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Setting our Faces toward Jerusalem, September 19, 2001
This review is from: A Retreat With Edith Stein: Trusting God's Purpose (Retreat With-- Series) (Paperback)
Setting our Faces toward Jerusalem
book review of
Edith Stein: Trusting Gods Purpose
by Sister Fran Gangloff, OSF
During the week of September 11, 2001, the day of the four suicide airplane hijackings and terrorist attacks on the United States, I received in the mail a review copy of - Edith Stein: Trusting Gods Purpose - in the series of a retreat with published by St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2001. The book is authored by Patricia L. Macks, the 74 page, softcover book (ISBN - 086716 - 387 - 9)
The title of Day One struck me immediately - Setting our faces toward Jerusalem. For it seems to me that our whole country and most of the world and each one of us are called by the tragic events to face the suffering with courage and determination, to set out faces steadily like flint as Jesus did toward the Holy City - where suffering and death encompass the seekers of truth and peace.
Edith faced her finest moment, knowing full what it meant, when Nazi soldiers arrested her at the Carmel at Echt in Holland. She said to her sister (blood sister and companion in the Carmel convent) - Come Rosa, let us go to die for our people.
The seven day retreat moves through the themes of - Jerusalem, Relationship, Empathy, Prayer, Eucharist, Sabbath, and Cross - using Jewish and Christian reference points in Ediths life and writings as a Jewish woman, intellectual scholar, convert to Catholicism, and Carmelite nun. Edith, AKA Sister Benedicta, victim of the 1940s Holocaust and recently canonized saint of the Catholic Church, becomes in this book a wonderful mentor and guide for our own difficult times.
A retreat with Edith deepens respect for the religious rights and beliefs of all persons. When Edith, in her final days, told others - we are traveling east - she knew it was toward a death camp. Her words also hold a larger meaning - we are traveling from the seen reality to unseen truth where God may be found - west or east. We set our faces toward Jerusalem.
The book lists eight suggestions for Deepening Your Acquaintance with Edith. Having read and studied them all, I strongly agree and highly recommend these choices. I also highly recommend this Edith Stein retreat book.
Jewish faith and Christian faith were changed forever in the aftermath of the Holocaust. We are still feeling its effects 60 years later. All religious faiths in America - Islamic, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, and all the others - are deeply changed forever and challenged by the events of 9 - 11 and its aftermath. This book - used as retreat or personal meditation and prayer - strengthens us to set our faces like flint, like Jesus, toward the pain of these changes and challenges. We set our faces toward Jerusalem.
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