Pope Francis has proposed to the whole Church to dedicate this year to prayer in preparation for the Jubilee of 2025. As he expresses in his message: “Prayer is the breath of faith, it is its most proper expression. It is like a silent cry that comes from the heart of those who believe and trust in God. With the Jubilee at the door, we are invited to become more humble and to make room for the prayer that comes from the Holy Spirit”.

In this brief writing I would like to highlight some features of Edith Stein’s spirituality that illustrate her profound experience of prayer. She hardly speaks of her own prayer, but her works reveal her prayerful experience. The list of enlightening texts would be endless, so I will only dwell on a few of them.

First of all, I will share one that strikes me because she wrote it a few years before her entry into the Catholic Church:

“There is a state of repose in God, of complete relaxation of all spiritual activity, in which no plans of any kind are made, no resolutions are adopted, and still less action is taken, but everything future is placed in the hands of the divine will […]. There is now the feeling of being accepted, of being freed from all concern and responsibility and obligation to act. And when I give myself to this feeling, it begins to fill me little by little with new life and impels me again – without any tension of the will – to new activity. This vivifying influx appears as an efflux of an activity and an energy which are not mine, and which act in me without imposing demands on mine. The only presupposition for such a spiritual rebirth seems to be a certain receptive capacity” (Psychic Causality. 1918).

In this reflection that Edith makes we can appreciate traits and attitudes of every prayerful person: the rest in God that comes from trusting in Him, the experience of feeling welcomed by Him, the interior renewal that this encounter with Him supposes, the realization of the free gift that constitutes this “vivifying influx that acts in me without imposing demands on mine”, the need to be open to the gift… Edith is able to express everything that a prayerful person experiences in this “friendship” that is prayer, in the words of St. Teresa of Jesus.

Edith is an authentic and experienced person of prayer when she expresses in one of her conferences: “He (Jesus) is not only waiting for us to seek Him, He is continually searching for us and He comes to meet us” (Difficult times and formation). Likewise, she possesses a great clairvoyance when she writes already as a Discalced Carmelite: “We must pray, not to communicate something to God, but in order to prepare ourselves for what God wants to communicate to us” (Exercises 1937. Personal notes).

Edith gives the same importance to personal prayer as to liturgical prayer, as she refers in this writing: “it is not a question of opposing interior prayer, free from all traditional forms, as “subjective” piety, to the liturgy as “objective” prayer of the Church. All authentic prayer is the prayer of the Church, and it is the Church herself who prays there, because it is the Holy Spirit who lives in her, who intercedes for us in every soul with ineffable groanings” (The Prayer of the Church).

We know that Edith frequented the Benedictine abbey of Beuron, one of the important centers of the liturgical movement that she nourished and contributed as much as she could to spread in her writings. In one of her conferences, given on the occasion of the Jubilee of the 900th anniversary of the cathedral of Speyer, she said: “He waits for us to take up all our burdens, to console us, to counsel us, to help us as the most faithful and permanent friend. He also allows us to live his life, especially when we join in the liturgy . There we relive his life, suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, the birth and growth of the Church. We will be lifted above the narrowness of our being, His mentality will be our mentality, His business will be ours, we will be pushed to co-sacrifice ourselves in His sacrifice, to live our whole life for Him . We grow in Him, indissolubly united to Him and in Him with all His. All solitude disappears, we are incontestably welcomed in the tent of the King, we walk in his light”. (Eucharistic Education).

In this sense, she gave a conference addressed to the Catholic Women’s Association of Zurich, in which she affirmed: “Whoever lives with the holy Church and in her liturgy, that is, whoever lives in a truly Catholic way, finds herself linked to the great human community, finds everywhere brothers and sisters united with her in the most intimate way. And, since from every person who is in God’s hand streams of living water flow, she exerts a mysterious force of attraction on thirsty souls; without intending to do so, she must become a guide for others who seek the light, exercise spiritual motherhood, and create and attract sons and daughters for the kingdom of God.” (Christian Life of Woman).

Aware of the free gift of prayer, she declared in a conference addressed to the Catholic Union of German Women Teachers: “Every time we enter a church, what an immense gift it is that we come to the Lord and that we can speak to Him as to our most faithful and loving friend”. (Difficult Times and Formation). She is probably evoking the event that so impressed her when she entered the cathedral in Frankfurt and saw a simple woman with a shopping basket praying.

Edith knows the difficulties of the person of prayer to find time dedicated to the Lord and, in this sense, she writes: “When we get up in the morning, the duties and worries of the day already want to flood us everywhere (and this in the case that they have not prevented us from sleeping). Then the restless question arises: how can all this be done in one day, when am I going to do this, when am I going to do that, and how should I do this and that? As if convulsed, one should shudder and run away. Then it is necessary to take the bridles in hand, and say: Slow down! In spite of everything, none of that goes with me now. My first hour of the morning belongs to the Lord. The work that He entrusts to me I want to do. And He will give me the strength to do it”. (Fundamentals of Women’s Formation).

She also encourages us to enter into this path of prayer, of authentic discipleship: “In our daily relationship with the Savior, our sensitivity to perceive what pleases Him and what does not please Him grows each day […]. Finally, we also learn to accept ourselves as we are in the inexorable light of the divine presence and to abandon ourselves to the mercy of God, who can reach everything of which our own strength is incapable”. (The Mystery of Christmas).

The reading of these texts of Edith Stein can reveal glimpses of the prayer of our Carmelite sister, who lived with passion that search and encounter with “the one who loves us so much”.

Autor: Paqui Sellés, ocd Puçol

Spanish original: https://delaruecaalapluma.com/2024/08/09/la-oracion-en-edith-stein/

Translated by: Sr. Aleksandra Nawrocka cmt