Edith Stein Quotes

If the mystery of the cross becomes the inner form of this science, a living energy that allows the soul to be molded by what is received from this mystery, it turns into a science of the cross . On the contrary, excessive interior preoccupation with one’s own personal concerns can develop in the course of life into a general indifference to things religious.

To suffer and to be happy although suffering, to have one’s feet on the earth, to walk on the dirty and rough paths of this earth and yet to be enthroned with Christ at the Father’s right hand, to laugh and cry with the children of this world and ceaselessly sing the praises of God with the choirs of angels — this is the life of the Christian until the morning of eternity breaks forth.

Excess of interest in both her own and in the stranger’s personality merge in feminine surrender, the urge to lose herself completely in a human being; but in so doing, she does justice neither to self nor to the humanity of another, and, at the same time, becomes unfit for exercising other duties. Also connected to the false pursuit of prestige is a perverted desire for totality and inclusiveness, a mania to know everything and thereby to skim the surface of everything and to plunge deeply into nothing. However, such superficiality can never be true humanity.

Woman's soul is present and lives more intensely in all parts of the body, and it is inwardly affected by that which happens to the body; whereas, with men, the body has more pronoucedly the character of an instrument which serves them in their work and which is accompanied by a certain detachment.

But John himself intuited that readers might find his thought dry or at least troublesome and admitted at the beginning of his Ascent of Mount Carmel that though the doctrine he was to expound was solid and good for everyone, not everyone would find it easy to take in. “We are not writing on moral and pleasing topics addressed to the kind of spiritual people who like to approach God along sweet and satisfying paths” (A. Prol. 8). Yet John advises perseverance and that thereby one will come to understand better, and then to read the work again. As Sr. Benedicta must have discovered, John becomes clearer and more beneficial and even pleasing to read as one reads more. In Science of the Cross she gives readers an opportunity to read John of the Cross again but in a different pattern.

We can do nothing ourselves; God must do it. To speak to Him thus is easier by nature for woman than for man because a natural desire lives in her to give herself completely to someone.

The spiritual nature of woman is as little considered as the principles of her historical development. Not only is violence being done to the spirit by a biological misinterpretation and by today's economic trends, but also by the materialistic and fundamental point of view of opposing groups.

Helene Lange throughout her life insisted that the dissimiliarity of the sexes must be emphasized in order that the feminine nature be freely developed and properly formed. Only then might this nature achieve its own cultural fulfillment, an achievement indeed necessary in our time as a suitable compensation for the obvious effects of our masculine Western culture; then feminine nature might be capable of authentic human formation and an activity of helping love.

At first, after her conversion she thought she would have to renounce all that was secular and live totally immersed in God, but then she realized that, even in the contemplative life, you cannot sever all connection with the world, that the deeper you are drawn into God, the more you must go out of yourself to the world in order to carry the divine life into it.

Every profession in which woman's soul comes into its own and which can be formed by woman's soul is an authentic woman's profession.

Everywhere the need exists for maternal sympathy and help, and thus we are able to recapitulate in the one word motherliness that which we have developed as the characteristic value of woman. Only, the motherliness must be that which does not remain within the narrow circle of blood relations or of personal friends; but in accordance with the model of the Mother of Mercy, it must have its root in universal divine love for all who are there, belabored and burdened.

If we consider the attitude of the Lord Himself, we understand that He accepted the free loving services of women for Himself and His Apostles and that women were among His disciples and most intimate confidants. Yet He did not grant them the priesthood, not even to His mother, Queen of Apostles, who was exalted above all humanity in human perfection and fullness of grace.

Because the sin which she encouraged him to commit was in all likelihood a sin of sensuality, woman is more intensely exposed to the danger of descent into stark carnality. And when this happens, she always becomes once again the evil seductress, whereas, paradoxically, God has specifically enjoined her to combat evil.

You can be at all fronts, wherever there is grief, in the power of the cross. Your compassionate love takes you everywhere, this love from the divine heart. Its precious blood is poured everywhere, soothing, healing, saving.

Wie wir „ursprünglich verstehen “, was Wahrheit ist, wenn wir erkennen, und was Gutheit ist, wenn unser Streben Erfüllung findet, so verstehen wir, was Schönheit ist, wenn jener „Glanz “ uns an die Seele rührt. Er begegnet uns in der sinnlichen Welt als das Strahlen des körperlichen Lichtes selbst, ohne das uns alle sinnliche Schönheit verborgen bliebe, als Farbenglanz und als Liebreiz körperlicher Gestalten. Aber er ist nicht an die Sinnenwelt gebunden. Es gibt eine geistige Schönheit : die Schönheit der Menschenseele,...