her.  This began a theological discussion that covered the range of Catholic doctrine.  He soon scheduled her baptism for New Year’s Day, 1922.

Edith wanted to quickly enter a religious order, but her spiritual advisor thought better of that.  Yet she was given a job teaching at the Dominican convent school of St. Magdalena in Speyer.  There, she taught German classes and later gave instruction in Latin, English and French.  She lived in the convent, ate convent food, received a modest salary, and studied the works of St. Thomas Aquinas.  She often knelt in prayer for hours at a time alone in addition to attending the services.  She began the work of translating, from Latin to German, St. Thomas’s Disputed Questions on Truth.

Her friend, Father Erich Przywara, S.J., suggested to her the Benedictine Abbey of Beuron, where she spent Holy Week and Easter 1928.  Rising usually before 4:00 a.m., she prayed the Office daily and continued to spend hours alone in prayer and meditation.

Her translation of St. Thomas’s work appeared in two volumes in 1931 and 1932, in current German, together with notes that described St. Thomas’s terms in a way that made his thinking understandable from the perspective of contemporary phenomenology.  She was becoming known for her work.  She began to help others who wanted to know more about Christianity, and became godmother to several of her Jewish friends who were baptized.  Her sister Rosa, who was then taking care of their aging mother, prayed and waited until their mother’s death before she was baptized.

In early 1932, Edith accepted a position on the faculty of the German Institute for Scientific Pedagogy at Munster, where she lived in simplicity in the Collegium Marianum, being watched as her reputation was increasingly well known for her knowledge of both Thomist philosophy and phenomenology.

The Third Reich was established in early 1933.  Soon, news reports began to filter in about the oppression of the Jewish people.  Edith began to see, as she said, “that God had put a heavy hand upon His people, and that the fate of this people would also be mine.”  She believed it was the Cross that was being placed on them, and that most of them did not understand it, and that she would willingly take it up “in the name of all.”  She wrote to the Pope warning him that Catholics would also be persecuted.  She received in response a blessing, and she wondered if he thought about her letter later.

Before long, Jews were no longer able to lecture.  No longer able to help others through that work, she was finally allowed to become a Discalced Carmelite nun, her longtime wish.  Her Jewish mother wept at the news, and did not write to her for some time before finally resuming their correspondence.  On October 2, 1933, she accompanied her mother to the synagogue for the last time, and two days later, she entered the Cologne Carmel.  As a nun, she took the name of Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

Living as a Discalced Carmelite nun in enclosure, she expected to give up her scholarly writing, but she was soon encouraged to resume her writing.  Although she was cut off from most of the news of events outside of the convent, she was kept informed of Jewish affairs.  She believed that she had been called to suffer for her people, as a mission to bring many home.  By 1936, she completed reworking Potency and Act into her master work of Finite and Eternal Being, and her life’s work was done.  She continued to write, including her book about St. John of the Cross, titled The Science of the Cross. That year, her mother died, and her sister Rosa was baptized.

As Hitler was elected in 1938, Edith became outspoken against the National Socialists.  In November of that year, as synagogues were burned, she had to leave her convent for one in the Netherlands.  By late 1941, the prioress ordered Edith’s letters burned to protect against their revealing her new location.  Holland was becoming too dangerous, and a move to Switzerland was proposed for both Edith and Rosa, who had become a Third Order Carmelite.  The move was not approved by the civil authorities in time.

By July 1942, the deportation of Jewish families to Polish concentration camps had begun, except for Jews who had been part of Christian communities before January 1941. Dutch bishops decided that a joint letter of protest against the deportations would be read in all Catholic parishes in Holland on Sunday, July 26, 1942. 

The following Sunday, the government reacted.  Without warning, all non-Aryan members of Dutch religious communities were arrested, including Edith and Rosa.  They spent August 5 to August 6 or 7 at Westerbork, where 1200 Jewish Catholics were interned.  Afterward, they were taken to Auschwitz, where they died in the gas chambers, probably on August 9, 1942.

She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on May 1, 1987.  At the time, some of her Jewish family members would have preferred that she be remembered as one of many Jews who died in the concentration camps.  She was canonized October 1, 1998.

Bibliography:

Herbstrith, Waltraud, Edith Stein: a Biography, Ignatius Press, 1985.

Posselt, Teresia Renata, O.C.D., Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite (ed. Susanne M. Batzdorff, Josephine Koeppel and John Sulllivan, with text, commentary, and explanatory notes), ICS Publications, 2005.

Stein, Edith, Selected Writings, with Comments and Reminiscences by her neice Susanne M. Batzdorff, Templegate, 1990.

My next duty

"So I will go to the altar of God [Ps. 43:4].  Here it is not a question of my minute, petty affairs, but of the great offering of reconciliation.  I may participate in that, purify myself and be made happy, and lay myself with all my doings and troubles along with the sacrifice on the altar.  And when the Lord comes to me then in Holy Communion, then I may ask him, "Lord, what do you want of me?" (St. Teresa) And after quiet dialogue, I will go to that which I see as my next duty." 

- St. Edith Stein, "Ways to Interior Silence", from Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, ICS Publications.

Photo:  Chapelle St. Joseph, Le Mans, France.

I stood with you beneath the Cross

"Today
I stood with you
beneath the Cross,
And felt
more closely
than I ever did
That you
became
our mother
only there."

- St. Edith Stein, from "Standing with you at the Cross", Good Friday, 1938, in Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, ICS Publications.

Picture: Station 12, Stations of the Cross, by Max DeMoss, Church of the Nativity, Rancho Santa Fe, California.

About St. Thomas, They Said . . .

G.K. Chesterton:

"Nobody, as I have said, says that St. Francis drew his primary inspiration from Ovid.  It would be every bit as false to say that Aquinas drew his primary inspiration from Aristotle.  The whole lesson of his life, especially of his early life, the whole story of his childhood and choice of a career, shows that he was supremely and directly devotional; and that he passionately loved the Catholic worship long before he found he had to fight for it."

- G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox, Image/Doubleday, pg. 15.

St. Edith Stein:

"But no matter whether one regards philosophy as a purely natural science -- that is, a discipline resting exclusively on reason and natural experience as its sources of knowledge -- or whether one grants to it the right to draw additional light from revelation, there can be no doubt that the philosophy of the great medieval doctors of the church grew to its maturity in the shadow of Christian doctrine.  In revealed truth it saw the measure of all truth, and it made every effort to resolve those problems which were posed by Christian dogmatics . . . .

In this matter modern philosophy has cut itself off completely from the medieval tradition.  The question therefore arises whether there is still common ground for constructive intellectual effort between such heterogeneous ways of thinking.  St. Thomas Aquinas himself answers this question strongly in the affirmative.  His own relationship to Aristotelian and Arabian philosophy presents sufficient evidence that he believed in the possibility of a philosophy founded on pure natural reason, unaided by revealed truth.  He clearly demonstrates this conviction in his Summa contra gentiles, commonly known as his philosophical Summa.  Here he points out that in discussions with pagans and Moslems, the Christian thinker cannot refer to a common faith based on the Scriptures (a common ground which in the case of the Jews is provided by the Old Testament and in the case of heretics by the New Testament).  It therefore becomes necessary, he says, 'to have recourse to that natural reason to which all must assent.'  There are, according to st. Thomas, two ways of truth, and though natural reason cannot attain to the highest and ultimate truth, it can nevertheless ascend to a stage of knowledge which enables it to reject certain errors of judgment and to recognize the accord between the naturally demonstrable truths of reason and the truths of faith."

St. Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, translated by Kurt F. Reinhardt, ICS Publications, 2002, pp. 12-13.

Pope Benedict XVI:

"The universal people -- the Church -- is formed through the power of the Holy Spirit as the bearer of the New Covenant.  Just as the covenant people is extended and becomes universal, so too the "law" (the contents of the covenant) takes on a new form.  What had been only scaffolding and preparation, as it were, can now be taken away.  The core of the law is disclosed in the flame of the Holy Spirit, in which God's own essence -- love -- is represented.  Thus Thomas Aquinas could say: The new law is the grace of the Holy Spirit (Summa Theologica I-II, q. 106, resp.).  Forms of worship and juridical orders, which are necessarily and always particular, recede in importance, and what is truly universal emerges -- grace, which is the love poured out into our hearts by the Spirit (Rom 5:5)."

- Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), On the Way to Jesus Christ, Ignatius Press, 2005, pp. 134-135.