Edith Stein's association
with several Jesuits
John E.Brooks s.j.
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Edith Stein's association John E.Brooks s.j. |
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Excerpted from a 1986 Address to the Faculty of "Holy Cross University" (USA), delivered by the President of Holy Cross, John E.Brooks s.j.
In 1925, Fr.Erich Przywara, the Jesuit philosopher of religion, was introduced to Edith Stein, and had high regard for her as a teacher, an educator. Early on, he asked her to translate some of the letters of Cardinal Newman, and this was the beginning of a lively intellectual friendship between the two.
He also recommended that she translate St.Thomas, up to then terra incognita to the phenomenologists. He put her in touch with the Benedictine Abbey of Beuron where she was able to satisfy her thirst for prayer. Beginning in 1927, he assumed the responsibility of setting up regular lecture tours for Edith.
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In 1933, very much aware of the catastrophe threatening the Jewish people in Germany, Edith had requested Pope Pius XI to write an encyclical in defense of the Jews. Unfortunately, this request was not complied with at the time, due in large part to faulty handling of the request.
But shortly thereafter, the Pope did commission two Jesuits, Fathers LaFarge and Grundlach, to compose a document condemning racial persecution. The outbreak of World War II and the death of the Pope prevented the publication of these efforts, but parts of their work later appeared in the speeches of Pius XII.
In 1941, Fr.Jan H. Nota, s.j., Professor of Philosophy and Phenomenology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, met Edith Stein in Echt, Holland. He was, at the time, a young Dutch Jesuit, who had recently moved to Valkenberg as a result of the 1940 commandeering of the Jesuit house at Maastricht by the Nazis.
Edith's philosophical study, "Finite and Eternal Being", had been set for publication in 1936, but anti-Jewish laws in Germany prevented it, and eventually the plates had been destroyed. The superior at the Convent in Echt decided to consult the Valkenberg Jesuits about the feasibility of having the work published in either Holland or Belgium.
They also asked if a Jesuit priest would be available to collaborate with Edith Stein. Fr.Jean Nota was recommended, having just finished his own dissertation on Max Scheler. This was the beginning of a brief but profound friendship that developed between Fr. Nota and Edith Stein, as he came to know her as a person who "had continued to be a great philosopher after having become a Carmelite nun."
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He last saw her on 16 July 1942. On 9 August 1982, the 40
It is Fr. Nota's hope that Edith Stein's thought will become more accessible to a wider audience, both among students and the general public, so that people will appreciate her understanding of human existance and be helped to live out that existance themselves, meaningfully and fraternally, in the midst of a troubled world.
For all these reasons Edith Stein Hall has been named in honor of a remarkable woman who was a brilliant philosopher and lecturer, a productive researcher and author, a fine teacher, a mystic, an exemplary feminist, a victim of the Holocaust and a friend of several Jesuits.
"The darker it becomes around us, the more we ought to open our hearts to the light that comes from on high." (Edith Stein)
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Edith Stein: an example of spiritual freedom (Sr Licinia Faresin) |
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