The Human Experience of Death and the Christian Hope in the Testimony of Edith Stein

Abstract

Aware of its finitude, the human person carries within himself the will of eternity. With the perception of being finite, the human being understands that living entails dying. In different instances, contemporary society has avoided awareness of finitude, generating beings who act as unlimited. The search for the significance of death also provokes the questioning of the meaning of life. The present article addresses the human experience as pedagogy, a leading way to the meaning of death in the light of Christianity. In order to do this, it analyzes in the Christian essence the value of conversion, communion and eternal hope. As an illustration of this process, the text briefly investigates the experience of death in the testimony of conversion and martyrdom of the German philosopher Edith
Stein (1891-1942). Edith Stein has had her life interrupted at Auschwitz during World War II. The hybrid of Stein’s life and work carries the mark of the period between wars, pointing to the nonnegotiable value of human’s life and the truth of faith. United to the cross of Christ, comprehended as the Incarnated, Dead and Resurrected went along a meaningful path with the certainty that the glory of the resurrection passes through the saviour meaning of the cross.