Looking for a deep spiritual and theological read?

This is not the typical spiritual reading book upon which to take leisure. The Science of the Cross by St. Benedicta of the Cross, a.k.a. Edith Stein, asks the question: Does salvation history have an effect on our lives? It seems that the struggle for union with God leaves a distaste for the journey and a feeling of being disconnected from the great salvific work of God. Her entire work responds to the question, showing a path to which all are invited but upon which few tread.

Born into a Jewish family in Germany on October 12, 1891, Edith was a precociously astute child. In adolescence, she gave up any affiliation with religion, primarily motivated by her desire to be coherent with her doubts and convictions. She also rejected traditional schooling due to frustrations with the limitations of pedagogy. With a thirst for knowledge and propensity to search for truth, she turned to the study of philosophy, a unique subject for women in her era, at the University of Breslau.

Eventually, moved by the testimony of her friend’s faith at the loss of her husband and provoked by St. Teresa of Avila’s Autobiography, which she read in 1921, Edith was baptized into the Catholic faith on January 1, 1922. She spent the next ten years of her life as a lay Catholic woman in service of the faith, primarily through teaching. By 1933, Nazi propaganda and persecution against Jews made it impossible to move forward in employment or in publication of her works. She entered the Carmel in Cologne on October 14, 1933, where she received her formation up until 1938. Due to escalating tensions against Jews, she transferred to the convent in Echt, Holland, where she remained until 1942.

Anticipating the centenary of St. John of the Cross’ birth in 1542, Edith had received the task from her superior in early 1941 to contribute to the literary part of the celebrations. While she may not have put the polishing touches on it, the content of her contribution was fully intact when Edith was arrested on August 2, 1942, then quickly transferred to Auschwitz, where it is believed that she died seven days later on August 9. The Science of the Cross sat upon her desk. It would be her first posthumously published work. Thanks to the Carmelite sisters’ efforts to preserve it and the Dutch provincial salvaging much of her works after a bombing, the work was able to be published in 1950, her life and death being a testimony to her own journey through the cross.

Throughout the work, her conviction is clear: The human person is invited to enter a path which inevitably traverses the road Christ walked, a way of the cross. Beware, those who attempt to romanticize the journey. Her brother in Christ and in the Carmelite order, John of the Cross, was very clear. It traverses through darkness, suffering, and a terrible night before the fullness of the resurrection is attained and ultimately, a “new incarnation” is brought about in union with the Most Holy Trinity. Edith integrates all of John’s works into a coherent, holistic and realistic vision of this journey as a means to motivate and encourage others to embrace the full living of their vocation to union with God.

God bless,

Jennifer Ristine