Before the enclosed grille of the Discalced Carmelite Convent in Cologne, a distinguished German philosopher nervously submitted to a test of humility: she sang a ditty for the brown-robed nuns assembled to examine her for entrance. Later, one of them asked anxiously: "Is she a good needlewoman?''
Dr. Edith Stein, whose fame had not penetrated convent walls, never learned to sing or crochet very well, even after she joined the nuns behind the grille. But, as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, she learned the spiritual lessons of Carmel so well that she has...
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