#teresia-renata-posselt — Public Fediverse posts

Quote of the day, 15 December: St. Edith Stein

Edith Stein was at home in the conventual family from the beginning. She used to laugh and joke like a child with the other Sisters until the tears ran down her cheeks. She used to declare that she had never laughed so much in all her life as during recreation in Carmel.

Everyone was at their ease with her. Soon after she herself had entered the Cologne Carmel she was given the wonderful experience of bringing in one of her young friends through her own example. This is what she wrote about it.

When we now stand facing each other in choir or walk together in procession I am struck more than ever by the wonderful ways of God. Naturally, in our seclusion we have a beautiful and silent Advent. How much one longs to send some of it to very many of those in the world… I believe that it would do them untold good to learn more of the peace of Carmel.

Teresia Renata Posselt, O.C.D.

Chapter 14: In the School of Humility

Posselt, T 2005, Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, translated from the German by Batzdorff S, Koeppel J, and Sullivan J, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

 Featured image: Photographer Tim Mossholder captures this image of pillar candles in an Advent wreath. Image credit: Tim Mossholder / Unsplash (Stock photo)

#advent #carmelites #silence #stEdithStein #teresiaRenataPosselt

Quote of the day, 21 April: St. Edith Stein

A few months previously a young Cologne girl had entered the small novitiate at Lindenthal. Wide-eyed, she had observed Sr. Benedicta and all the happenings on her special day. Now she clung to Sr. Benedicta like a small trusting child and asked, “How does Your Charity feel?”

Sr. Benedicta answered in a tone that cannot be imitated: “Like the Bride of the Lamb.”

Sr. Teresia Renata Posselt, O.C.D.

Recalling Edith Stein’s profession on Easter Sunday, 1935
Carmel of Cologne-Lindenthal

Note: To her good friend Mother Petra Bruning, OSU, Edith wrote:

The Bridegroom sends you the little wreath of myrtle with which your love decorated him, him as well as the bridal candle, the candles on the table, the napkin, cutlery, etc. [from Edith’s temporary profession, 21 April 1935]. The Bride wore a wreath of white roses. I was very happy to hear where the adornments came from. Heartfelt thanks for them.

Posselt, T 2005, Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, translated from the German by Batzdorff S, Koeppel J, and Sullivan J, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: A simple wreath of white flowers rests on rustic wooden planks, evoking the bridal crown worn by Edith Stein on the day of her temporary profession. Image credit: tab62 / Adobe Stock. Asset ID# 102178876. Licensed under Adobe Stock standard terms.

⬦ Reflection Question ⬦
Do I allow myself to be claimed by Christ with the joyful trust of a bride, wholly His and wholly loved?
⬦ Join the conversation in the comments.

#brideOfChrist #CarmelOfCologne #LambOfGod #novitiate #religiousProfession #StEdithStein #StTeresaBenedictaOfTheCross #TeresiaRenataPosselt

Quote of the day, 2 April: St. Edith Stein

“Through him, with him, and in him in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, for ever and ever.”

With these solemn words, the priest ends the eucharistic prayer at the center of which is the mysterious event of the consecration. These words at the same time encapsulate the prayer of the church: honor and glory to the triune God through, with, and in Christ.

Although the words are directed to the Father, all glorification of the Father is at the same time glorification of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the prayer extols the majesty that the Father imparts to the Son and that both impart to the Holy Spirit from eternity to eternity.

All praise of God is through, with, and in Christ.

• Through him, because only through Christ does humanity have access to the Father and because his existence as God-man and his work of salvation are the fullest glorification of the Father;
• with him, because all authentic prayer is the fruit of union with Christ and at the same time buttresses this union, and because in honoring the Son one honors the Father and vice versa;
• in him, because the praying church is Christ himself, with every individual praying member as a part of his Mystical Body, and because the Father is in the Son and the Son the reflection of the Father, who makes his majesty visible.

The dual meanings of through, with, and in clearly express the God-man’s mediation.

The prayer of the church is the prayer of the ever-living Christ. Its prototype is Christ’s prayer during his human life.

Saint Edith Stein

The Prayer of the Church (1936)

Note: Edith’s former prioress, Sister Teresia Renata Posselt, O.C.D. comments on this essay in her biography, Edith Stein: Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite. Sister Teresia Renata writes:

Ecclesia orans. The classic phrase is indeed the most concise way of expressing the essence of Edith Stein. She was the embodiment of the Church’s prayer. No happier theme could have been offered her, to touch the deepest springs of her heart, than that set her by the Academic Union of St. Boniface: The Prayer of the Church. In 1936 she contributed an essay under that title to a symposium on “The Lifestream of the Church” (Bonifatius Verlag, Paderborn). The thoughts she there expresses are the precious fruits of her own enlightened devotion.

Whoever reads this, can discern that Sr. Benedicta here opens the carefully guarded door to the sanctuary of her soul and lets us glimpse a little of her intimacy with God, kindled to a flame of love by the Holy Spirit in the opus Dei and in contemplation. Many people who were not very close to her were disappointed when Edith Stein chose to enter the contemplative order of Carmel rather than a liturgical order. But anyone who reads her article The Prayer of the Church will unhesitatingly include her among the great men and women of prayer from whom she there quotes, and will realize that this soul, inclined to contemplation by nature and grace, by inclination and vocation, could only become a Carmelite.

Posselt, T 2005, Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, translated from the German by Batzdorff S, Koeppel J, and Sullivan J, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Stein, E. 2014, The Hidden Life: hagiographic essays, meditations, spiritual texts, translated from the German by Stein, W, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: Orans woman in the Catacomb of Priscilla, a symbol of the Church at prayer. Image credit: Kristicak / Wikimedia Commons (Some rights reserved)

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Reflection question:
How does knowing you’re part of Christ’s Body change the way you pray?
Share your thoughts in the comments.

#contemplative #essay #Liturgy #prayer #StEdithStein #TeresiaRenataPosselt #vocation

It seems that the last word from Edith reached a St. Lioba Sister in Freiburg who received a small penciled note from an unknown quarter; it said no more than, “Greetings from my trip to Poland. Sister Teresia Benedicta.”

Sister Teresia Renata Posselt, O.C.D.

Chapter 22, The Last News

Note: Translator and editor Suzanne Batzdorff, who is also Edith Stein’s niece, notes the following details concerning the greetings to Freiburg:

The Sister referred to here was most likely Sister Placida Laubhardt, O.S.B. (1904–1998), a close friend of Edith Stein and a member of the St. Lioba Benedictine community in Günterstal, near Freiburg. Classified as ‘non-Aryan’ by the Nazi regime due to her father’s Jewish heritage, she was later interned in Ravensbrück. Before her own deportation, Sr. Placida destroyed all the letters she had received from Edith Stein, so we must assume this note was among them. Joachim Feldes reports that during a conversation with Sr. Placida on 21 January 1998, she confirmed receiving the note, recognized Edith’s handwriting, and admitted to burning it a few days before her arrest to protect her community. According to Sr. Placida, the actual wording of the note was: “Grüße von Schwester Teresia Benedicta a Cruce. Unterwegs ad orientem” or “Greetings from Sr. Teresia Benedicta a Cruce. En route to the East.” This formulation is different from the one given by Sister Teresia Renata.

Posselt, T 2005, Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, translated from the German by Batzdorff S, Koeppel J, and Sullivan J, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: The famous entrance gate to Auschwitz Camp bears the logo, “Work sets you free.” Image credit: Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/08/09/edith-adorientem/

#Benedictine #Freiburg #greetings #lastWords #message #StEdithStein #StTeresaBenedictaOfTheCross #SusanneBatzdorff #TeresiaRenataPosselt

It seems that the last word from Edith reached a St. Lioba Sister in Freiburg who received a small penciled note from an unknown quarter; it said no more than, “Greetings from my trip to Poland. Sister Teresia Benedicta.”

Sister Teresia Renata Posselt, O.C.D.

Chapter 22, The Last News

Note: Translator and editor Suzanne Batzdorff, who is also Edith Stein’s niece, notes the following details concerning the greetings to Freiburg:

The Sister referred to here was most likely Sister Placida Laubhardt, O.S.B. (1904–1998), a close friend of Edith Stein and a member of the St. Lioba Benedictine community in Günterstal, near Freiburg. Classified as ‘non-Aryan’ by the Nazi regime due to her father’s Jewish heritage, she was later interned in Ravensbrück. Before her own deportation, Sr. Placida destroyed all the letters she had received from Edith Stein, so we must assume this note was among them. Joachim Feldes reports that during a conversation with Sr. Placida on 21 January 1998, she confirmed receiving the note, recognized Edith’s handwriting, and admitted to burning it a few days before her arrest to protect her community. According to Sr. Placida, the actual wording of the note was: “Grüße von Schwester Teresia Benedicta a Cruce. Unterwegs ad orientem” or “Greetings from Sr. Teresia Benedicta a Cruce. En route to the East.” This formulation is different from the one given by Sister Teresia Renata.

Posselt, T 2005, Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, translated from the German by Batzdorff S, Koeppel J, and Sullivan J, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: The famous entrance gate to Auschwitz Camp bears the logo, “Work sets you free.” Image credit: Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/08/09/edith-adorientem/

#Benedictine #Freiburg #greetings #lastWords #message #StEdithStein #StTeresaBenedictaOfTheCross #SusanneBatzdorff #TeresiaRenataPosselt

The Pastoral Letter from the Dutch bishops
26 July 1942

Saint Edith Stein’s biographer and former novice mistress, Sister Teresia Renata Posselt, O.C.D. of the Carmel of Cologne witnessed from a distance the events in the Netherlands leading to the arrest of Edith Stein. She tells us that even in Germany, Hitler’s regime was targeting Discalced Carmelite nuns:

The first victims were the Sisters in Luxembourg who were driven out of their monastery in February 1941 so that it could be made into a clubhouse and dance-hall for the B.d.M. [League of German Girls]. Scarcely had these homeless nuns found refuge with their Sisters in Pützchen before this Carmel also, together with the Carmel of Aachen, was dissolved in a space of two hours by the arbitrary power of the Gestapo. Düren followed in August of the same year.

Sr. Teresia Renata indicates that during that same time frame, relations between the regime and the Dutch bishops had deteriorated:

In Holland, the regulations issued against the Jews grew steadily more fierce. In August 1941, a conflict had already arisen between the Dutch Episcopate and the German authorities.

Among the measures in Holland that caused the Dutch bishops to bristle: a 1941 decree from the regime, which stated that only Jewish teachers could teach Jewish children. The decree meant that Catholic children of Jewish parentage no longer could attend Catholic schools. Cardinal de Jong of Utrecht protested, declaring that Catholic schools would never exclude children because of their heritage.

When the Nazi regime next decreed that signs stating “Forbidden to Jews” should be posted on all public buildings, once again the Dutch bishops refused to comply. But all of these measures paled in comparison to what followed, as Sr. Teresia Renata explains:

Yet the exclusion of Jews from public life was nothing when compared to the mass deportations of men, women, and children, indeed of whole Jewish families, that began in 1942. As was generally feared, many of them went to meet certain death in the Polish concentration camps, where they were either gassed or driven to do inhuman work in the salt, lead, or tin mines.

Thus it followed that a telegram was sent to the highest Nazi official in the Netherlands (Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart) on 11 July 1942 by a united, ecumenical representation of Dutch churches expressing their anger at the deportations.

The Nazi regime replied that any converted Jews who became Christians before 1941 would be spared deportation. However, the Dutch churches, including the Catholics, were not appeased; they were still opposed to the mass deportations of the Jews.

Sr. Teresia Renata describes what happened next:

[T]herefore they resolved to issue a joint protest in writing that was to be read publicly in all the churches on Sunday 26 July 1942. The proclamation should contain the text of the telegram sent to Seyss-Inquart on 11 July 1942. But even before the day on which it was to be read, Seyss-Inquart and Schmidt [his associate, the General-Kommissar] found out about the content of this joint letter of the church communities.

On 24 July the Nazi officials made concerted efforts to persuade church leaders to omit the text of the 11 July protest telegram from their public proclamation to be read from the pulpit. Some were ready to relent, but Cardinal de Jong of Utrecht stood his ground. That a worldly power should intervene to influence the pastoral duties of the bishops was unthinkable.

Furthermore, the Dutch bishops’ pastoral letter had already been written on 20 July and distributed. It was impossible to retract the statement on purely practical grounds.

Thus on Sunday 26 July 1942, the pastoral letter of the Dutch episcopal conference was read in every church at every Mass. Sr. Teresia Renata tells us that the letter began as follows:

We are experiencing a time of great distress, as well from a spiritual as from a material standpoint. But there are two problems greater than any others, that of the Jews and that of those who are deported to forced labor abroad.

We must all become deeply aware of these dangers, and it is the purpose of this joint pastoral letter to make you conscious of them.

Such distress must also be brought to the notice of those who exercise power over these people. Therefore the Most Reverend [Catholic] Episcopate of the Netherlands, in conjunction with almost all the other church communities in the Netherlands, has turned to the authorities of the occupying forces; for the Jews among others, in a telegram with the following content dispatched on Saturday 11 July of this year:

“The undersigned church communities of the Netherlands, deeply shaken by the measures taken against the Jews in the Netherlands that have excluded them from participation in the normal life of the people, have learned with horror of the latest regulations by which men, women, children, and whole families are to be deported to the territory of the German Reich…”

The Nazi response was swift. On the following Sunday, 2 August 1942, Jewish converts in religious Orders were rounded up all over the Netherlands. St. Edith Stein and her sister Rosa were among them.

On the same day, General-Kommissar Schmidt publicly announced that the deportations were a direct reprisal against the pastoral letter that was read in the churches on 26 July. Sr. Teresia Renata tells us that Schmidt pressed the issue further:

Since the Catholic hierarchy… refuses to trouble about negotiations [to edit their letter], then we, for our part, are compelled to regard the Catholic Jews as our worst enemies and consequently see to their deportation to the East with all possible speed.

So it was that a Verbite priest remarked later: “all these religious, both men and women, truly died in testimonium fidei [in witness to the faith as martyrs], because their arrest was an act of reprisal for the bishops’ pastoral letter.”

Sister Teresia Renata Posselt, O.C.D.

Chapter 20, Plans of escape (excerpts)

Note: On the same day that the Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter was read in all the Dutch parishes, St. Titus Brandsma died a martyr in Dachau, on 26 July 1942. Edith and Rosa Stein were among scores of “Catholic Jews” who were arrested on 2 August 1942.

Posselt, T 2005, Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, translated from the German by Batzdorff S, Koeppel J, and Sullivan J, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: The Dutch episcopal conference met in the Bishop’s Palace in Utrecht on 14 December 1943. From left to right: Bishop J.P. Huybers (Haarlem), Bishop P. Hopmans (Breda), Cardinal Archbishop Dr. J. de Jong (Utrecht), Bishop G. Lemmens (Roermond, in which diocese the Carmel of Echt was located), Bishop W.P.A.M. Mutsaerts (Den Bosch). Image credit: NIOD Photo Archives (used by permission) 

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/08/01/posselt-nedbish/

#bishops #Holocaust #Jews #NationalSocialists #Nazi #Netherlands #pastoralLetter #repression #StEdithStein #TeresiaRenataPosselt

The Pastoral Letter from the Dutch bishops
26 July 1942

Saint Edith Stein’s biographer and former novice mistress, Sister Teresia Renata Posselt, O.C.D. of the Carmel of Cologne witnessed from a distance the events in the Netherlands leading to the arrest of Edith Stein. She tells us that even in Germany, Hitler’s regime was targeting Discalced Carmelite nuns:

The first victims were the Sisters in Luxembourg who were driven out of their monastery in February 1941 so that it could be made into a clubhouse and dance-hall for the B.d.M. [League of German Girls]. Scarcely had these homeless nuns found refuge with their Sisters in Pützchen before this Carmel also, together with the Carmel of Aachen, was dissolved in a space of two hours by the arbitrary power of the Gestapo. Düren followed in August of the same year.

Sr. Teresia Renata indicates that during that same time frame, relations between the regime and the Dutch bishops had deteriorated:

In Holland, the regulations issued against the Jews grew steadily more fierce. In August 1941, a conflict had already arisen between the Dutch Episcopate and the German authorities.

Among the measures in Holland that caused the Dutch bishops to bristle: a 1941 decree from the regime, which stated that only Jewish teachers could teach Jewish children. The decree meant that Catholic children of Jewish parentage no longer could attend Catholic schools. Cardinal de Jong of Utrecht protested, declaring that Catholic schools would never exclude children because of their heritage.

When the Nazi regime next decreed that signs stating “Forbidden to Jews” should be posted on all public buildings, once again the Dutch bishops refused to comply. But all of these measures paled in comparison to what followed, as Sr. Teresia Renata explains:

Yet the exclusion of Jews from public life was nothing when compared to the mass deportations of men, women, and children, indeed of whole Jewish families, that began in 1942. As was generally feared, many of them went to meet certain death in the Polish concentration camps, where they were either gassed or driven to do inhuman work in the salt, lead, or tin mines.

Thus it followed that a telegram was sent to the highest Nazi official in the Netherlands (Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart) on 11 July 1942 by a united, ecumenical representation of Dutch churches expressing their anger at the deportations.

The Nazi regime replied that any converted Jews who became Christians before 1941 would be spared deportation. However, the Dutch churches, including the Catholics, were not appeased; they were still opposed to the mass deportations of the Jews.

Sr. Teresia Renata describes what happened next:

[T]herefore they resolved to issue a joint protest in writing that was to be read publicly in all the churches on Sunday 26 July 1942. The proclamation should contain the text of the telegram sent to Seyss-Inquart on 11 July 1942. But even before the day on which it was to be read, Seyss-Inquart and Schmidt [his associate, the General-Kommissar] found out about the content of this joint letter of the church communities.

On 24 July the Nazi officials made concerted efforts to persuade church leaders to omit the text of the 11 July protest telegram from their public proclamation to be read from the pulpit. Some were ready to relent, but Cardinal de Jong of Utrecht stood his ground. That a worldly power should intervene to influence the pastoral duties of the bishops was unthinkable.

Furthermore, the Dutch bishops’ pastoral letter had already been written on 20 July and distributed. It was impossible to retract the statement on purely practical grounds.

Thus on Sunday 26 July 1942, the pastoral letter of the Dutch episcopal conference was read in every church at every Mass. Sr. Teresia Renata tells us that the letter began as follows:

We are experiencing a time of great distress, as well from a spiritual as from a material standpoint. But there are two problems greater than any others, that of the Jews and that of those who are deported to forced labor abroad.

We must all become deeply aware of these dangers, and it is the purpose of this joint pastoral letter to make you conscious of them.

Such distress must also be brought to the notice of those who exercise power over these people. Therefore the Most Reverend [Catholic] Episcopate of the Netherlands, in conjunction with almost all the other church communities in the Netherlands, has turned to the authorities of the occupying forces; for the Jews among others, in a telegram with the following content dispatched on Saturday 11 July of this year:

“The undersigned church communities of the Netherlands, deeply shaken by the measures taken against the Jews in the Netherlands that have excluded them from participation in the normal life of the people, have learned with horror of the latest regulations by which men, women, children, and whole families are to be deported to the territory of the German Reich…”

The Nazi response was swift. On the following Sunday, 2 August 1942, Jewish converts in religious Orders were rounded up all over the Netherlands. St. Edith Stein and her sister Rosa were among them.

On the same day, General-Kommissar Schmidt publicly announced that the deportations were a direct reprisal against the pastoral letter that was read in the churches on 26 July. Sr. Teresia Renata tells us that Schmidt pressed the issue further:

Since the Catholic hierarchy… refuses to trouble about negotiations [to edit their letter], then we, for our part, are compelled to regard the Catholic Jews as our worst enemies and consequently see to their deportation to the East with all possible speed.

So it was that a Verbite priest remarked later: “all these religious, both men and women, truly died in testimonium fidei [in witness to the faith as martyrs], because their arrest was an act of reprisal for the bishops’ pastoral letter.”

Sister Teresia Renata Posselt, O.C.D.

Chapter 20, Plans of escape (excerpts)

Note: On the same day that the Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter was read in all the Dutch parishes, St. Titus Brandsma died a martyr in Dachau, on 26 July 1942. Edith and Rosa Stein were among scores of “Catholic Jews” who were arrested on 2 August 1942.

Posselt, T 2005, Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, translated from the German by Batzdorff S, Koeppel J, and Sullivan J, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: The Dutch episcopal conference met in the Bishop’s Palace in Utrecht on 14 December 1943. From left to right: Bishop J.P. Huybers (Haarlem), Bishop P. Hopmans (Breda), Cardinal Archbishop Dr. J. de Jong (Utrecht), Bishop G. Lemmens (Roermond, in which diocese the Carmel of Echt was located), Bishop W.P.A.M. Mutsaerts (Den Bosch). Image credit: NIOD Photo Archives (used by permission) 

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/08/01/posselt-nedbish/

#bishops #Holocaust #Jews #NationalSocialists #Nazi #Netherlands #pastoralLetter #repression #StEdithStein #TeresiaRenataPosselt

My dear Reverend Mother,

Today we received your good letter. I thank you with all my heart for being willing to accept me as a member of your dear family—yours and that of all my dear sisters. I am unable to tell you how touched I am by your goodness and even more that of the Good God. You will understand it even better after you have heard the history of our lives and that of our family. We will now see if it is possible to get permission to leave the Netherlands. But it will probably take much time—months I suppose. I shall have to be content with such a promise.

Our dear Reverend Mother and my sister Rosa will add a few lines. Again, a thousand thanks, my dear Reverend Mother, and the expression of my respectful love in Jesus Christ.

Your very little and humble, unworthy,
Sr. Teresa Benedicta a Cruce, OCD

Saint Edith Stein

Letter 338 to Mother Marie Agnès de Wolff, O.C.D.
24 July 1892

On Saturday, 4 July 1942, the Chapter nuns of Le Pâquier were assembled for a meeting at which the Reverend Mother Prioress proposed to them that Sister Teresia Benedicta of the Cross, in the world Edith Stein, a professed Sister of the Cologne Carmel who is at present in the Carmel of Echt in Holland, be received as a member of the community, either permanently or temporarily according to circumstances…. On the fifth of the same month, a Sunday, the nuns were assembled once again and the Reverend Mother Prioress made the same proposal, after which it was unanimously resolved by a secret vote to receive Sister Teresa Benedicta into the community for an unlimited time.

We, the undersigned, testify that the above account is exact,
Sr. Marie Agnès of the Immaculate Conception, Prioress;
Sr. Marie-Françoise of the Most Sacred Heart, 1st Key-Bearer

Executed on 5 July 1942, at Le Pâquier

This excerpt is from the official record of the 5 July 1942 vote by the Chapter nuns of the Carmel of Le Pâquier in Switzerland to receive Edith as a member of their community. Their prioress shared the news of the unanimous approval in a 17 July letter to Mother Antonia, the prioress of the Carmel of Echt, Holland. Explore more about the Carmel of Le Pâquier on their website (available in French and German) and their Facebook page (in French).

Tucked away in the mountains of Fribourg, the Carmel of Le Pâquier was the first community of Discalced Carmelite nuns in Switzerland, founded in Lully in 1921. In 1936, Mother Marie Agnès de Wolff oversaw the construction of a new monastery in Le Pâquier, to which the growing community transferred. | Photo credit: Discalced Carmelites

Posselt, T 2005, Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, translated from the German by Batzdorff S, Koeppel J, and Sullivan J, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Stein, E. 1993, Self-Portrait in Letters, 1916-1942, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Discalced Carmelite, translated from the German by Koeppel, J, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: In this detail from the final photo taken in the Carmel of Cologne-Linthenthal, St. Edith Stein is seated in the cloister doorway. Biographer Teresia Renata Posselt, O.C.D. comments on the scene: “As usual she wore her threadbare Carmelite habit. When the Prioress, who was present, noticed how heavily darned it was, she took off her own scapular and placed it over Sr. Benedicta, who acknowledged the action with an indescribable look of filial gratitude in her beautiful eyes. The result was that final photograph that is true to life.” Image credit: Discalced Carmelites

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/07/04/edith-ltr338/

#CarmelDuPâquier #CarmelOfEcht #DiscalcedCarmelites #history #LePâquier #monasticLife #nuns #StEdithStein #Switzerland #TeresiaRenataPosselt #transfer #vocations

I received the beautiful wooden candlestick with the large Easter candle, although I surmise this large light was intended for the Novice Mistress [Sr. Teresia Renata]. It will burn for me now during my retreat, when I make my meditation in the solitude of my cell, away from the community.

Our holy Father John of the Cross will be my guide: the Ascent of Mount Carmel. Probably I will be allowed to begin early on Friday. I would like most of all to remain in solitude until the morning of the Clothing [15 April 1934], but there is a possibility that I will be called out the day before at the request of guests from out of town.

Edith wanted to begin her retreat on Freitag 6 April (Friday in Easter Week) but she was afraid that she would have to go to the parlor to meet guests on Sonnabend 14 April (Saturday).

I look forward with so much joy to the silence. As much as I love the Divine Office and as loath as I am to be away from the choir even for the shortest of the Hours—the basis of our life, after all, is the two hours of meditation provided by our schedule. Only since I’ve been enjoying this privilege do I know how much I missed by not having it outside.

Our Reverend Mother will surely be glad to send along [with this letter] the ritual for the Clothing ceremony. It will be so much better if you can read it before it takes place—even though you cannot be present yourself.

In her biography St. Edith Stein’s novice mistress mentions that Edith’s sister Rosa “sent some heavy white silk material” for the nuns to sew Edith’s bridal gown; and later, a white “Mass vestment” (Posselt 2005).

Particular thanks for the Easter Prefaces: they are helping me celebrate the beautiful octave. And above all, thank you again for your love that I have in no way earned.

Saint Edith Stein

Letter 168 to Mother Petra Brüning (excerpts)
Easter week 1934

Posselt, T 2005, Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, translated from the German by Batzdorff S, Koeppel J, and Sullivan J, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Stein, E. 2014, The Hidden Life: hagiographic essays, meditations, spiritual texts, translated from the German by Stein, W, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: Discalced Carmelite nuns from the Carmel of Consuegra, Spain prepare to welcome a new novice with the blessing of her new habit at Mass (detailed image). Image credit: José María Moreno García / Flickr (Some rights reserved).

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/04/12/edith-1934retreat/

#Clothing #Latin #novitiate #parlor #retreat #silence #solitude #StEdithStein #StJohnOfTheCross #TeresiaRenataPosselt