Memorial of St. Teresia Benedicta a Cruce

Seven years ago, on this date, I received the Sacrament of Confirmation. For a long time, I could not remember the date, until last year when I started looking for my confirmation patron saint and found that the memorial of St Edith Stein, also popularly known as St Teresia Benedicta a Cruce (her Latin title, while the English spelling is "St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross"), is celebrated on this date, August 9th.

(Needless to say, I was overjoyed to 'discover' this saint, learning that she was canonized just one year before my confirmation, and to visit the city of Cologne, where she spent her days as a Carmelite nun—though I missed the sculpture of the 'Saint without a grave')

In many ways, St Teresia Benedicta is a model for our generation, a generation that often prides itself in being a thinking generation. In times when rationalism and intellectualism are often used to ridicule faith, St Teresia Benedicta showed how fides et ratio are not only not opposed but how our thinking faculties lead us to seek and contemplate our Creator.

Read here a short hagiography of her life.

St Teresia Benedicta, pray for us.