Woman Warrior of the Month Column

A few weeks ago, I was at the Campus Catholic Center at my university chatting a with a friend about a book I had lent her -- Led by Faith by Immaculée Ilibagiza. "This book is so incredible, Edith. Immaculée is such a woman warrior. I would give her a bow and arrow!" I replied, "Great, I am so glad you liked it!! I hope that I have the courage to be a woman warrior one day!" And she said, "Oh Edith, in my book, you already are. I'd give you a bow and arrow any day!" Which blew me away, because indeed my friend is one of the most luminous, strong, and beautiful women I know!!

But this conversation gave rise to a thought -- Have you ever read a story about a woman -- maybe a story of one of the saints, or woman in our contemporary time -- and were just amazed at her strength and courage? These are the women who have endured life's most difficult trials, or women who are paving the way for us to embrace an authentic femininity, or women who just exemplify something so beautiful, we just don't know how to put it into words.

Well, I am introducing to you our monthly (or maybe even weekly) posts featuring just such a woman. Now, we've done it in little ways all along, with posts about Adrienne Von Speyr, Sophie Scholl, and St. Agatha just to name a few. But I think we need to dedicate something on this blog regularly, because we need to know about women who demonstrate true femininity in order to become those women. After all, doesn't virtue come first through imitation? (Thank you, Aristotle.)

Our first Woman Warrior column will debut on June 1, so stay tuned! And readers, please give us your thoughts! Tell us about the women warriors you have touched your life!

Woman Warrior of the Month: St. Monica, Part 2

(I wanted to title the post "Locksmiths are expensive, or: My goodness, I wish I had St. Monica's Patience." but I went with the more prosaic title above. It's probably for the best. Anyway...)

Continuing our Women Warrior of the Month series, in Septmeber we are honoring St. Monica. And I certainly was glad for her advocacy last night.

You see...I've been borrowing a friend's car while she's home taking care of her family. And I had to pop out to the store to get some munchies for a dinner party Julian and I are going to tonight. I was lazy. I drove. And then I locked myself out of the car.

3 hours, 15 calls to the locksmith, and $179.00 later, I was heading home. Instead of checking off all the things on my to-do list (including writing an eloquent and delightful post about St. Monica) I had sat on the street for so long the ants and crickets thought I was part of the scenery (and welcomed me heartily to the neighborhood).

But as I sat there, remarkably, I didn't fret. $179 (that I could have used for the furniture that my bed room so badly needs!) wasted--but what could I do; it's only money. 3 hours flying by, but what could I do; it's only time. I said a prayer for St. Monica--ever patient--and sat and waited.

I know. Waiting for a locksmith is nothing compared to waiting for your son to quit galavanting around, stealing pears, courting women, and picking new philosophies every few years. But who could possibly endure that trial without the grace to endure every little matter that comes in front of you in day to day life. St. Monica had both a difficult marriage, and a difficult motherhood, but she endured it all with patience, and her time of waiting bore great fruit.

St. Monica: thanks for helping me to be patient last night. Give me the courage to face each new obstacle with patience and prudence, and to both look for God's will,a nd hope for the time when I shall know why each trial has been given to me.


St. Monica, pray for us!

Woman Warrior of the Month: Catherine Doherty

This month's woman warrior is a contemporary of Dorothy Day and a Russian woman who lived to witness the Russian revolution, and both World Wars. Catherine Kolyschkine Doherty was born in 1896 to a devout, Russian aristocratic family. According to her biography,

She was a pioneer among North American Catholic laity in implementing the Church’s social doctrine in the face of Communism, economic and racial injustice, secularism and apathy. At the same time she insisted that those engaged in social action be rooted in prayer and that they incarnate their faith into every aspect of ordinary life. Catherine was a bridge between the Christian East and West. Baptized Orthodox and later becoming Roman Catholic, her spiritual heritage drew upon both of these traditions.

She married quite young and fled with her husband to Canada. She had a child and suffered under tremendous poverty, which ultimately destroyed her marriage and gave her cause for an annulment. A woman warrior indeed who suffers so much.

But she allowed God's grace to envelop her life. She became wealthy once again, but sold her possessions (after providing for her son, of course) and chose to live a life of poverty with the poor, much like Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. She began an apostolate to take care of the poor called the 'Friendship House' in Canada and Harlem, where she met Dorothy Day. When that apostolate seemed to have failed, she moved with her second husband, Eddie Doherty, back to Canada. But her calling had just begun. She founded the Madonna House, a Catholic apostolate made up of lay men and women, as well as clergy, who live in community to serve the poor within the community. According to her biography:

Catherine had a faith vision for the restoration of the Church and our modern culture at a time when the de-Christianization of the Western world was already well advanced. She brought the spiritual intuitions of the Christian East to North America. Lay men and women as well as priests came to Madonna House to live the life of a Christian family: the life of Nazareth. They begged for what they needed and gave the rest away. . . . Catherine’s vision was immense, encompassing farming, carpentry, cooking and laundry, theology and philosophy, science, the fine arts, and drama. “Nothing is foreign to the Apostolate, except sin... The primary work of the Apostolate is to love one another... If we implement this law of love, if we clothe it with our flesh, we shall become a light to the world,” she said, “for the essence of our Apostolate is love—love for God poured out abundantly for others.”

Catherine also introduced many elements of Eastern Christianity's spirituality to her community at the Madonna House and may of her publications have been widely published and you can find a complete list here.

She died in 1985 and left behind a wealth of spiritual writings that I am placing high on my to-read list. I'll leave off with a quote of hers about how we should live our lives for us to meditate upon: "Stretch one hand out to God, the other to your neighbor. Be cruciform. ... Christ’s cross will be our revolution and it will be a revolution of love!"

Woman Warrior of the Month June: Immaculée Ilibagiza

This month, I'd like to introduce the Woman Warrior Rwandan refugee, and now American citizen Immaculée Ilibagiza. I don't know if you have ever heard of her, but she's been a media sensation since her book Left to Tell emerged last year. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, the media has not featured two new books by Ilibagiza: Led by Faith and Our Lady of Kibeho, who appeared in Rwanda just before the genocide began.

If you have never read Immaculée's story, do so! She survived the genocide of Rwanda in the early 1990's, while her entire family - parents and all her brothers -- were brutally slaughtered by people who were at one time close family friends and neighbors. She was hidden in a tiny bathroom for months with seven other women. Immaculée found the strength to pull through and forgive those who murdered her loved ones. Her weapon of choice: the rosary. There are two particularly moving passages in her story Left to Tell. First, the story her brother's martyrdom at the hands of the Hutu murderers. It's reminiscent of St. Sebastian's death. And the story of her confrontation with those murderers: she forgave. What a woman of strength!!!! Here's a description of her story from her website:

Immaculée's life was transformed dramatically during the 1994 Rwandan genocide where she and seven other women spent 91 days huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor's house. Immaculée entered the bathroom a vibrant, 115-pound university student with a loving family - she emerged weighing just 65 pounds to find her entire family had been brutally murdered (with the exception of one brother who had been studying out of the country).

Immaculée credits her salvage mostly to prayer and to a set of rosary beads given to her by her devout Catholic father prior to going into hiding. Anger and resentment about her situation were literally eating her alive and destroying her faith, but rather than succumbing to the rage that she felt, Immaculée instead turned to prayer. She began to pray the rosary as a way of drowning out the negativity that was building up inside her. Immaculée found solace and peace in prayer and began to pray from the time she opened her eyes in the morning to the time she closed her eyes at night. Through prayer, she eventually found it possible, and in fact imperative, to forgive her tormentors and her family's murderers.

Immaculée's strength in her faith empowered her to stare down a man armed with a machete threatening to kill her during her escape. She also later came face to face with the killer of her mother and her brother and said the unthinkable, "I forgive you." Immaculée knew, while in hiding, that she would have to overcome immeasurable odds without her family and with her country destroyed. Fortunately, Immaculée utilized her time in that tiny bathroom to teach herself English with only The Bible and a dictionary; once freed she was able to secure a job with the United Nations.

If you are interested in hearing about this story from Immaculée herself, you can find a list of her public appearances here.

Woman Warrior of the Month: Anna Abrikosova

This month, I'd like to introduce Anna Abrikosova - a Russian Eastern rite Catholic saint who died in the Gulag in 1935. She converted to Catholicism in 1908, at Saint Magdalene’s Church in Paris (A connection to our patroness!!) Her husband converted a year later in Rome.

She was born in 1882 into an aristocratic family in Russia, and after their conversion, they began to spread their faith throughout the intelligentsia in Russia. During their honeymoon, she and her husband, Vladimir experienced a great vision that catalyzed their conversion:

Looking at the people walking about, they suddenly saw walking skeletons with torn clothes instead of real persons. They started thinking of their spiritual life, neglected up to that moment, and they became fervent Catholics.

In 1913, Anna entered the Third Order Dominicans and started an apostolate to help young women who were ostracized from their families for embracing the Catholic faith (which, as you may know, is not very popular among the Russians -- who proudly adhere to their Orthodox faith). She and her husband both entered religious life in 1917 when Anna -- now known as 'Mother Yekaterina' (Russian for Catherine after St. Catherine of Sienna) -- began a Dominican community in Moscow.

In 1922, her husband, who had been ordained a priest, was sentenced to death by shooting by the Russian Communist police. One year later, she too was arrested:

On 11 November 1923 Anna Abrikosova, the sisters and some of the parishioners were arrested. The tribunal sentenced Mother Yekaterina and the oldest sister 10 years in jail, three of the other sisters to from 5 to 8 years in a labour camp, and the others to 3 years’ exile in Siberia. Their time in jail and the camps is an example of pure love and sacrifice for outcasts, petty criminals and syphilitics. In August 1932 Anna Abrikosova was transferred to the hospital of Butyrka prison and underwent an operation for cancer; after the operation she was confined to Kostroma.

One year later, Mother Yekaterina was arrested again and accused of leading a counterrevolutionary terrorist organization plotting to assassinate Stalin.

She was condemned to 8 years in jail but her condition deteriorated and on 23 July 1936 she died of cancer in the hospital prison, aged 54.

She is known to have said before she died: “Christ desires now in Russia the individual sacrifice of those who…go as lambs to the slaughter….Obedience until our death upon the cross, together with humility — these are the two virtues I preach to the sisters.”

Her death and her witness to the world in a time of darkness is similar to the death and witness of my namesake, Edith Stein. Both of them women of God's fortitude and blazing examples of women warriors!

See article here for more information.

Reflections of a Traveler

Well, I have just returned from my travels. I realized that I get to traveling a lot. I’m quite lucky. Less than a year ago, I was in North Africa! And just these past few weeks I have been in Vienna, Austria. But I am the world's worst blogger when I travel, and for that I apologize. Maybe it is because I have been stressed these last two trips. Maybe I am just a bad blogger when I travel. So here are a few reflections of what I have been learning during my travels.

This trip was both wonderful and stressful. Wonderful because I got to see my golden old friends (and family - my sister lives in Europe!) meet tremendous new ones. Nothing helps healing more than friendship. I was doing some work for a conference that tremendously interests me - on Islam and Europe. It was a great conference. But my boss was a bit of nightmare during it...he made it quite stressful. But I won’t delve into that, save to say that he is not the best manager of people and a micro-manager who also hates details. Yes, imagine that – not an ideal combination to put it lightly.

But after all that passed over, and I found myself still missing Peter. The goal of the trip was to forget him, to let the memories of our relationship and the plans of our future pass into smoky oblivion and move on, but that still has not happened. The stress of conference planning was merely a distraction, and as I found myself steeped in the beauty of a city the Habsburg money built, I found my heart so heavy with sorrow. Why could I not just forget about him? I walked into every gorgeous Church I could find asking that question receiving no comfort, no answer. Even now, I still miss him and he still haunts my sleep. Even if my better judgment reminds me that I have been saved, my irrational emotions remember the goodness of Peter, instead of his faults that made him entirely wrong for me. That’s human nature, isn’t it? A little good, a little bad – such a complicated mixture of good and evil.

Despite my sorrow, I opened up to others about my experience – to my friends old and new. What I found was solidarity in suffering, as this trip revealed to me the long known truth that world is full of human suffering....

Take the lovely young girl from Armenia. She is 22. At age 20, she married the love her life, the man of her dreams. At age 21, she had a child who lived for only 6 months. He died of genetic disease - the genes for which both she and her husband carried. After the death of her baby, she and her husband divorced. At 21, she moved to Vienna to seek meaning and move on.

Then there was the older American woman who used to work for the same person I worked for during this trip. She left a fabulous well paying job because she was looking for meaning and thought working for an organization associated with the Church might give that to her. She worked for this organization for just six months and found the job odious. The next thing she knew, she was making rather poor decisions, like that one guy that one night...and then she found herself pregnant. In Europe I met both her and her beautiful little daughter.

Finally, there was the glorious French professor who teaches in Germany. He writes about Medieval Islam and Christianity and was invited to speak at our conference along with many other notable men and women. I went with the driver to pick him up from the train station in Vienna and escort him to the conference. I was captivated by him. He is very French, delightful, forgetful, and absent minded. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible and his face was almost expressionless, but his words were always so kind and incredibly wise.

When I asked him about his work, he told me a story about his wife. She had encouraged him to take a fellowship that would take him away from her and their three young sons. She did it because she loved him and she wanted what she knew would make him happy and allow him to become the best of himself – he did not say that, but I knew it. But he did say, “She had so much courage to do that, to stay with our three sons on her own. That is what I love about her – she has the feminine courage that lasts for the long run, while masculine courage only lasts in the short run…”

Those words resonate with me. I thought – that is exactly the kind of love I want to have from a husband. I hope he is out there, and I hope I do a much better job of finding him. I think that’s why I love the idea of the woman warrior, because all of us women are called to be one at one time or another. Even as I protest, God has put that training before me. And while I am no woman warrior like the ones I blog about, I certainly aspire to be. I think it is safe to say that I am a work in progress on that feminine genre of the virtue. After all, it takes courage to meet your almost mother in law on what should have been your wedding day and return those gorgeous rings you were supposed to exchange. And while you are quite tearfully doing that, she is gently and tacitly blaming you for the mess: “Peter says you just wanted too much and he felt too pressured to give everything to you.” Whatever that was supposed to mean – just another lie, another attempt to escape blame for what he did wrong. As I said, human nature is a complicated mess of good and evil. And it takes courage to tell your family members which items belonged to Peter that need to be returned to him as you weep so that they can pack them up and get them out of your apartment. All the while, he is roaming around town partying at a Mardi Gras parade on what should have been the first day of your honeymoon – the first day of your life together as man and wife. Yes, it takes courage to move on from all that. It takes the feminine courage that lasts for the long run, the kind I am inevitably, and perhaps unwillingly, learning to practice.

Photos: From my trip
1: View of Vienna from Stephansdom Tower
2: Altar at Votivkirche
3: Facade of Michaelkirche - St. Michael the Archangel

Woman Warrior of the Month: Etty Hillesum

Well, it’s been quite a while since I’ve done this column, but now seems as a good a time as any to resurrect it. Here’s how I came to discover this jewel of a woman. I admit it…after finishing a Jane Austen novel last week, I relapsed into Holocaust literature. But really, it is not depressing me! I find this particular work unbelievably inspirational, and in fact, a pretty good spiritual read for the end of Lent. I am reading Etty Hillesum’s diary and collection of letters of a concentration camp in Westerbork. I introduced Etty earlier this week as a young Jewish woman who died in the concentration camps. She reminds me, in many ways, of my own namesake, Edith Stein, who, as you know is a Jewish convert to Catholicism and one of the patron saints of Europe.

Etty Hillesum began her diary in 1941 at age 27….an age I am creeping perilously close to – ugh! She was a fascinating, shocking, and brilliant woman – single, living in the city of Amsterdam and working as a teacher of Russian and as a secretary. I am drawn to her writing, but I must warn any potential readers, however – she is extremely sexual at the beginning of her diary especially. She was secretary for a Jungian ‘psychologist’ named Julian Spier (we would call him a filthy womanizer) whose ‘specialty’ was ‘helping’ women to combat their problems by wrestling with them and touching them inappropriately. She might also be considered his patient and student. This is the atmosphere in which Etty opens up her explosive diary. I think it shows the spiritual sickness of the time – a time not unlike our own in many, many ways. (In fact, reading her writings about this, I could not help but again be grateful for John Paul II’s profound meditation on the theology of the body, but that would take me to an entirely new post).

But the beauty of it is that she changes so profoundly through her suffering and her heart opens up to God and His will for her. You can see throughout that in her heart she knows that what she is doing with her psychologist is wrong, but she falls in love with him anyway – drawn to him almost inexplicably. She often chastises herself for it, but continues to struggle with this and is ultimately transformed. The reader realizes that God’s goodness really does shine forth and conquer sin. She writes about her experience as a woman, and when I read this passage, I found myself both nodding in agreement and shaking my head at her:

I am an ordinary twenty-seven-year-old girl, and I too am filled with the love for all mankind, but for all I know I shall always continue to be in search of my one man. And I wonder to what extent that is a handicap, a woman’s handicap. Whether it is an ancient tradition from which she must liberate herself, or whether it is so much a part of her very essence that she would be doing violence to herself if she bestowed her love on all mankind instead of on a single man. (I can’t see yet how the two can be combined). . . . It’s typical that I always do end up wanting to be desired by man, but in fact it is only primitive instinct. Feelings of friendship, respect, love, for us as human beings, these are all very well, but don’t we ultimately want men to desire us as women? Pp. 33-34

It was my meditation this week on this passage about femininity and love that inspired my last post. She is a paradox, and she reveals the human paradoxes of living in the world with her experiences. She tries to reconcile her feelings of love towards one man with how she should love others. In the end, Etty feels herself drawn to love all mankind – she volunteers to go to the concentration camp, knowing it would be her fate soon enough. She writes:

I don’t think I would feel happy if I were exempted from what so many others have to suffer. They keep telling me that someone like me has a duty to go into hiding, because I have so many things to do in life, so much to give. But I know that whatever I may have to give to others, I can give it no matter where I am, here in the circle of my friends or over there, in a concentration camp. And it is sheer arrogance to think oneself too good to share the fate of the masses. P. 177

As each privilege gets revoked from the Jews, such as shopping in the grocery stores, walking in public places, riding bicycles, Etty still manages to find joy, beauty, God in every day life. With a mix of both fear and courage, Etty writes the last words of her diary: “We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.” Her witness to act as a sacrifice of love for others is precisely the way we are called to live. She is a woman warrior to whom I simply cannot do enough credit here. I’d certainly recommend reading her diary and letters, but if you do so, keep in mind the caveat I mentioned above – she will indeed shock you, but she will also challenge and inspire you to the core.

Woman Warrior of the Month: Edith Stein

Dear Readers,
Happy feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross! As you know this past week of August we celebrated with the Edith Stein Novena, which follows her last nine days in this world before the Nazis murdered her and many, many more Hebrew Catholics in retaliation of the Dutch Bishops denouncing the Nazis and the slaughter of the Jews. The novena, taken from the Association of Hebrew Catholic Website, and as the association's president David Moss explains, the novena is especially prayed during the time of August 1-9 - the time from her arrest to her death. David Moss writes,

The novena was composed by Elias Friedman, O.C.D., founder of the Association of Hebrew Catholics (AHC), who recommends it to all devotees of Saint Edith. The most suitable time to observe it would be from August 1 to August 9, in annual remembrance of the days spent by our saintly martyr in the death train, accompanied by her sister, Rosa, and many other Hebrew Catholics, on the way to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

We present the Novena to the public, hoping thus to further devotion to our holy Carmelite and as a model for Hebrew Catholic’s to imitate. Edith Stein offered herself, like Jesus, our Lord and Messiah, as a victim of expiation for the redemption of her people and of mankind.

May our efforts hasten the day when all Israel shall proclaim:

Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord

(Baruch haba beShem Adonai)

Also, a little more about what inspired this novena prayer from author Elias Friedman:

An attempt has been made to draw a parallel between the last week in the life of Saint Edith Stein and the last week in the life of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. There is more in the parallel than pure analogy; Jesus himself, repeated his passion in the soul and body of Saint Edith. It is what gives to her suffering its full redemptive value. Through Jesus, our Saint sanctified the Shoah, turning the Catastrophe into a true Holocaust unto the Lord. Tragic as the story is, it should be understood as the sine qua non for the ingrafting of the Jewish People into the Church, their own olive-tree.

Now, about our Saint. I have spending lots and lots of time reading everything I can about her and by her especially since my break with Peter. I felt that I wanted to reconnect with strong women to help me recover my own strength, and learn that feminine way to practice the virtue of fortitude. Let me tell you something about St. Edith, in case you have already seen, she is THE woman warrior.

Edith Stein was born in Breslau, Germany on October 12, 1891 to Siegfried and Auguste Stein. Before she reached the age of two, her father passed away, leaving her mother with 7 children and a lumber business to run. And her mother did run that business. In her unfinished autobiography, Life in a Jewish Family, Edith says that all who knew her described her mother as the most capable merchant in town. Edith wrote this book in the 1930's as an antidote to the rising anti-Semitism in her beloved Germany. This book, which I've not quite finished reading, chronicles her very normal, very real family life from her birth until 1916, which as far as she had written before the Nazis took her off to the death camps. She shows great affection for her family and reveals her own spiritual journey to the Church, which was a highly intellectual one.

Edith was known as an extremely intelligent and gifted child. She loved school and did quite well in school. She says that although her mother was quite religious and did observe the basic tenants of Judaism, Edith and her siblings were not very religious and often ridiculed their mother's piety. Frau Stein did not let that deter her. But as a young teenager, Edith self-consciously decided that she did not believe in God. It was not until she went on to receive her doctorate that Edith would find herself attracted to the Catholic faith.

Edith studied for her doctorate under the famed phenomenological Edmund Husserl. She became great friends with many very renowned scholars of phenomenology and several times had come into contact with Dietrich von Hildebrand (although they did not know one another well). It was also here that she began to be more open to the Christian faith, as most of her friends were Christians, both Protestant and Catholic. She was a brilliant student, and all her friends and family teased her for her great passion to study with Husserl. She writes that on one New Year's Eve before she left to study in Goettingen for her doctorate, her sisters and friends wrote a little verse about her: "Many a maiden dreams of 'busserl' [kisses in German], Edith, though, of naught but Husserl. In Goettingen she soon will see Husserl as real as real can be." (Life in a Jewish Family, p. 220). I admit, I had to laugh at this little anecdote. To me it not only shows her passion for the intellectual pursuit of truth, but it just shows her humanness.

It was while she was studying in Goettingen during 1913-1914 that Edith says she started to learn how "to respect questions of faith and people who had faith." (Life in a Jewish Family, p. 316). She said that she even attended some Protestant liturgies, but that the sermons, which mixed politics and religion, often turned her off to the faith. It would be about another 10 years before Edith found God in the Catholic faith.

Edith loved Goettingen and Husserl's classes. She was paving the way for women intellectuals, who, even in an intellectual powerhouse like Germany, were not common. She dearly loved Germany, loved its history, loved being a Germany citizen, but she was also keenly distressed at its tempestuous political situation in the during WWI and in the decades the followed. Edith even took a leave of absence from school during WWI and served as a nurse for wounded soldiers. To the end, she loved her German identity.

Edith finished her doctorate in 1917 and stayed on for several years helping her "Master" Husserl to edit his works. She finally began to consider seriously the possibility of becoming a Christian in 1918, and for two years discerned whether to be a Catholic or a Lutheran. She knew this would cost her many of her friendship among her Jewish acquaintance, and she especially knew that her mother would be heartbroken. And God works in funny ways. While she was visiting a Protestant friend in 1921, she randomly found a copy of Teresa of Avila's book The Book of Her Life. She felt that the saints words in the book fulfilled the desires of her heart, and on January 1. 1922, Edith Stein became a Catholic. She also felt at this time that to join the Carmelites was her calling, but she waited until 1935, so that she would not add insult to injury for her heartbroken mother.

Although her family was far from pleased by her decision, Edith remarks that they all respected her because they knew that Edith ardently sought truth with her whole being. Dr. Fraulein Stein, as she was called, longed to be a philosopher and also loved to teach. Josephine Koeppel says of her:

Edith earned the international reputation she had in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria by her careful attention to contemporary topics of her own day which were forerunners of our own vital issues. Her lectures on women's roles. . . incorporated all the facets of her remarkable erudition. . . . To enable others to lead and teach is an inestimable talent, and this was one Edith Stein's greatest gifts." (Life in a Jewish Family, Chronology, p. 419)

In 1933, Edith entered Carmel in Cologne, Germany. Her mother was sorrowful, but embraced her daughter for the last time. She made her final vows in 1938 and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, which means "Teresa Blessed of the Cross" (or by the Cross in some translations.) Her name reflects her beloved spiritual sister and fellow Carmelite, Teresa of Avila, and her fate of sharing in the Cross of Christ in a very tangible, visible way. After her mother's death, her sister Rosa followed Edith's example, became a Catholic and joined her as a Third Order Carmelite. As a Carmelite, she continued her work as a philosopher and a seeker of truth. Many great treatises and theological meditations were written in this period. But in 1938, the threat of the Nazis was so great that the nuns removed Edith and Rosa to their Carmel in Echt. It was here, as we know, that Edith and her sister were brutally taken in 1942 to their deaths in Auschwitz.

But on the journey to her death, Edith made an impression on her fellow Jewish Catholics. Lucie Bromberg-Rosenthal, who shared a barrack with Edith, remembers this time:

The great difference between Edith Stein and the other sisters lay in her silence. My personal impression is that she was grief-stricken. She was not afraid, but I cannot express it better except by saying that she seemed to carry such a heavy burden of suffering that even when she did smile every once and a while, it made one even sadder. . . . She had the thought of impending suffering; not her own, for she had long accepted it, but the suffering that was awaiting the others. Her whole appearance, as I see her in my mind's eye sitting in the barrack, still reminds me of a Pieta without Christ." (Taken from Edith Stein and Companions, p. 85-86)

What Edith has taught me is the great love it takes to embrace suffering. What I hope she teaches me is how to become a better woman in Christ and how to love and to suffer as she did. May this feast day be a blessing to all of you, and I hope you will let Edith Stein into your life today to show you the face of Christ.

Edith Stein's writings can be found in English through the Institute of Carmelite Studies.

Woman Warrior of the Month: St. Monica Part 1

Today we are each writing a post in honor of September's Woman Warrior: St. Monica, whose feast day was August 27th. This woman and sister in Christ is so incredible that she really could be every month's nominee. I could go on and on about her, but I will just tell you a little of why she is so important of a model to me.

We are taught by our Church that the pinnacle of femininity is reached in motherhood, that the "crown of a marriage" lies in children, or the visible fruits of the love between a man and a woman. I tend to stay in the shallow end of the teaching and focus on the procreative part of the feminine vocation and the married vocation...stopping at the conception and birth of children as if that is the fullness the Church is speaking of.

St. Monica's fruit was St. Augustine, but not Augustine as an infant. The fruit of her femininity was the same fruit of her labors of prayer, fasting, and modeling the faith - it was Augustine the man, the scholar, the preacher, the convert, and the saint. St. Monica is the exemplar of receiving the task that God has given you and laboring until you have made it worthy enough to glorify Him. How often do I do a mediocre job on things that are in front of me? How often do I fail to really work at my vocation of singleness? Will I accept a satisfactory job this school year as I prepare to teach young high school women, or will I pray, study, and fast so that their souls are opened to the Lord?

Thank you St. Monica, for your beautiful example.

And as a sidenote, thanks for teaching me that it's okay to love wine...just in moderation.

(Picture found here)

A True Woman Warrior

Here's to Eunice Shriver, who served life in all of its stages and in all of its unique packages. Thanks for teaching us women how to serve our country, our culture, and our Church. Resquiat in pacem.

Woman Warrior: St. Mary MacKillop

This weekend Pope Benedict XVI canonized six saints, including the great Br. André (of Montreal), and St. Mary MacKillop, the first Australian born saint. According to reports, Australia had quite a party celebrating Sr. Mary of the Cross.

The first nun, and mother superior of the Josephite Sisters, Mary MacKillop is also somewhat of a rarity in the canon of saints--she was excommunicated for "insubordination" by a bishop. (Her excommunication lasted less than a year.)

The story goes as follows:

But the full story is that Mary MacKillop was excommunicated out of "revenge," in the words of one priest familiar with her life, for uncovering a case of sex abuse by a Father Keating, in a nearby parish. Paul Gardiner, S.J., the former postulator of MacKillop's canonization process, told an Australian television documentary a few days ago, "Priests being annoyed that somebody had uncovered it--that would probably be the way of describing it--and being so angry that the destruction of the Josephites was decided on." A statement from the Sisters of St. Joseph has confirmed that the documentary's reports are "consistent with" studies of the event.

--James Martin, S.J. in America Magazine via The Deacon's Bench. Read the whole story here.

She was clearly a remarkable woman, and a wonderful reminder to us that not only is there a role for women in the Church, but that we have something powerful to fight for: the protection of innocence in all its forms through our witness to the faith.

Happy Birthday, Magdalene Sisters!

Hi Sisters and Readers, all. Today marks the one year anniversary of our very first blog post, and thus of our blog! We got off to a slow start, but, thanks to your feedback and our own comic/tragic adventures, we're ready for the second year of fellowship, discovery, growth in faith and sisterhood. (And, with Edith getting married, it will be a year of changes, too!)

In celebration of this day, we wanted to highlight a few of our personal favorite posts. Thank you all for reading (and praying) with us.

PERSONAL BESTS
From Agatha:
-- I Don't Do is Agatha's rant on bridesmaid dresses. (And, in case you readers were curious, Edith took all her advice!)
-- Talithia Koum: Agatha asks, aren't we all just little girls?

From Edith:
-- The Goodness of God and His Mother reminds us all of the beauty and grace of humanity.
-- The entire Woman Warrior series, conceived and executed by Edith, is amazing, but I think we all agree, her post on Immaculée Ilibagiza was incredibly inspiring, and moved all of us to study her life more.

From Julian:
-- Can't Live With 'Em may have been a bit of a rant, but it touched on some of our deepest concerns, and sparked great debate.
-- Always a godmother, never a God was Julian's honest, pure thoughts on the grace of becoming a godmother for the first time.

BIG QUESTIONS

-- Edith and Julian's thoughts on Catholic Feminism.

-- Can Men and Women Be Friends? Yes. No. Maybe So.

QUOTES, MEDITATIONS, & PRAYERS

-- Pope Gregory the Great's Sermon on Mary Magdalene speaks powerfully to all.

-- Francis De Sales has eased many a heart.

-- Edith's patron Edith Stein helped us keep things in focus.

-- And, of course, we worked hard on the Mary Magdalene Novena and were so grateful your prayed along with us.

(Oh yeah, and let's not forget this.)

Happy Birthday, Magdalene Sisters! Here's to another great year!