Welcome to our daily rosary meditation. Let's begin in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Let's call to mind all those we've promised to pray for.

Today is the feast of St. Edith Stein, otherwise known as Theresa Blessed by the Cross.

She was born into a German Jewish family in 1891, and as a young woman she studied under Edmond Herseril, the

creator of a system of philosophy called phenomenology. Now this was a very important philosophical development

because for many hundred years people like Descartes Hume, Con, Nietzsche, and

others claimed that we cannot know reality.

We cannot know the truth.

So there's no use in even trying. But phenomenology said that was crazy. We can indeed know reality

through our direct experiences. We can know truth. And this includes the possibility of

encountering and knowing God through our experiences. And this philosophical

training paved the way for the conversion of Edith Stein.

She would visit her friends for weeks at a time at their farm, one evening she went through her friend's library

looking for something to read and the book she chose was the autobiography of

Teresa of Avala and And once she started, she couldn't put it down, and

she stayed up the whole night. And when she finally finished it the next morning, she said

to herself, this is truth and this experience led her to buy a

catechism and then a missile which she studied thoroughly and then she started going to mass and then she went to the

priest and said I want to be baptized and he said whoa whoa this takes time and preparation.

So she said, okay, test me.

And she could answer everything.

So she was baptized on January 1st, 1922.

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