on pilgrimage - Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Homily
Monday of the 19th Week in Ordinary Time II
9 August 2010
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, virgin and martyr

I can think of no better companion for our trip today than St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, one of John Paul II's favorite saints, our patron for the day, and a saint for our modern times. We add her, as it were, to our list of friends and intercessors that we are accumulating on this pilgrimage. St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, Fr. Emil Kapaun, St. John Vianney, the patron of priests and the patron of the archdiocese, St. Charles Borromeo, the patron saint of seminarians, Mary, the mother of our vocations, and now St. Edith Stein. What a company of friends and witnesses go with us if we but invite them along. May we know their presence and rely more deeply upon their powerful intercession, and their willigness to obtain for us all that is good as we continue our travels. No matter how far we have come in our own conversion, and to get to the place where many of you now stand has required a lot of conversion, still St. Teresa leads the way for us. We have not allowed ourselves to be converted to the transforming love of God as much as she allowed herself to be captured by God. Teresa studied philsophy with greater ferver than we do. Her love of wisdom and truth and reality led her to profess faith in Jesus Christ, whom she found to be the way, the truth and the life. Through her example, let us never give anything less than the best to our studies, whether we are studying philsophy or theology or anything else that can help our minds to seek God above all things.

Teresa was a convert to Catholicism to Judaism, and not just an intellectual convert. She professed vows with the discalced Carmelites, and entered into a life of deep prayer and of sincere chastity, poverty and obedience, and she lived these vows to the point of arriving at a true sanctity. Known as a great philsopher, the Church honors her just as much or more for her virtuous life, for her purity of heart, and we too can rely on her intercession in our desire to be chaste spouses of the Church with Christ. And yet there is more. St. Teresa not only gave her heart and her mind and body to Christ, she was chosen to shed her blood as well. She is venerated as a martyr of the Church, being arrested by the Nazis in 1942 and dying in the Auschwitz concentration camp that same year.

Jesus teaches his disciples that he must be arrested and be killed, and the news of this filled them with grief. He teaches Peter that he and his disciples must remain focused on this witness that was to be consummated in Jerusalem, and not be distracted by issues that in the end amount only to a few coins. May we learn from Jesus today, and by the example of St. Edith Stein, how to keep before us the perfect and complete gift of our lives that we are to give in witness to Christ. Let us not be grieved over the witness that Christ wants to give in us, with us and through us, in the very circumstances of our lives. As we know well, there are thousands of issues and thoughts, feelings and desires that come to us in the course of our formation. A few of them are critical to our sincere conversion to the love of God. A few of them are critical to the fulfillment of our vocation, so that our lives can speak with power exactly the word that we have been given to speak. With a desire for our lives to speak like St. Edith Stein's, let us cast off with the virtue of humility all those things that do not really matter, and be more generous in advancing in the way that God would have us go.