Today, August 9, 2021, we celebrate the memorial of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, virgin, and martyr.

Santa Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was a brilliant philosopher who stopped believing in God when she was 14. Twelve years later after reading the autobiography of Teresa of Avila, she began a spiritual journey that led to her baptism in 1922. She imitated Saint Teresa by becoming a Carmelite, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

She was born into a prominent Jewish family in Breslau, Germany—now Wroclaw, Poland. As a student at the University of Göttingen, she excelled as a protégé of Edmund Husserl, one of the leading phenomenologists, Edith earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1916. She continued as a university teacher until 1922, but her appointment as lecturer at the Educational Institute of Munich ended under pressure from the Nazis.

In 1938, the Nazis occupied Echt, Netherlands Cologne and they arrested all Dutch Jews who had become Christians. Teresa Benedicta was martyred in a gas chamber in Auschwitz on August 9, 1942.

Pope John Paul II beatified Teresa Benedicta of the Cross in 1987 and canonized her 12 years later.