"At the origin of this small people there is a Divine choice, this people is summoned and led by Jahvè, the Maker of Heaven and Earth. Its very existence doesn’t concern Nature or Culture… but Supernatural" (Giovanni Paolo II, Oct. 31^st, 1997).

Edith Stein (on the left), with her sister Elsa, in 1907

Edith Stein lives her faith in the alliance, she sees its accomplishment in the new alliance, in the light of it she revises her people’s history and embraces his lot, with a clear awareness and without any repentance: "Under the Cross I knew God’s people’s lot, that was being pre-announced since then. I thought that the one who understands that this all is nothing but but Christ’s Cross, he should bear it on behalf of all" (written by Edith Stein, Dec. 9^th,1938).

Edith bears her chosen people’s cross and shares his lot to the last. So she brings the Christians to "understand that a world without Israel should be a world without Israel’s God" (A. Heschel), that "until Judaism will have nothing to do with our history of salvation, we’ll be in the hands of the anti-Semitic effects" (R. Etchegaray), and, most of all, that "the Jewish religion is not extrinsic to us, but in a certain way, it is inherent to our religion" (Giovanni Paolo II).

Edith Stein acts in her very person and leaves to Jewish and Christians a heritage of reconciliation that the inhuman tragedy of the Shoah is waiting for, as. Auschwitz isn’t only a historical matter but also the top of human wickedness, that reduces everyone to silence and repentance .

If "Church encourages Her childrento purify their hearts through repentance for the mistakes and the unfaithfulness of the past" (E.Cassidy), Edith, who died for her people, "can be refulgent, as a Christian Saint, bearer of her Jewish origin" (B. Di Porto, Il tempo e l’idea, n.9, May 1997 p. 6°) even to her Jewish brothers.

As one of them aknowledges: "As a Jewish, I firmly believe in the value of our people’s cohesion, but I don’t surround it with cords and stakes. I admit in the free dynamic of our souls, the possibility of exchanges and sudden dazzles… I honour Edith’s canonization, as a Christian martyr, born as a Jewish sister of mine, killed in Auschwitz by people who considered her fraternity of blood with me as indelible" (B. Di Porto).

Edith Stein in 1926

She doesn’t believe in the positivism of Stern’s experimental psychology but she is attracted towards phenomenology by Husserl’s valuation of the conscience emerging over the world and giving meanings; she admires a reality that amazes, that spurs on to search, that invites to that "going to things" without presuppositions, that "encloses within brackets" the Being observed in a naturalistic way, and therefore every kind of realism that asserts the prevalence of Being over Thought.

Phenomenology, that so much will influence the modern thought from Scheler to Hartmann, from Sartre to Merleau-Ponty, Lévinas,Ricoeur… fascinates Edith Stein who looks at Husserl as "the philosopher of our times"because of the clearing up of reality he makes through his analysis of the cognitive process in their first offering, as a reflection on what appears on the streaming of the consciousness, with the width of a method of searching not only gnosiological and psychological but also ethical, which psychiatry can use, especially logo-therapy.

In 1917 Adolf Reinach died in war, and his young widow’s serene faith led Edith "to her first meeting with the Cross and with Christ’s light". In 1921 she reads Teresa d’Avila’s autobiography and she clearly and lively faces Christ’s Thruth..

Christened on January 1^st, 1922, Edith is taken up to the study of the philosophia perennis by the Jesuit Father Erich Przywara: first Tommaso d’Aquino, later at the Carmel, Giovanni della Croce and Dionigi L’Areopagita.

She became a Christian at the end of a passionate and anxious search for truth, to give an answer to the great questions on Man and his destiny; the desire inflamed her to investigate every existential question, attracted as she was by the mystery of the Person and by the need of a meeting with reality that doesn’t dominate Man but makes him a Lord., Edith Stein is a symbolic figure of a search that interests both the faithful or not owing to the breadth of its horizons and the exactness of its critical method, and she urges to a strong will towards the great questioons overhanging life.

Edith Stein in 1931

Her conversion, making her a Christian and , at the same time, leaving her a child of Israel, yet sadly alienates her from her family and from her beloved mother, who has got "a deep faith" (Summer 1933). "My mother still opposes with all her strenght to the decision I’m going to take. It’s hard to face a mother’s sorrow and her conflict of conscience, and being not able to help her with human means" (Jan.26^th, 1994).

The detaching from her mother’s faith, that will be "to the end" with Edith’s admiration "faithfull to her faith" (Oct.4^th, 1936) joins in her with that of her further exiles: first from Friburg University (1922), later from Munster Pedagogic Academy (1933) finally from the Carmel in Cologne (1938), till to the last detaching from the Carmel in Echt (Aug. 2^nd, 1942) to the Amersfort Camp, the Westerbork Camp (Aug. 3^rd, 1942) and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp (Aug.7^th, 1942) where Edith and her sister Rose will be immediatly selected to death (Aug. 9^th, 1942).

Edith verifies that the history of salvation is that of a continuos walking on God’s traces… A new discovery, a new experience of God in history, a new request of Him can make us walk in an unespected direction. Our walk will have an end when we will look at God as He is (1 John 3,2)" ( C. Maccise).

The willingness of followinf the exodus is given by the abandoning of oneself to God. Edith, fond of the Carmel "there was only Mount Carmel on the top of my thoughts" (March 27^th, 1934, sunk in the thanksgiving of being a Carmelite "I have nothing left but always thanking God for the measureless Grace, not deserved, of my calling".(Feb. 11^th, 1935). She is yet open to God’s unexpected events: "I always consider that we are not lasting down here. I wish nothing but the satisfaction of God’s will in me and through me. He knows how long He’s going to leave me here and what is going to happen then. In manibus tuis sortes meae…I have nothing to worry about" (Oct. 16^th, 1939).

God is everywhere as He lives in human hearts, which is wider than every place, even a holy one: "God is with us with all th Holy Trinity. If deep in our hearts we built a well protected cell where we retire as often as possible, we’ll never lack anything wherever we’ll be" (Oct. 22^nd, 1938).

Even in a Camp. While she was in Westerbork,three days before her death, Edith says "Whatever happens, I’m prepared. Jesus is here with us" (Aug. 6^th, 1942).

Edith Stein has been proclaimed a Saint by John Paul II, on October 11th 1998

Since her Christening she felt herself as an evangelizer: "I’m one of God’s instruments... If one comes to me, I would bring him to God" (Dec. 14^th,1930). "God doesn’t call someone just fo his sake" (Oct. 15^th, 1938). "Every day this place seems to me an immense Grace that couldn’t be given to us just for our sake" (Jan.2^nd, 1934).

A real evangelization doesn’t tolerate any conditioning, it is a strong and free evidence of thruth: "Our acting among the others will be effective and blessed by God only if we’ll be firm in our faith, and we’ll follow our conscience with no influence by human respect" (March 20^th, 1934).

No delay in the evidence of truth, but also a deep awareness of God being in every sincere search, beyond the searche’s perception: "I never thought toGod’s mercy as still at the boundaries of the visible Church. God is Truth. The one who’s looking for truth is looking for God, being aware or not" (March 23^rd, 1938).

A martyr evangelizes because his sacrifice is an offer to God for his brothers. Edith Stein, who shares with her Jewish brothers the tragic fate of six million people, who dies as a Christian, but "child of her tortured people" (Giovanni Paolo II, May 1^st, 1987) and, as she admitted, "for " this people, reminds us that, if Faith is still possible today, after Auschwitz, it is because "God Himself has been in Auschwitz, suffering with its martyrs and its deads" (G.Dossetti, quoting J.Moltmann).

Her sacrifice leads the Christians "to renew their consciousness of the Jewish roots of their Faith… to remember that Jesus was one of David’s descendant; that the Virgin Mary and the Apostles were born from the Jewish People; that the Church supports Herself on the roots of that good olive-tree on which the branches of the Gentles’ wild olive tree have been grafted (Rm 11, 17-24); that the Jews are our dear and beloved brothers" (We remember: A meditation on the Shoah, March 16^th, 1998).

Edith pushes Jews and Christians to feed themselves at the sources of the "Holy Root" and to a Mutual, shared respect, as it is necessary to the ones who adore the only Maker and Lord and share the Father of Faith, Abraham".

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