Stein, Edith (Edith Stein)

(12.10.1891 - 9.09.1942)
Modest plaque did not immediately notice the abundance of windows among. In place of commercial buildings was before the war Carmelite Monastery. Street was destroyed by bombing.
The plaque is puzzling conjugation of the Jewish menorah, menorahs, and the Catholic cross, twined with barbed wire. Text placed between the symbols, notifies that lived in the convent nun Edith Stein.
. Two years ago, Pope John Paul II has ranked Edith Stein a saint.
. The current head of the Catholic Church declared more saints of the Christian martyrs, saints, teachers, than his predecessors in minuyuschem century together - Edith Stein was a 280-I
. But Edith Stein - an exception among these brothers and sisters in faith. She - a Jew.
Edith was born in 1891 in Breslau. The traditional family, commercial business - selling firewood. From childhood train of thought Edith not merged with that is the subject of reflection the rest of the relatives. A long time looking at the fire in the stove, smoke, flowing from pipes in the sky, it did not compare the pine wood with birch and did not ask about the prices per cubic meter.
Later - and pretty early - it turned out that she is looking for absolute truth.
Houses were lit Shabbat candles, but Edith was sitting stranger at the banquet table. No, she did not abandon the faith of fathers - she gave up the faith in general: religion, which she was known, did not lead to the truth of what she wanted to find.
After school she chooses career, which frightened the perfect impractical - philosophy. But for her philosophical research is connected with pragmatic motives: no comprehension of the essence of phenomena and objects she has no idea of its real existence. Her dedication and ability did not go unnoticed. She becomes one of the closest students of Edmund Husserl - its creation, phenomenology, carries away the many prominent followers.
. In Husserl's phenomenology, the science of "sound principles of consciousness" which chose as its subject the "realm of pure truth," "a priori meanings," Edith Stein opens desired approach to the understanding of world order
. But the human suffering, conceptualize it as a metaphysical category, break into the everyday life: the First World, and Edith defer study of philosophy - is a sister in the military hospitals, barracks typhoid
. Once, once in Frankfurt, she walks into the cathedral, sees a huge empty space of the temple is a woman, street vendor, kneels and begins to pray. Treatment of a single man to God invades the constant reflection of Edith Stein, the search for absolute truth as exhaustive and irrefutable knowledge. Hope to find the truth, finding the true faith and her God, no longer leaves her
She has found this true faith, when one night read the autobiography of St. Teresa. Spanish nun Teresa of Avila, . lived in the XVI century, . in the difficult struggle established a monastery of Carmelite Order updated, . strict rules, . - The deep interior prayer walked hand with the tireless and heavy apostolate, . translating into reality the covenants Sermon,
.
Date of Baptism Edith coincides with the celebration of circumcision of the Lord. On the day when the newborn Jesus was adopted into the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Edith Stein, a Jew, was adopted into the faith of Christ.
. In the quest for absolute she would like the sacrament of baptism to bring in a whole their faith, scholarly works and the practical lessons
. She now thinks his philosophical works as a prayer: to serve God and people. God is in it strictly phenomenological philosophy: He is the Truth. "The only alternative: Set in Europe or return to nadmirnomu, nadchelovecheskomu source of all - to God". Faith for her - not an annex to the life of a pious Catholic, but life itself and life. Edith Stein became a nun in an old (three hundred years of history) Carmelite convent in Cologne. Now her name - Teresa Benedict of the Cross.
Parish National Socialists to power in 1933 masks a holy date - 1900 years of earthly death of Jesus Christ. Carmelite nun receives an invitation to the celebrations in Rome, but not coming: waiting for the Vatican clearly defined his attitude to Nazism. Nazism, in turn, every day demanding the nun makes thinking about your own people - Jews and his own Jewishness.
"I discovered that God has put a heavy hand of their people and that the fate of this nation as my". She wrote to Pope Pius XI, urging him to speak out in defense of the Jewish people, and receives in response to a personal letter with a blessing. August 2, 1942 at the gates of the monastery there are two SS. They deliver sisters Stein (the elder, Rose, also a Catholic) to the assembly point. August 7 from here are sent to Auschwitz 987 Jews. The train arrives at the destination station 9-th. All the party directly from the cars are in the gas chambers. Miraculously surviving eyewitnesses remember two unusual in that column of women in monastic garb.
The legendary founder of the Order of Carmelites consider the Prophet Elijah. It is known, was carried to heaven in a chariot of fire. Edith Stein went to the sky with smoke Auschwitz crematorium.
When the SS took them from the convent, she told her sister: "Come on, we go for our people".
Well-known theologian then formulated: "It has remained a Jew and became a Christian". In the right-looking, prosperous formulation concentrated blast percentage of the tragic contradictions of two millennia.
In Cologne, a monument of Edith Stein. It depicts three figures on it - in three persons. Seated girl, think about the future path. A female scientist with a split - physically, on the sculpture - head: it is not yet able sopryach sought the truth of science with the truth of faith. Finally, a nun, stepped onto the narrow rocky trail. But the path on which it is, rests in a pile of shoes - shoes, women shoes and children's shoes: men took off their feet before entering the gas chamber. All back to square one:
Decision of the Pope classify Edith Stein a saint unanimous enthusiasm did not lead. She died only because they were Jewish. And for other Jews, she - one of the six million Holocaust Gone. As for other Christians who do not see in her tragic death is a Christian martyrdom. Critics suspect the Pope of the church in an attempt to retroactively redeem the position of Rome in the Holocaust. A passionate zealots - in the over-an extension of holiness. But in the Pope's decision is something that the above, important calculations and logic in everyday use, all sorts of practical considerations.
Passers-by on the pedestrian street in a hurry by generous windows, hardly anyone pays attention to a modest plaque, in the symbols and text which embodies the pain and hope in our history.