Christ in the Mystery of His Cross
First Sunday of Lent, 2020
One of the books I’m reading just now is by the Dutch Jesuit Fr Peet van Breemen. It has the attractive title, “The God Who Won’t Let Go”. On the back cover, we are told that this personal exploration “enters the depths of mercy, compassion and resurrection”, which makes it a suitable book for Lent and I can thoroughly recommend it
In his chapter on the crucifixion of Jesus, van Breemen writes about the German philosopher and saint Edith Stein who was born into a Jewish family in 1891 but became an atheist in her teenage years. She studied philosophy in the University of Göttingen. Following the outbreak of war in 1914, she trained as a medical orderly. In 1916, Edith took up a teaching post at the University of Freiburg as assistant to Professor Edmund Husserl who is often regarded as the founder of the philosophical school of Phenomenology.
In 1917, a colleague of hers, the philosopher Adolf Reinach, was killed in battle in Flanders. Edith decided to travel from Freiburg to Göttingen to attend his funeral and to visit his wife, Anna. That visit filled her with dread: what words of consolation could she offer in the face of such tragedy? During that meeting, however, Edith found that the tables were turned and it was Anna who consoled Edith. In her grief, Anna was able to convey something of the consolation of her faith.
Edith later wrote that this was her “first encounter with the cross and the divine strength it conveys to those who carry it. “I saw very clearly the Church, born in the redemptive passion of Christ, triumph over the sting of death”. This was the moment, she went on, that her unbelief collapsed and Christ began to shine for her, “Christ in the mystery of his cross”.
In 1923, Edith was baptised and in 1933 she entered the Carmelite monastery in Cologne, later taking the name, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. In 1938, she moved to the monastery at Echt in the Netherlands to escape, or so it was hoped, the Nazi persecution of those with Jewish blood. However, she was arrested and was executed along with her sister, Rosa, at Auschwitz on 9 August 1942, which is now her feast day.
The Lenten season which we have begun is dominated by the figure of Christ on the cross. The cross of Jesus tells us what God’s love for us is like. He doesn’t just tell us about that love with words or with actions, however remarkable his words and actions were. It is Jesus’ death on the cross that tells us what God’s love is like: it is nails through the hands and the feet and a spear in the side: such is God’s love for us.
In the course of this Lent, encouraged perhaps by the example of St Teresa Benedicta, may the cross of Jesus shine ever more brightly for us. May we never underestimate transforming power of the love of God displayed on the cross and through the words of consolation we bring to others, may it come to shine more brightly as well for our brothers and sisters who, like Edith Stein in her earlier years, may be finding faith difficult
Fr Michael Holman S.J.