Emphasis Preaching Journal

On Sunday, October 11, 1998, Pope John Paul II canonized Teresa Benedicta (1891-1942). She was born a Jew named Edith Stein but was baptized at the age of thirty, and eleven years later, under her new name, she took the vows of a Carmelite nun. During World War II, even though she was a Christian, she was made to wear the Jewish star. When German troops occupying Holland rounded up all Jewish-born Catholic converts in the summer of 1942, she was sent to Auschwitz, where she died in a gas chamber. It would seem to some that she died because she was a Jew, but the Catholic Church sees her death as the result of a reprisal by the Germans for a brave Catholic stance when the Dutch bishops denounced the persecution of Jews only two days earlier. The miracle which qualifies her for sainthood occurred in 1986. Benedicta McCarthy of Brockton, Massachusetts, a child of two, was suffering from an accidental overdose of Tylenol and was not expected to survive. Her family prayed to Teresa Benedicta, and the child lived.

Christians have a special status in the sight of God, not because of what we have done, but because his Holy Spirit has been bestowed on those who believe in Jesus Christ. Not only are we saints in his sight, but we are his beloved children who can speak intimately with him now, and who will share in his glory in eternity. There is no controversy about that.

-- Guettler