Dear brothers and sisters! The love of Christ was the fire that inflamed the life of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Long before she realized it, she was caught by this fire. At the beginning she devoted herself to freedom. For a long time Edith Stein was a seeker. Her mind never tired of searching and her heart always yearned for hope. She traveled the arduous path of philosophy with passionate enthusiasm. Eventually she was rewarded: she seized the truth. Or better: she was seized by it. Then she discovered that truth had a name: Jesus Christ. From that moment on, the incarnate Word was her One and All. Looking back as a Carmelite on this period of her life, she wrote to a Benedictine nun: "Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether consciously or unconsciously". ... Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was able to understand that the love of Christ and human freedom are intertwined, because love and truth have an intrinsic relationship. The quest for truth and its expression in love did not seem at odds to her; on the contrary she realized that they call for one another.
The faith and reason stuff hear is great and clearly the stuff of Fides Et Ratio (which was published in September of 1998, a month before this canonization). Seeing philosophy and religion as two parts of the same cloth requires an affirmation of searching and seeking in itself (although not as an end, possibly, but certainly as a means).
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