Edith Stein was born Jewish, became an atheist, found Christ through philosophy, entered a Carmelite convent, and died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Her journey from brilliant phenomenologist to canonized saint—St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross—represents one of the twentieth century's most remarkable spiritual pilgrimages.
From Faith to Philosophy
Born in Breslau, Germany in 1891, Stein was the youngest of eleven children in an observant Jewish family. Intellectually precocious, she abandoned the faith of her childhood as a teenager: "I consciously decided, of my own volition, to give up praying."
At the University of Gottingen, she became a student of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. Her philosophical gifts were exceptional—she served as Husserl's assistant and produced acclaimed work on the problem of empathy. Yet academic success left her spiritually empty.
Instant Conversion Through Reading
The turning point came in 1921, during a visit to a friend's home. Unable to sleep, Stein picked up the autobiography of Teresa of Avila. She read through the night and into the dawn. "When I had finished the book," she later wrote, "I said to myself: This is the truth."
The conversion was instantaneous and total. Within months she was baptized into the Catholic Church. "My longing for truth was a single prayer," she reflected.
Called to the Cross
For the next decade, Stein taught at Catholic educational institutions and wrote extensively on the intersection of phenomenology and Thomistic philosophy. She translated Thomas Aquinas and wrote her masterwork, "Finite and Eternal Being." But the contemplative life increasingly drew her.
In 1933, as Hitler rose to power, Stein entered the Carmelite convent in Cologne, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She had written to Pope Pius XI warning about Nazi anti-Semitism—a letter that received no response. Now she offered her life for her people: "I spoke to our Savior and told Him that I knew it was His cross that was now being laid upon the Jewish people."
Holocaust Martyr Saint Testimony
In 1942, the Nazis arrested Jewish converts throughout the Netherlands in retaliation for the Dutch bishops' condemnation of Nazi racism. Edith and her sister Rosa, also a convert, were among those seized. Witnesses at the transit camp recalled her calm: "Her eyes looked out at them, sunken and full of a great pain, and yet somehow shining..."
On August 9, 1942, Edith Stein was killed at Auschwitz. She was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1998 and declared a co-patron of Europe.
Her final words to her sister as they were taken away have become her epitaph: "Come, we are going for our people."
