Morior Invictus: Death before Defeat

Today is the Memorial of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Of old, it was the proper Vigil of Saint Lawrence, but we don’t really have proper Vigils in the calendar these days. Both of these great saints suffered martyrdom: Lawrence to the Roman Empire and Teresa Benedicta to Nazi Germany.

The Vigil of Saint Lawrence is still celebrated in my monastic breviary, albeit in a very peculiar fashion. Rather than praying a proper or a common, the ordinary psalms of the day are prayed with a proper collect.

I’ll speak more of Saint Lawrence tomorrow, but for today, I’d like to give a sort of martyrology for today’s saint, who is co-patron of Europe¹.

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Virgin and Martyr.

(12 October 1891 to 09 August 1942)

Edith Stein was a prominent German Jewish philosopher. An atheist by the time she was a teenager, she was influenced by the writings of Saint Teresa of Ávila and converted to the Roman Catholic Church. She was baptized at the age of 31.

She entered Teresa’s Order and became a Discalced Carmelite nun.

With many others, she was arrested in retaliation for the Church’s public stand against Nazism and antisemitism. She was killed at Auschwitz on or about August 9, 1942.

God of our Fathers,
who brought the Martyr Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
to know your crucified Son and to imitate him even until death,
grant, through her intercession,
that the whole human race may acknowledge Christ as its Savior
and through him come to behold you for eternity.

Who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

And by the way… why is the updated Roman Martyrology still not available in English?

1. Along with Saints Benedict of Nursia, Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena.