The Conversion of St Edith Stein

From "The Scholar and the Cross" by Hilda Graef.



The author, a refugee from Berlin, converted from Judaism ( via Anglicanism, as she gained a First in the Archbishop of Canterbury's Examination in 1940) in 1941, becoming Senior Assistant to the Editor of the Oxford Patristic Greek Lexicon. Her biography here.

The biography of St Edith Stein who at the time of her conversion had renounced Jewish beliefs in favour of atheism. Hilda Graef implies she was shown in the German state register as a protestant.

Cardinal Newman wrote
"God has created me to do him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of conneciton between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good. I shall do his work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it - if I do but keep his commandments.

Therefore I will trust him. Whatever, wherever I am. I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what he is about. He may take away my friends, he may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future form me - still he knows what is is about."

One of the first activities of Edith Stein as a Catholic was to do a translation into German of Newman's Letters and Journals prior to his conversion in 1845.