How do we judge that a life has been well spent?

 

 We look to the intentions of the person, the contribution made to society and, most of all to the fulfillment of God's will in that life. As a child and adult, Edith Stein made love of family, friend and the whole human race a priority in her life. As a German during World War I, she wante to serve and to heal which she did as a Red Cross nurse. As a woman she wanted to fight for women's rights which she did as avery young suffragette and leader of the Catholic's Women movement in Europe. Her hunger was to learn, to understand truth and to philosophize. Her seminal work as philosopher and theologian wedded phenomenology to scholasticism and brought her wide acclaim as an innovative thinker. As a catholic, she wanted to be holy, both as a lay person and later as a contemplentive nun. As a convert to Catholicism, she wanted to be faithful to her jewish heritage, to share the fate of the jews during the Holocaust in imitation of Christ's passion, and to expiate for the human sins whichcaused the Shoah. And she did all three- to the point of martyrdom. On August 9, 1942 she was among the many who were gassed that day in a little white cottage at Auschwitz, then buried in a mass grave, later to be exhumed and cremated. By all human reckoning, Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, should have been forgotten. But this is far from the case.

 

Beatified by pope John Paul II on May1, 1987 and canonised by him on october 11, 1998, she was named one of the co-patron of Europe in 1999. This book will introduce the reader to the life and thought of this truly extraordinary woman whose legacy has much to offer those of us who are privileged to live in the third Millennium.