Attending the powerful performance of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites at Covent
Garden last night I took to thinking how it was that the Discalced Carmelite
charism enunciated first by St Teresa of Avila had led to so many courageous
women who had willingly given up their lives for faith. Visiting the Carmelite
Convent of Ware a few weeks back and meeting these remarkable women in the
flesh it is perhaps no surprise. The author of the original novel upon which
the opera is based, Gertrud von Le Fort, said in a lecture that her intention
in writing was to enunciate ‘the special experience’ of contemporary humanity
which is ‘a profound horror of the threat that all that is good, all that has
seemed our safe possession for centuries will be ruined.’ As a result of this
the modern person, she continues, although hostile to Christ:
Is nonetheless turning their face toward the mystery of Christ, even if
unconsciously and involuntarily. The transformation of destruction and annihilation
into sacrifices of love and hope – that is what I try to express in my books. I
consider this to be the fate of Europe, of our culture and our religion… for
the poet nothing is past, but only transformed.
Beautifully expressed in the opera, this ‘transformation of destruction
and annihilation into sacrifices of love and hope’ is what lies at the heart of
the Carmelite charism and what makes this charism so peculiarly relevant to
(and resilient within) our contemporary world where faith contends with
despair, destruction and loss on a daily basis. I include below some of my
writing on Edith Stein, another remarkable 20th Century Carmelite
martyr, taken from my ‘Bloomsbury Guide to Christian Spirituality’ whose life
strangely mirrors those of the sisters of Compiègne. There are a few more
performances of Dialogues scheduled
for Covent Garden next week (and it will be broadcast on Radio 3 later this
week). Sadly I will be in Rome so cannot attend but I would strongly recommend
you to attend or listen to this extraordinary production if you can. If you cannot, here is the final scene on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFL2iu4faEU
Born of a devout Jewish family in Breslau, Germany, Edith Stein
(1891-1942), later to be known as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, developed
an early love and skill in philosophy which was to remain with her throughout
her life. The greatest influence on her philosophical development was the work
of Edmund Husserl and the newly emerging phenomenological school. From her Jewish
faith, Edith turned to atheism, although always with a lively interest in the
‘God question’. In all her atheistic questing she sensed the importance of the
divine perspective for all phenomenological research. The key moment of her
conversion occurred in 1921 when she stayed at the house of some friends, the
Conrad-Martiuses, at their home near Bergzabern. Wanting some reading for the
evening she looked through the bookshelves of her hosts and found Teresa of
Avila’s ‘Book of the Life’. She was not able to sleep that night and was
completely gripped by the narrative that Teresa presented. Afterwards she would
say of Teresa’s book: ‘This is the truth’, finally she had found what she had
been looking for (See Herbstrith 1992:65). As she would write later ‘It is just
the people who at first passionately embrace the world who penetrate farthest
into the depths of the soul. Once God’s powerful hand has freed them from its
allurements, they are taken into their innermost selves’ (From ‘Die Seelenburg’
in Welt und Person: Beitrag zum
christlichen Wahrheitsstreben, Stein 4:66).
Once Edith had found
‘the treasure hidden in the field’ she went away, sold everything she had and
bought the field. She was baptised a Christian in 1922 and began an extended
study of the Church Fathers and scripture, especially the works of St Thomas
Aquinas. The next ten years were ones of teaching and work to reconcile
Christian and atheist philosophy, in particular the phenomenology of her
‘master’ Husserl and the high scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas. Perhaps the most
remarkable fruit of this time is the delightful Festschrift she wrote for Husserl’s seventieth birthday, What is Philosophy?, where a tired
Husserl slumps down on his sofa after a long day lecturing only to be surprised
by the shade of St Thomas Aquinas who then proceeds to question the master on
the nature of phenomenology and God (reprinted as Knowledge and Faith, Edith Stein, Collected Works, 8).
Husserl would end his
days a Christian having experienced a deathbed conversion in 1938. On hearing
the news, Edith, just about to take her solemn vows in the Cologne Carmel,[1]
wrote to another sister: ‘As regards my dear Master, I have no worries about
him. To me, it has always seemed strange that God could restrict his mercy to
the boundaries of the visible Church. God is truth, and whoever seeks the truth
is seeking God, whether he knows it or not’ (Stein, Letter 259, quoted in
Herbstrith 1992:139).
From the original fathers on the Jewish
mountain of Israel, to the converso Teresa
of Avila and John of the Cross, and now in these words Edith summarises the
Carmelite charism of openness to all cultures. For her, and for all true
Carmelites, God’s saving action does not stop at the doors of the church but
extends to all humanity in all its suffering and confusion. For Edith, this
would become a terrible reality as the Nazi persecution of the Jews gathered
pace and the net slowly closed in on her and her family. Despite her conversion
to Christianity she was still a target for Nazi persecution and after the
horrendous events of Kristallnacht on
November 8th 1938 she was forced to leave Germany to seek shelter
with the Carmelite community at Echt, Holland. Despite the persecution
throughout all this time Edith was able to continue her
philosophico-theological writings on the interface of phenomenology and
theology. What they reveal, and scholars are still working hard on interpreting
them,[2] is
a woman who grasped the essence of Carmelite spirituality in all its
intellectual depth and existential consequence. Since her student days Edith
had been fascinated by the ‘nature of empathy’, and in fact had written her
doctoral thesis on the subject (published as On the Problem of Empathy in The Collected Works, 3). Commenting on
this interest, Roman Ingarden writes that ‘What interested her most was the
question of defining the possibility of mutual communication between human
beings, in other words, the possibility of establishing community. This was
more than a theoretical concern for her; belonging to a community was a
personal necessity, something that vitally affected her identity’ (Ingarden
1979: 472 in Herbstrith 1992:146). Once again we have that other great
Carmelite theme – the need to find God in community. Perhaps, as Edith
realised, our hope as alienated, atomized, late capitalist individuals, lies in
the return to community as the manifestation of our essential natures as homo empathicus.
The other great theme that emerges from these late
writings of Edith is the need for radical
Christian life. It is not enough, says Edith, to be ‘ “a good Catholic” who
“does his duty”, “reads the right newspaper”, and “votes correctly” – and then
does just as he pleases’.[3]
At a time of general Christian indifference to the fate of the Jews in Germany
(with some notable and noble exceptions), her critique of complacent bourgeois
‘Christendom’ [4]
is as striking as it is relevant to us in the West today who see a tired old
bourgeois church brought to its knees by complacency and indifference. Such
indifference, suggests Edith, will lead to disaster. Rather, we should strive
for radical Gospel living, ‘in the
presence of God, with the simplicity of a child and the humility of a
publican’. This call for radical Christian life, especially in the mystery of
following Christ on the path to Calvary, would come to her suddenly when the SS
officers arrived at Echt in the afternoon of 2nd August, 1942
demanding that she leave with her sister, Rosa, who had become an extern sister
at the convent. In the shock and surprise, the whole neighbourhood came out to
protest at this indecent act. In the crowd and confusion Rosa became alarmed
and upset. In this distress and confusion Edith gently took her hand and said
‘Come, Rosa. We’re going for our people’.[5]
We have fragmentary accounts of what happened to Edith next including reports
from Westerbork, the Nazi holding camp in Holland for all deported Jews (where
the other great Jewish mystic, Etty Hillesum, would also be held) and from
guards and functionaries as her train moved slowly East to the killing fields
of Auschwitz. One account, from the Dutch official Mr Wielek at Westerbork,
will suffice to give a sense of Edith’s last days on earth:
The
one sister who impressed me immediately, whose warm, glowing smile has never
been erased from my memory, despite the disgusting incidents I was forced to
witness, is the one whom I think the Vatican may one day canonize. From the moment
I met her in the camp at Westerbork… I knew: here is someone truly great. For a
couple of days she lived in that hellhole, walking, talking and praying… like a
saint. And she really was one. That is the only fitting way to describe this
middle-aged woman who struck everyone as so young, who was so whole and honest
and genuine. (in Herbstrith 1992:186)
Edith went to her death at Auschwitz, we assume it was on August 9th
1942, the day on which she is now celebrated as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the
Cross since 1998. From the mountains of Palestine to the Gates of Auschwitz the
Carmelite calling can be seen as one that places the individual into the
deepest and most intimate relationship with God as a call to radical personal
transformation. From this transformation arises the need to seek Christ in all
his beloved children, regardless of race, creed or religion. As we have seen,
Carmelite spirituality transcends the boundaries of any small creed or sect to
present a universal call to holiness in union with Our Lord and Saviour through
His Blessed Cross and Resurrection. In its unique tensions and potentialities,
Carmelite spirituality is wonderfully adapted to promote the development and
transformation of the individual into a son or daughter of Jesus Christ.
[1]
She entered Carmel
[2]
See, for example, Alasdair McIntyre’s recent Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913 – 1922. London
[3]
From ‘Weihnachtsgeheimnis’ quoted in Herbstrith 1992:154.
[4]
As Kierkegaard called it in his critique a hundred years before, another
significant influence on the young Edith.
[5] From the Kölner Selig- und Heiligsprechungsprozess der Dienerin Gottes Sr.
Teresia Benedicta a Cruce – Edith Stein (Cologne 1962:92) in Herbstrith
1992:180.
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