Universalis: Today

Universalis

Saturday 9 August 2008
Saturday of week 18 of the year
or Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), Virgin, Martyr

[About today]

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Tomorrow: 19th Sunday of the year
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Let us listen for the Lord’s voice, so that we can reach his place of rest.

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (1891 - 1942): She was born into a practising Jewish family. She had a distinguished career as a philosopher and received a doctorate at the University of Freiburg, but her academic career was impeded because she was a woman.
Reading the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Ávila brought about her conversion to Catholicism and she was baptized on 1 January 1922. She taught at a Dominican girls’ school and studied Catholic philosophy. She became a lecturer at the Institute for Pedagogy at Münster but was thrown out of her post in 1933 as a result of the Nazi régime’s anti-Semitic legislation.
She entered a Carmelite monastery in Cologne and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Her order moved her to the Netherlands to keep her safe from the growing Nazi threat. While a Carmelite she wrote an important philosophical book, seeking to combine the phenomenology of her former teacher Edmund Husserl with the philosophy of Aquinas, and she also wrote on St John of the Cross.
On 20 July 1942 the Dutch Bishops’ Conference had a statement read in all churches condemning Nazi racism. In retaliation the authorities ordered the arrest of all Jewish converts to Christianity. Teresa Benedicta was taken to Auschwitz and killed on 9 August 1942.
See also the article in Wikipedia, and also an interesting article entitled Edith Stein, Apostate Saint (if the link still survives) on the issues raised for Jews and Christians by Saint Teresa Benedicta’s life and death.

Mid-morning reading (Terce)	Deuteronomy 8:5 - 6 ©
The Lord your God was training you as a man trains his child. Keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and so follow his ways and reverence him.

Noon reading (Sext)	1 Kings 2:2 - 3 ©
Be strong and show yourself a man. Observe the injunctions of the Lord your God, following his ways and keeping his laws, his commandments, his customs and his decrees, so that you may be successful in all you do and undertake.

Afternoon reading (None)	Jeremiah 6:16 ©
Put yourselves on the ways of long ago and enquire about the ancient paths: which was the good way? Take it then, and you shall find rest.

August 2008
Wed 20	Saint Bernard, Abbot, Doctor
Thu 21	Saint Pius X, Pope
Fri 22	Our Lady, Mother and Queen
Sat 23	Saturday of week 20 of the year or Saint Rose of Lima, Virgin
Sun 24	21st Sunday of the year
Mon 25	Monday of week 21 of the year or Saint Louis or Saint Joseph of Calasanz, priest
Tue 26
Wed 27	Saint Monica
Thu 28	Saint Augustine, Bishop, Doctor

Calendar used: General Calendar

Scripture readings taken from the Jerusalem Bible, published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. For on-line information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Internet web site at http://www.randomhouse.com.

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