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Edith Stein, whose feast day we celebrate today, represents all of those people who suffer because of who they are.
In Edith’s case, she was born into a Jewish family in Poland at the turn of the 20thcentury.
After losing her faith in college, she rediscovered the Lord, converted to Catholicism, and became a Carmelite nun right before the breakout of World War Two.
But shortly afterwards, she and the other nuns in her convent were shipped off to Auschwitz and gassed.
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Stein was hated because she was Jewish…and, again, because she became Catholic.
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But the people in Dayton, the migrants in El Paso, the children headed off to elementary school across America are targeted, too.
Throughout history, people have been deemed objects of hate because of their race, their color, their religion, and so on.
Edith Stein – and all the victims of hate – remind us that we must learn to transcend these boundaries that divide us, seeing each person as made in the image and likeness of God.
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Do I hold any prejudice in my own heart? Do I ever see myself as more valuable than another human being?
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True Christianity means that we support the dignity of every person, regardless of how different they may seem from you or from me.
“For whatever you do to the least of these my brothers and sisters,” Jesus says,“you do unto me.”