Happy Feast Day of St. Teresa Benedicta of The Cross

Love makes pain bear fruit and pain deepens love. 

thanks Wikimedia for photo

I discovered her as Edith Stein when I was studying Edmund Husserl many years ago for a doctoral thesis I never finished. She was his best student. For many of us, she is a light in many ways. Pray to her if you want clear thinking.  I love this saint.

A Bride of Christ at Cologne Carmel

Beside being one of the patrons of Europe and other people, she is the patron of those who have lost parents.

Here is a great quotation for my perfection series from her.

The more lofty the degree of loving union to which God destines the soul, so much more profound and persistent must be its purification.  

And, from Bl. John Paul II at her canonization Mass:

“From now on, as we celebrate the memory of this new saint (every August 9), we cannot fail to remember from year to year the ‘Shoah’ (the Holocaust), that savage plan of exterminating a people, which cost the lives of millions of Jewish brothers and sisters.”

“Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross says to us all: Don’t accept anything as truth if it is without love. And don’t accept anything as love if it is without truth! One without the other is a harmful lie.”

“Many of our contemporaries would want the Cross to be silenced. However, nothing is more eloquent than the Cross made silent! The true message of pain is a lesson of love. Love makes pain bear fruit and pain deepens love.”

I think St. Teresa Benedicta would be a good patron for late vocations. She was 42 when she made her final vows.