August 9 is the feast of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (also known as Edith Stein), virgin and martyr, a Jewish convert to Catholicism, who later became a Discalced Carmelite nun and was martyred at Auschwitz. She is the patron saint of converted Jews, loss of parents, martyrs, and World Youth Day. Here are ten powerful quotes from Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross:
“One cannot desire freedom from the cross when one is especially chosen for the cross.”
“For by doing what God demands of us with total surrender of our innermost being, we cause the divine life to become our own inner life. Entering into ourselves, we find God in our own selves.”
“Whoever seeks the truth seeks God, whether he is conscious of it or not.”
“In the heart of Jesus, which was pierced, the kingdom of heaven and the land of earth are bound together. Here is for us the source of life. This heart is the heart of the Triune Divinity, and the center of all human hearts… It draws us to itself with secret power, it conceals us in itself in the Father’s bosom and floods us with the Holy Spirit. This heart, it beats for us in a small tabernacle where it remains mysteriously hidden in that still, white host.”
“Whatever was not planned by me, was planned by God.”
“God Himself teaches us to go forward with our hand in His by means of the Church’s liturgy.”
“The more lofty the degree of loving union to which God destines the soul, so much more profound and persistent must be its purification.”
“There is a state of resting in God, an absolute break from all intellectual activity, when one forms no plans, makes no decisions and for the first time really ceases to act, when one simply hands over the future to God’s will and ‘surrenders himself to fate’.”
“God is there in these moments of rest and can give us in a single instant exactly what we need. Then the rest of the day can take its course under the same effort and strain, perhaps, but in peace. And when night looks back and you see how fragmentary everything has been, and how much you planned that has gone undone, and all the reasons you have to be embarrassed and ashamed: just take everything exactly as it is, put it in God’s hands and leave it to Him – really rest – and start the next day as a new life.”
“Learn from St. Therese to depend on God alone and serve Him with a wholly pure and detached heart. Then, like her you will be able to say ‘I do not regret that I have given myself up to Love’.’’
~ Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
The post Top Ten Quotes from St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross appeared first on Jean M. Heimann.
