Edith Stein Quotes

Only the person blinded by the passion of controversy could deny that woman in soul and body is formed for a particular purpose. The clear and irrevocable world of Scripture declares what daily experience teaches from the beginning of the world: woman is destined to be wife and mother.

However, we are not merely used up as cells are, but we can become aware of our relationship with the wholes to which we belong (I even believe one can experience the operative developmental tendencies) and can voluntarily submit to them. The more lively and powerful such a consciousness becomes in a people, the more it forms itself into a "state" and this formation is its organization. The state is a self-confident people that disciplines its functions.

What is meant by "the Law of the Lord"? Psalm 118 which we pray every Sunday and on solemnities at Prime, is entirely filled with the command to know the Law and to be led by it through life. The Psalmist was certainly thinking of the Law of the Old Covenant. Knowing it actually did require life-long study and fulfilling it, life-long exertion of the will. But the Lord has freed us from the yoke of this Law. We can consider the Savior's great commandment of love, which he says includes the whole Law and the Prophets, as the Law of the New Covenant. Perfect love of God and of neighbor can certainly be a subject worthy of an entire lifetime of meditation. But we understand the Law of the New Covenant, even better, to be the Lord himself, since he has in fact lived as an example for us of the life we should live. We thus fulfill our Rule when we hold the image of the Lord continually before our eyes in order to make ourselves like him. We can never finish studying the Gospels.

As a child of the Jewish people who, by the grace of God, for the past eleven years has also been a child of the Catholic Church, I dare to speak to the Father of Christianity about that which oppresses millions of Germans. For weeks we have seen deeds perpetrated in Germany which mock any sense of justice and humanity, not to mention love of neighbor. For years the leaders of National Socialism have been preaching hatred of the Jews. But the responsibility must fall, after all, on those who brought them to this point and it also falls on those who keep silent in the face of such happenings. Everything that happened and continues to happen on a daily basis originates with a government that calls itself "Christian." For weeks not only Jews but also thousands of faithful Catholics in Germany, and, I believe, all over the world, have been waiting and hoping for the Church of Christ to raise its voice to put a stop to this abuse of Christ’s name.

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. When she has once realized that no one other than God is capable of receiving her completely for Himself and that it is sinful theft toward God to give oneself completely to one other than Him, then the surrender is no longer difficult and she becomes free of herself.

This inability may be grounded in an inborn dull-mindedness (in the literal sense), or in a general indifference developed in the course of a lifetime, or finally, in an insensitivity to certain impressions as a result of repeatedly ignoring them.

Our world is going through a crisis of dehumanization, breakup of family life, a general loss of moral values.

God the Creator is present in each thing and sustains it in existence. He has foreseen each, and knows it through and through with all its changes and destinies. By the might of his omnipotence he can do with each, at every moment, whatever he pleases. He can leave it to its own laws and the normal flow of events. He can also intervene with extraordinary measures. God dwells in this manner in every human soul, also. He knows each one from all eternity, with all the mysteries of her being and every wave that breaks over her life. She is in his power. It is up to him whether he leaves her to herself and the course of worldly events or whether, with his strong hand, he will interfere in her destiny. Such a marvel of his power is every rebirth of a soul through sanctifying grace.

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.