Who Asked You to Be Faithful?

©2010, Randall A. Beeler

As far back as March 26th, 1939, Edith had addressed a petition to her Prioress on a used postcard (for motives of monastic poverty) asking permission to offer herself to Jesus in expiation, that the sway of Antichrist be broken and peace ensue.

"I am asking this, today, because it is already the twelfth hour. I know I am nothing, but Jesus wills it and He will call many more to the same sacrifice in these days."

The manuscript of her book, Science of the Cross, lay on her table; it would never be finished, because the next day [Aug. 1, 1942], the Gestapo would come to drag her away from the convent.

(from the Novena to Saint Edith Stein, Day 1)

Saint Teresa Benedicta a Cruce (Saint Edith Stein) offers herself to Jesus in expiation for the spirit of Antichrist that had swept over the age in which she lived.

But who asked her to? the skeptic might reply. Isn't this offer audacious? Isn't she being anti-Christian—by trying to be Christ in place of Christ?

I love Saint Teresa Benedicta (yes, I friended her on Facebook). No, I don't worship her (for, truly, she is not the Christ). But I do read her writings. I say a novena every year leading up to her Feast Day (August 9). I do my stumbling-best to pattern my life after hers. She is the primary reason I am entering Phase I of a Lay Carmelite vocation.

But isn't this all just a vain, exercise of subjectivity and sentiment? Because she "appeals" to me, I wrap my own interests around her like anyone would embrace a hobby, right? So why conform my life to that of this Saint? Who asked me to?

I don't "know" the answer to that like I know, say, the results of my blood test. Yet I believe Who leads me to pattern my devotion to Saint Edith's. And I know that such is reasonable to do.

After all, did I draw my blood? Did I run the test? Did I scale the results into numbers? Not me. But is it not reasonable for me to believe my GP when his office reports the results? Thus far, he's not given me a reason to question those numbers or his assessment. In such a situation, everything about my knowing is devoted to the supreme choice to believe.

I have ample reason to believe that Saint Teresa Benedicta is one of God's means for me to love Christ.

Saint Teresa had ample reason to believe where the Nazi domination of the Continent would lead her and her people. She devoted ample prayer—indeed, her very life in a Carmelite cloister—to responding to God's will amid the encroachment of darkness upon Europe. Furthermore, she put her discernment under the authority of God's chosen instruments—that of her Superior and that of the Bishops of Holland (whose well-intentioned protest against the Nazi deportation of Jews indirectly led to her martyrdom at Auschwitz):

The Catholic Bishops of Holland had issued a joint protest against the deportation of Dutch Jews by the Nazis, which they instructed was to be read out at every Mass in all churches on Sunday, July 26th [1942] … On August 2nd, Christians of Jewish origin of every religious community in the country were arrested and carried off by the Gestapo … two S.S. men turned up at the Carmel of Echt to carry off our Saint Edith and her sister, Rosa, in a police-van. (from the Novena to Saint Edith Stein, Day 2)

Honestly, I pattern my devotion along the life of Saint Edith because I don't die to myself very well. Ask my wife. Ask my kids. Ask my students and coworkers. Ask my mom. (Well, okay, you don't have to ask all of them.) My intentions (on a darn good day) might reach a level of nobility; but my execution is, well, like those dudes on the X-Games who flip a board in a middle of a full pipe.

Ouch.

What with the gloomy news from Kenya this morning and the contemporary sway of antichrist in our age, I—and you—may one day be called to a martyrdom like Saint Teresa's. But that possibility, at least for me, is shrouded in the fog of my limited perspective. Dang, I'd love to be a visionary. But I'm not.

What I can be occasionally made to see (by the tremendous efforts of Heaven and a nearly exhausted Guardian Angel) is that, today, right in front of me, Christ calls me to be a living expiation on behalf of my people—my wife, my kids, my students, my coworkers, my mom, my congressman, Obama, why even you …

It's hard to remember that Saint Edith saw things no more clearly. She was dying for her Superior, her Bishops, her sisters, her people, the Nazi's, why even me, whom she could not possibly see.

So, Who asked her? Christ asked her. From His Cross, from which He had a view that spanned the past, the present, the future, and scanned Israel, Rome, Europe, Kenya, America, why even me and you …