The Church as the Bride of Christ in the Writings of Edith Stein – St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Bogdan Ferdek

Abstract

Stein did not write any ecclesiological treatise. However, in her writings he uses the model of the Church as the Body of Christ. No less close is her comparison of Christ’s relationship with the Church to marriage, which appears in the Letter to the Ephesians 5:22−33. The Church would therefore be sponsa Christi. The author would like to systematize her understanding of the Church as the Bride of Christ by analyzing the Saint’s writings. This task was partially accomplished in the publication The Symbolic Meaning of Woman by Edith Stein. In this publication, the author would like to go further and show the concretization of this model of the Church in the sacraments, especially baptism, confirmation and Holy Communion, monastic life, mysticism and eschatology. A Christian becomes sponsa Christi through the sacraments of Christian initiation, a few Christians − through monastic life, and even fewer − through the experience of the mystical marriage of the soul with God. The fulfillment of the sacramental, monastic and mystical being of sponsa Christi is divinization − the eschatological wedding of God with saved humanity. The idea of the Church as sponsa Christi is the basis of Stein’s symbolic ecclesiology. Symbolic ecclesiology, using the marriage known from experience, wants to explain the mystery of the Church of the living God (1 Tim 3:15). Symbolic ecclesiology entered the biography of Edith Stein/Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was a faithful sponsa Christi from baptism in a white cloak, through entering the convent in a white dress, to the white robe in the eschatological paradise garden, which she achieved through the red blood of martyrdom.