Optional Memorial of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Virgin and Martyr
For what do we live? Is it only for this world? Nineveh, the capital of long powerful Assyria, had armies and victories and an empire that stretched across many nations. Yet, all of it was only for this world. It indulged in tremendous brutality seeking only to build up its stature in this life. To Nineveh, long successful in the world’s eyes, the prophet Nahum, from one of the small kingdoms that had suffered much at Assyria’s hands, proclaims impending doom. Why? Because injustice is no foundation for true and lasting greatness.
Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Carmelite nun whose earthly life ended in a gas chamber in Auschwitz in 1942, had the same vision as Nahum. She could see that brutality was no foundation for true and lasting greatness. Instead, love for her Jewish brothers and sisters who were suffering and being murdered, prompted her to embrace solidarity with them, even at the cost of her own life. She lived for love of Christ and her neighbor, and proclaimed that love even in the face of worldly death. May she pray for us, that we love Christ above all and gladly embrace any sacrifice that Christian love asks of us.