Originally posted at Behold on 8.9.23, for the Feast of St. Edith Stein

“Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether consciously or unconsciously.” —St. Edith Stein

I’ve always felt a bit unsettled. I changed both jobs and apartments several times in a mere five years, never finding something that clicked. I was wayward and a little lost, despite efforts to make those rented abodes feel like home. Even in Christianity, as a convert, I spent a few years drifting as I searched for the Truth. Everyone around me seemed to be more settled and confident, less transitory.

When I learned of St. Teresia Benedicta of the Cross, more commonly known as St. Edith Stein, she seemed a fervent religious who surely had it all together. She was a stubborn feminist during World War II, unafraid to declare that a woman’s place doesn’t have to be in the kitchen. But when I delved more into her history, which includes her Jewish upbringing and a stint in agnosticism, I started to see things differently.

If anyone earned the right to feel unsettled, it was St. Edith. She read innumerable books searching for Truth, finding them wanting. She tested the waters of atheism, throwing it aside as nonsense. Despite a doctorate in Philosophy, she had trouble finding employment as a Jewish woman. Even after joining the Carmelite Order—after being denied several times—she transferred to convents across different countries to remain undetected by the Nazis. Yet she was able to say,

“When night looks back and you see how fragmentary everything has been, and how much you planned that has gone undone, and all the reasons you have to be embarrassed and ashamed: just take everything exactly as it is, put it in God’s hands and leave it to Him.”

It’s said when the SS van eventually came for the Catholic Jews, after declaring they wouldn’t, St. Edith calmly waited in the street outside the convent. Later, in the concentration camp, she refused an offer to escape because she wouldn’t abandon her Jewish brethren.

In a life constantly in flux, only one thing kept her at peace:

“If we drink from the fount of the Saviour each day, then each day will lead us deeper into eternal life and prepare us to throw off the burdens of this life easily and cheerfully at some time when the call of the Lord sounds.”

Life is transitory. There will always be changes, both planned and unplanned. There will be roadblocks. There will be detours, or we never arrive at our anticipated destination. The lives of the saints, and notably St. Edith, show that one thing remains constant: God. No matter where we are, or how we get there, He is the One thing that keeps us grounded. I didn’t fully understand this until I found a home in the Church. At that point in my life, everything was uprooted—I desperately sought a new job, and was weary of rented apartments. It was no mistake that I found St. Edith during that time. On the surface, nothing went right for her. But within, she found rest. When she still lived with her Jewish family, she would sneak out before sunrise to attend Mass so they didn’t know. At the Carmel, she adored those required two hours of daily prayer. “There is a state of resting in God,” she writes, “an absolute break from all intellectual activity, when one forms no plans, makes no decisions and for the first time really ceases to act, when one simply hands over the future to God’s will and surrenders himself to fate.”

St. Edith Stein’s feast day is August 9th. Pray that she intercede in those occasions of turmoil, in the constantly-changing things of life. Pray that she may be a model of peace, an inspiration to find Truth and rest in our Creator, and, in her words, to “leave it to Him.”