"The most beautiful of all was his radiant joy, a joy of a child ... "
i ; and wrote Hedwig Conrad-Martius, the godmother of Edith Stein, remembering the baptism of his godchild. The future martyr was thirty years. She herself later wrote: "Is it possible for anyone to be reborn, once past the half of his life? You said it, and it came true for me "
ii. The saint wrote this for his sister, Rosa, who had been baptized on Christmas Eve in 1936. But in reading, we hear about his own recollection. The poem ends thus: "You're mine now and I'll never leave you. Can go wherever the road of my life, You are with me, nothing ever can separate me from Your Love. "Fifteen years flew from the day of his baptism, the young philosopher meanwhile became the nun Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, but the joy that springs from the baptismal water," the joy of a child ", translated here by a enamored flame, had not lost its vigor and certainty.
"intraverunt Vetere, novi exierunt; senes intraverunt, exierunt infantes" (Old they came, they emerged rejuvenated, the old men are entered, they are becoming out of children). The inscription that we can still find some older baptistries, certifies that since the days of primitive communities, the newly baptized were considered as "princesses": children born in baptism. The great Augustine told his converts: "senectus enim veternosa, vetusta vita; infantia autem regeneracionist, vita nova. (The old languishing, that's life old; childhood regenerated, that's life story) "
iii. I, like Edith Stein and the other converted late in the middle of my life I'm born again, my life has been renewed, and the baptismal mystery, I actually lived. It is wonderful to experience consciously his own birth. In some cultures, Considering that life is imposed, the birth is against our own will, and so, all evil, all the misery of this life are a sad explanation here. Life would be unbearable and unsustainable if it was just accidental product, without a time goal. Yet, our life is willed, willed by God our Creator. We are, each of us, the result of a thought of God, the fruit of His Love. The Holy Father said in his homily at the solemn Mass of his induction: "And only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet in Christ the living God, we know what life. "Without God, our life is just wandering. If one believes that life must have meaning, God therefore that we should seek, He will make our lives a true wandering Exodus, and we find in Him the purpose of our existence. Sooner or later we will require an affirmation of our lives, to continue to live with some insight, and so we become adults: the maturity of reason and maturity of faith coincide here in recognizing the reality of our lives. However, paradoxically, this double maturity is to recognize "child of God." Some refuse such recognition, considering it a threatening addiction, which would cause the loss of their freedom, yet when the yearning for freedom is opposed to the truth of our being, it becomes a burden that eventually exhaust ourselves. Some even turn away from this question: yes, today we are ridiculed by becoming serious! But if we leave a vacuum in the living heart of our life, we eat them empty and fall into ruin our lives in utter nonsense. The secret of life is indeed hidden in the secret of faith.
Edith Stein was baptized January 1, 1922. That day, according to the ancient tradition of the Church, it was once memory the circumcision of the Lord. For Edith, daughter of the Jewish people, the choice of this date was full of meaning. Since then, through the restoration of the ancient liturgy of Holy Week, (promoted by Pius XII, then completed by Vatican II), the Church proposes that the sacraments of Christian initiation are celebrated at the Easter Vigil. Thus, we can, as the early Christians, live birth of neophytes in the celebration of the memorial of the birth of our faith. The Easter vigil, St. Augustine called "Mater omnium sanctarum vigiliarum (Mother of all holy vigils)"
iv , and it is good to call it that because it is in this night, the Easter Vigil, our whole Christian faith finds its meaning and support. It was in that night, that Our Lord has fallen asleep in death, and we'll make sure his sleep provisional, remembering that He died for us: He died so that we might live. It was in this night that our Lord is risen, he crossed the dead. Now, death has lost its power over mankind and man is freed from his slavery. The Easter Vigil is the passage from death to life, "it is the night when we are fighting the despair and hope: the struggle to superimpose to all those in history, to the depths saturates "
v . Yes, "if Christ be not risen, your faith is futile (1 Cor 15, 17), and yet it is precisely his empty tomb, which is the matrix of our faith. Nothing is more beautiful than to experience this transition in his own life, and it is grace that all newcomers have received at the Easter Vigil: we participated in the Lord's death by burying our old life in baptismal font, we participated in his glorious resurrection, by being reborn in every new life, and, in the dawn of Easter, we meet the Risen Christ, the true sun without decline, as a newborn plunging into the joyful light of his first day ... Pascale
Night 2008 is for me the most beautiful of all nights, for it is this night that my married life its deepest reality, and so, finally I became myself.
(Samuel Jean-Zheng WANG, Grand Seminary of Lorraine)
