\nToday\u00b9s liturgy places the impassioned prayer of Esther on the lips of Teresa Benedicta in Auschwitz. \u00b3As a child I was wont to hear from the people of the land of my forefathers that you, O Lord, chose Israel from among all peoples, and our fathers from among all their ancestors, as a lasting heritage, and that you fulfilled all your promises to them. Be mindful of us, O Lord. Manifest yourself in the time of our distress.\u00b3(Est 4:3, 12). This canticle of Esther occurs in our cursus for the Divine Office at Lauds on Saturday of the second week; on Saturday of the first week, the canticle of Judith occurs in the same place. This was done designedly. On Saturday \u2039 Shabbat \u2039 the day marked by the presence of the Virgin Mary, we pray with her in the inspired words of Israel\u00b9s holy women.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\n\nHow can we who were born in the century of the Holocaust, not be moved by this daughter of the Synagogue and of the Church? As we celebrate her martyrdom today, we are mindful that the Sacred Body and Precious Blood of Jesus offered and received in this Eucharist are Jewish flesh and Jewish blood. In the Eucharist, the anguished prayer of Esther is assumed into the prayer of the crucified and forsaken Jesus. In the Eucharist, Jewish and Gentile Christians enter together into the \u00b3adoration in spirit and in truth\u00b2 (Jn 4:24) revealed by Christ. In the Eucharist, Christ\u00b9s promise of \u00b3a spring of water, welling up to eternal life\u00b2 (Jn 4:14) is wondrously fulfilled. The force of that torrent is capable of extinguishing every bitterness, of overcoming every horror, of quenching every thirst. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today is the memorial of this saint, born and more well-known as Edith Stein, philosopher, Jewish convert to Catholicism, Carmelite nun, killed at Auschwitz. There is an abundance of material available on the Web related to St. Teresa Benedicta, of course. A few links: A relatively brief introduction to her life from Crisis Magazine: Another…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}