Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda - Edith Stein: The Life and Legacy of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Mara Ruiz Scaperlanda

Edith Stein

The Life and Legacy of
St. Teresa Benedicta
of the Cross

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2017 by Mara Ruiz Scaperlanda

This book was originally published in 2001 by Our Sunday Visitor, Huntington, Indiana. This 2017 edition by Sophia Institute Press includes minor revisions. Permission to use material from other books was given for the original edition; see the special acknowledgments for details.

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Coronation Media.

On the cover:

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Scaperlanda, Mara Ruiz, 1960- author.

Title: Edith Stein : the life and legacy of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross / Mara Ruiz

Scaperlanda.

Description: Manchester, New Hampshire : Sophia Institute Press, 2017. |

Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017023090 | ISBN 9781622824649 (pbk. : alk. paper) ePub ISBN 9781622824656

Subjects: LCSH: Stein, Edith, Saint, 1891-1942. | Carmelite

Nuns Germany Biography. | Catholic converts Germany Biography. | Women

philosophers Germany Biography. | Jews Germany Biography.

Classification: LCC BX4705.S814 S33 2017 | DDC 282.092 [B] dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017023090

For Michael, my best friend, with all my love

Contents

, by Michael Linssen, O.C.D.

, by Susanne M. Batzdorff

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

6,

Part 4:

Part 5:

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

A book like this one would not be possible without the help of many people along the way.

I owe much gratitude to the editors and translators of Edith Steins works, who have made her work accessible to us: Mary Catherine Baseheart, L. Gelber, Josephine Koeppel, O.C.D., Romaeus Leuven, O.C.D., Michael Linssen, O.C.D., Maria Amata Neyer, O.C.D., Freda M. Oben, Walter Redmond, Marianne Sawicki, Waltraut Stein, and John Sullivan, O.C.D. Many thanks to Wally Redmond, who took the time to answer my questions, and special thanks to Sister Josephine Koeppel, O.C.D., of the Elysburg, Pennsylvania, Carmel, for her time, consultation, and expert advice. Thank you to the Discalced Carmelite community worldwide, who have preserved the writings, the faith, and the charism of Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Your work is a blessing to the Catholic community at large.

I am especially grateful to my own local Carmel, the Discalced Carmelite nuns in Piedmont, Oklahoma, who have supported this project by their faithful prayers. A special thanks to Sister Jeanne Marie Futrell for her copyediting and to Sister Ruth Miriam Irey, whose expertise in Jewish studies and on Edith Stein was an invaluable aid to the development of this project.

Words of thanks are insufficient to express how grateful I am to Susanne Batzdorff, Edith Steins niece, for her help and assistance in taking the time to read and comment on my work in progress. Your perspective and vision are unparalleled.

Profound thanks to Dr. Ilse Kerremans, who not only shared with me her personal devotion to Edith, but also welcomed me to Ghent, Belgium, to participate and learn from the 1998 Edith Stein Exhibit. Thank you, Ilse, for your help and support for the last two years, and for even becoming a translator for this project! A grateful tribute to Father Frans Hoornaert, O.C.D., the curator of the Ghent exhibit, and to Prior Piet Hoornaert, O.C.D., and the Carmelite friars in Ghent. Thank you for your warm hospitality and friendship.

Through Dr. Kerremans (and with the assistance of cyberspace!), I have come to know Father Michael Linssen, O.C.D., Director of the International Edith Stein Institute in Wrzburg, Germany. Thank you, Father Michael, for being one of the work-in-progress readers and for agreeing to write a preface to the biography.

My family thanks the community of Carmel Maria vom Frieden in Kln for their generous hospitality during our Jubilee Year visit. Sister Carla Jungels and the rest of the community received our brood of six with open arms and loving hearts. And my interview with Sister Maria Amata Neyer added new insight to my understanding of their fellow Carmelite Edith Stein.

I must also thank my friend, fellow writer, and cyber-office mate, Colleen Smith, who strongly suggested that I pursue this project, as well as the editorial committee of Our Sunday Visitor, particularly Jacquelyn Lindsey, Editorial Development Manager, for their vision in presenting an up-to-date biography of this great saint.

And finally, above all, this project would not have been possible without the love, patience, and encouragement of my children Christopher, Anamaria, Rebekah, Michelle and my home editor and husband, Michael. You all are awesome, and I love you.

Foreword

Foreword

Edith Stein, Jewish by origin, lived her life for the greater part in the first half of the twentieth century. She graduated summa cum laude in 1916 with a doctorate in philosophy but was increasingly impeded in the practice of science due to the fact that she was a woman and a Jewess. Yet, by her publications and lectures, she became a famous personality in and outside Germany. Finally, however, together with countless others she was coerced by the Nazis to abandon her work in public.

Under circumstantial compulsion, she could freely fulfill a longtime cherished desire: she became a nun in the Carmel convent in Cologne, taking the name Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. The open world became for her a closed world, a world that locked her out. She opened for herself a future in the hidden privacy of a convent. What in the opinion of many is to be buried alive was, for her, a new beginning of an authentic life toward eternal Being and eternal Truth. To the outside world she would have remained hidden in her freely chosen concealment if she hadnt become, as did millions of others, a sacrifice in the horrible center of the history of mankind, the Shoah . Her body was merged with the anonymity of the massacre. But her spirit lived on through the people who got acquainted with her and who learned to appreciate her through her many writings, which have been preserved.

Edith Stein was beatified in 1987. In 1998, she was canonized. A large number of her writings are published and have been translated into many languages. A critical edition of her complete works (at this writing) has been started. Her name and her teachings, her person and her vision, have become well known to many people. She is respected and esteemed. For many of us she is a safe guide in an unsafe world.

In this situation, I welcome the publication of this Edith Stein biography, written by Mara Ruiz Scaperlanda. In this biography, the life of Edith Stein is opened for the contemporary reader with great empathy in her fundamental genuine honesty, a rich life despite precarious circumstances due to time and cultural circumstances. Along with these subjects, the biography explores Ediths search for her own identity along with the relationship between Judaism and Christianity.

Mara Ruiz Scaperlanda opens for us in her book a human life in essence supported and guided by God, the hidden and increasingly revealing, rich, and enriching life of St. Edith Stein.

Michael Linssen, O.C.D.