Be a Child of God

"Whatever did not fit in with my plan

did not lie within the plan of God.

I have an ever deeper and firmer belief

that nothing is merely an accident

when seen in the light of God,

that my whole life, down to the smallest details

has been marked out for me

in the plan of Divine Providence

and has a completely coherent meaning

in God's all seeing eyes.

"To be a child of God,

that means to be led by the hand of God,

to do the Will of God, not one's own will,

to place every care and every hope in the Hand of God

and not worry about one's future.

On this rests the freedom and the joy of the child of God.

But how few of even the truly pious,

even of those ready for heroic sacrifices, possess this freedom.

"When night comes, and you look back over the day

and see how fragmentary everything has been,

and how much you planned that has gone undone,

and all the reasons you have to be embarrassed and ashamed:

just take everything exactly as it is,

put it in God's hands and leave it with Him.

Then you will be able to rest - really rest -

and start the next day as a new life."

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, OCD (Edith Stein)

October 12, 1891 - August 9, 1942

From Catholic Online:

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)Virgin and Martyr Edith Stein, born in 1891 in Breslau, Poland, was the youngest child of a large Jewish family. She was an outstanding student and was well versed in philosophy with a particular interest in phenomenology. Eventually she became interested in the Catholic Faith, and in 1922, she was baptized at the Cathedral Church in Cologne, Germany. Eleven years later Edith entered the Cologne Carmel. Because of the ramifications of politics in Germany, Edith, whose name in religion was Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was sent to the Carmel at Echt, Holland. When the Nazis conquered Holland, Teresa was arrested, and, with her sister Rose, was sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Teresa died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of fifty-one. In 1987, she was beatified in the Cologne cathedral by Pope John Paul II. Out of the unspeakable human suffering caused by the Nazis in western Europe in the 1930's and 1940's, there blossomed the beautiful life of dedication, consecration, prayer, fasting, and penance of Saint Teresa. Even though her life was snuffed out by the satanic evil of genocide, her memory stands as a light undimmed in the midst of evil, darkness, and suffering. She was canonized on October 11, 1998.