St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
09/August/2007 Filed in:
JottingsAugust is a month of light and shadow, especially when one lives according to the liturgy. The great feast of the Transfiguration will be forever linked with the terrible bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the glorious Assumption of Our Lady is ushered in, so to say, by the death of Maximilian Kolbe as a martyr of charity amidst the waste and shame of Nazi persecution. Today's feast has a particular poignancy because it highlights the way in which war crushes, or attempts to crush, all that is noblest and truest in human nature. St Teresa Benedicta, so talented intellectually and spiritually, a daughter of Israel and of Carmel, met a squalid and brutal death with her sister Rosa because men and women less gifted, less generous, were consumed with hatred and the lust to destroy, or were else too weak or scared to stand up for what was right. The decisions most of us face are not life and death ones, but we still need courage to prefer truth to falsehood. Doing the right thing can indeed be costly, so let us ask the prayers of St Teresa Benedicta.