St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edith Stein, died in the death camp of Auschwitz.
Wow, could the readings of the day (the Thursday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time) be more perfect?
The days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel
and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers:
the day I took them by the hand
to lead them forth from the land of Egypt;
for they broke my covenant,
and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD.
But this is the covenant that I will make
with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD.
I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts;
I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives
how to know the LORD.
All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD,
for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more. (Jer 31:31-34)
Edith Stein was a Jewish girl, one of God’s Chosen People. But she recognized that Yhwh sent His Son to expand that kingdom (see today’s Gospel!), to renew that covenant to be a universal, transformed covenant for all races and nations and people.
And just as God forgives His people their evildoing, so did she — even when that evildoing was the murder of the Chosen People.
