Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
My original plan was to go to Auschwitz as part of our pilgrimage today to honor her and to remember the many souls all over the world who still suffer as victims of inhumane ideologies and godless malice. Last year, in Dachau, I remember the sobering sounds of a young woman sobbing. The effects of cruelty ought to be sobbed over and remembering the evil of which we are capable ought to move us to beg for God’s mercy. This is what I had hoped to do today. However, most of our group arrived today and many of them had difficulty getting here. So my day was spent gathering and welcoming our pilgrims.
Hospitality – giving and receiving it – is a vital part of the spirituality of being a pilgrim. There is something of the mystery of welcoming Christ in it. Sometimes, listening to God in prayer must be temporarily postponed so that we can welcome the Lord in the disguise of those He sends us. Nonetheless, a special grace still connected me to St. Teresa. Three pilgrims who came yesterday had some free time this afternoon while everyone else was getting in. So they went out to the former extermination camp on their own — not only to honor St. Teresa (Edith Stein) but also to honor St. Maximilian Kolbe who was killed in a starvation bunker in the same complex a couple miles away. In fact, yesterday was the anniversary of his being sent to the bunker after he offered to substitute himself for a man condemned to die. Accounts from the prison guards themselves tell us that he turned that hellish bunker into a place of love, praying with and comforting those with whom he was condemned unto the end. When the seminarians left to go to this bunker today, they carried my intentions with them — which means they carried your intentions too.
I just recently read the post of St. Teresa Benedicta, and I was deeply moved by it. It is just incredible how God touches us in the least likely moments we'd expect him to. God grant us the least of strength these people had to love you and honor you…
(I wanted to share the article with Jewish friend lol)