Teresia Benedicta a Cruce
Tomorrow, on the 9th August, we remember Saint Edith Stein, the Carmelite nun, who died a martyr‘s death in Auschwitz-Birkenau in the year 1942, along with her sister Rosa Stein.
Edith Stein grew up in Breslow as the youngest child of a Jewish merchant. She was a very intelligent woman, studying psychology, philosophy, history, and German philology at university, writing both a doctoral thesis and a habilitation treatise, which was declined because she was a woman, and for some years assisting the philosopher Edmund Husserl in his work.
Then, in her late twenties, she came to faith in Jesus Christ through reading the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila. She was baptized and received into the Catholic Church on the 1st January 1922. Before entering the Carmelite order in October 1933, just a couple of months after the rise and implementation of the Nazi regime, she worked as a teacher at Catholic schools for girls. Remembering the saintly woman and spiritual mother to which she owed the road to her conversion, she chose Teresia Benedicta a Cruce as her religious name.
Many things could be said about Saint Edith Stein, her life, and her martyrdom and would be noteworthy, yet let us, in honor of her, simply look at some of her remarks concerning the marks of “feminine singularity“, of women‘s unique approach to life and the world around them – remarks from almost a hundred years ago, during the period of her life as a school teacher, when she gave a talk at the Bavarian Catholic Women Teachers Association on Woman‘s Intrinsic Value in National Life.
The first misogynist
What does it mean to be a woman?
Some time during 2019, I read a book by Carrie Gress that opens with the following observations on the present-day disorientiation in regards to masculinity and femininity in its introduction chapter:
“Women have been a mystery since Adam encountered Eve. But sometime over the last fifty years, a dark change has taken place in the lives of women and the men who love them. There is much confusion today about what it means to be a woman and even more confusion about how to treat them. The definitions of womanhood seem as numerous as there are people, with each woman trying to work out for herself who she is and how she ought to live her life. Meanwhile, men live in a constant state of shadowboxing, trying to stay in sync with the new progressive demands of womanhood. (…) The changes that we have seen over the last half-century go well beyond effective teaching, psychology, politics, and fancy marketing. Yes, all of these have played a role in influencing our culture, but there is most certainly another actor involved in the deconstruction of the family. (…) The attack has been directed at the very areas where women are able to reflect the love, goodness, and likeness of the Virgin Mary: in their virginity and motherhood.“
Carrie Gress, The Anti-Mary Exposed. Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity, TAN Books, p. ix-xv
This destructive “actor“ in the background Carrie Gress talks about is, as she clarifies later on, the enemy of all mankind and of the well-being of our souls, Satan, who ardently hates the Blessed Virgin, as she is the one who gave birth to the King of Kings defeating him once and for all…
While it is definitely not easy to be a woman in our day and age, it maybe never was – beginning with Eve, the mother of all the living… Satan is a misogynist from the very start. He knows that women are “the weaker vessel“ (1 Peter 3: 7), and as the story of Genesis 3 depicts, he knows how to exploit their fragility to his advantage. That there is one “weak“ woman in human history who is actually stronger than him – the Blessed Virgin Mary, the New Eve “full of grace“ undoing Eve‘s fall from grace – is as humiliating to him as can be. In her, the curse of Eve is reversed. In her, the most blessed of all women, all women are blessed.
Yet they are attacked in their womanhood, in the feminine nature they share with both the Old and the New Eve, on account of Satan‘s hatred for the Blessed Virgin and for all the graces she has been mediating for all of mankind, on account of his hostility toward the one woman who never gave him the slightest little chance to gain any foothold over her most pure soul.
Companionship and motherliness as feminine singularity
Saint Edith Stein would have agreed with Carrie Gress in stating that motherhood, or motherliness, is the supreme and unique vocation of women, something absolutely intrinsic to our specific feminine human nature. We find this notion firmly expressed in her talk on Woman‘s Intrinsic Value in National Life.
“To be a companion, that means to be support and mainstay, and to be able to be so, a woman herself must stand firmly; however, this is possible only if inwardly everything is in right order and rests in equilibrium. To be a mother is to nourish and protect true humanity and bring it to development. But again, this necessitates that she possess true humanity herself, and that she is clear as to what it means; otherwise, she cannot lead others to it. (…) These are mothers who have a firm philosophy of life, who know to what purpose they should rear their children, who have an open vision of the developmental possibilities of their children. But also they have an incorruptible perspective of the dangerous drives in them which must be curtailed and which must be seized with a powerful hand at the right moment. And these also must be mothers who know their place, who do not think that they are able to do everything themselves but, on the contrary, are able to let go of their children and place them in God‘s hand when the time comes, when the children have outgrown them. Such mothers are probably the most important agents for the recovery of the nation. (…) Everywhere the need exists for maternal sympathy and help, and thus we are able to recapitulate in the one word motherliness that which we have developed as the characteristic value of woman. Only, the motherliness must be that which does not remain within the narrow circle of blood relations or of personal friends; but in accordance with the model of the Mother of Mercy, it must have its root in universal divine love for all who are there, belabored and burdened.“
Edith Stein: Essential Writings, Orbis Books, p. 99-108
We see that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the “Mother of Mercy“, is the supreme model of true motherliness and that every woman is called to develop this quality in herself and become more like Mary throughout her life.
Interestingly enough, Saint Edith Stein hints at the necessity of a woman standing on firm ground before she can live up to her true calling in a healthy and fruitful way. This firm ground is a “firm philosophy of life“ lived out, empowering a woman to true self-realization. Yet this orienting and ordering philosophy can only come to a woman through the graces of the ultimate firm ground that is the man and Son of God Jesus Christ, not, as promised by the first misogynist, through the means of isolating herself from both God and Adam and eating from the tree of the “knowledge of good and evil“ on her own, following the misogynist‘s alluring lead. The daughters of Eve, who was tailored by God out of the very side of Adam to be his unique helpmate, can only truly find themselves in relation to both God and Adam. To be united with Jesus Christ, the “New Adam“, is a woman‘s true “autonomy“ and “self-sufficiency“ enabling her to fully give herself to others as a companion and a mother.
Two main tendencies of our feminine human nature
Let‘s get a bit more into what Saint Edith Stein has to say about women‘s singularity, about certain natural – God-given – tendencies of our feminine human nature in contrast to a man‘s God-given abilities.
“1. Man appears more objective: it is natural for him to dedicate his faculties to a discipline (be it mathematics or technology, a trade or business management) and thereby to subject himself to the precepts of this discipline. Woman‘s attitude is personal; and this has several meanings: in one instance she is happily involved with her total being in what she does; then, she has particular interest for the living, concrete person, and, indeed, as much for her own personal life and personal affairs as for those of other persons. 2. Through submission to a discipline, man easily experiences a one-sided development. In woman, there lives a natural drive toward totality and self-containment. And, again, this drive has a twofold direction: she herself would like to become a complete human being, one who is fully developed in every way; and she would like to help others to become so, and by all means, she would like to do justice to the complete human being whenever she has to deal with persons. Both of these characteristic impulses as they emerge from nature do no demonstrate yet any initial value; indeed, they can be harmful. But, correctly handled, they can become most valuable.“
Edith Stein: Essential Writings, Orbis Books, p. 99-108
While making clear that these natural impulses of women can go astray and must be developed as virtues, not vices, Saint Edith Stein identifies two main aspects of being a woman: Women tend to take a “personal attitude“, and they tend to yield to “totality“ and “completeness“. They are interested in persons, not things, in concrete beings and situations, not abstract ponderings, and in a complete assessment of someone or something.
It has become a well-known and almost threadbare fact disseminated by popular science that in women‘s brains there is much more neuronal connection between the right and the left hemisphere than in those of men, and that men‘s ability to focus on only one thing, and to “compartmentalize“ their brains and their activities is much higher. Women just can‘t stop sensing, feeling, thinking, and at times talking about “everything“ “all the time“. They can‘t stop seeing and making connections and joining the dots. They always crave the “whole picture“.
This must be why women have the potential to develop into good and wise mothers who reach levels of a deep and complete understanding of concrete human beings – a wisdom men tend to admire, as they themselves hardly ever get there.
We women, in turn, tend to admire in men this unique ability to “simplify“ things, to boil things down to their essence, and to thereby solve almost any problems that keep plagueing us. Because in our heads, each and every problem can become so complex and complicated, that it feels almost always quite “unsolvable“. That can be just one of various downsides, then, of our tendency toward “completeness“…
Remedies for the vices of “hyper-femininity“
Finally, Saint Edith Stein gives the advice that every woman should dedicate herself to some sort of “thoroughly objective work“ in order to make her natural impulses virtuous, in order to cure herself of the ailments of a “hyper-feminine nature“:
“Every such work, no matter of what kind, whether housework, a trade, science, or anything else, necessitates submitting to the laws of the matter concerned; the whole person, thoughts just as all moods and dispositions, must be made subordinate to the work. And whoever has learned this, has become objective, has lost something of the hyper-individuality and has attained a definite freedom of self; at the same time she has attained an inner depth – she has attained a basis of self-control. Indeed, every young girl should receive a basic vocational formation for the sake of these great personal gains, quite aside from any economic compulsion; and after this formation, she should hold a position which completely fulfills her. No other environment than the life of the high school girl of the old style and that of the unoccupied woman from affluent circles provides a more fertile soil for the debasement of the feminine singularity and for hysteria, its sickly enhancement.“
Edith Stein: Essential Writings, Orbis Books, p. 100-101
There is, then, also a need for not overdoing the male-female polarity, pushing it into unhealthy realms, but for integrating into one’s own personality and character formation some of the potentials often associated as natural strengths with the opposite sex.
Ultimately, men and women are not only utterly distinct from one another, but they also share one common and indivisible human nature and along with it a common calling towards perfection. This shared human nature stands in need of “objectivity“ – encounter with reality and the fullness of truth – so that toxic versions of our self-realization as both men and women may be curbed.
The absolutely perfect templates of redeemed humanity, the “New Adam“ and the “New Eve“, Jesus and Mary, are able to show us what the fullness of all truth, goodness, and beauty means. Mercy, compassion, kindness, meekness, patience, hospitality, and sensitivity are virtues for men, too, not just for women. And in turn, tradition has often depicted the Blessed Virgin Mary as the strong and powerful co-redemptrix crushing Satan – “she that comes forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army in battle array“ (Canticles 6: 10) – strong, powerful, prudent, and brave like Old Testament Judit with her sword against Holofernes.
Besides “objective work“, which is an encounter with reality, there is another and the most important antidote to a feminine nature obsessed too much with personal affairs and totality, and thus growing vicious instead of virtuous. The most important medicine against all feminine tendency toward “hysteria“ is the encounter with the one who is Truth, the union with the “New Adam“, with Jesus Christ:
“The better we get to know the Savior, the more we are conquered by his sublimity and gentleness, by his kingly freedom which knows no other obligation than submission to the Father‘s will, and by his freedom from all living creatures which is simultaneously the foundation for his compassion toward each living creature. And the deeper this image of God penetrates into us, the more it awakens our love. (…) Through his sacraments, he purifies and strengthens us. And if we turn confidently to him, which is his will, his spirit penetrates us more and more and converts us; through union with him, we learn to dispense with human props and to gain the freedom and strength which we must have in order to be the support and mainstay for others.“
Edith Stein: Essential Writings, Orbis Books, p. 101-102