Raissa Maritain, Jaques, Bloy and Edith Stein ...

I am intrigued ....! A Jewish woman mystic has suddenly appeared onto the little horizon of my mind today. I was reading about the Rules of Discernment in Ignatian Spirituality. I stumbled upon an article about Fr. Timothy M. Gallagher, O.M.V. and his book The Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide for Everyday Living. In the article, there was a sentence :

   “In giving an example of a perceptible experience of God’s love to illustrate Rule 3, Fr. Gallagher cites Raissa Maritain as she begins to pray the Litany of the Sacred Heart. This insight into the interior life of one of the great Christian thinkers of the last century is marvelously effective.”

 http://www.worldmission.ph/wm.php?issueid=132
That is when I started googling for this Raissa Maritain. I’m sure it is my Guardian Angel again who wanted me to know about this great woman, who sought to know the truth about a personal God in the face of human suffering !! She and her best friend (later, her husband) Jacques Maritain strolled down the Jardin des Plantes , the main botanical garden in France, refusing to accept the absurdity of the calm materialism and convinced atheism of their science professors and philosophers at the Sorbonne University. But God in His great mercy, opened the door of Faith, which led them to Christ. They walked through the veil of Baptism into the Catholic Church to be sustained by the Holy Eucharist. Paradoxically, it was the great French novelist Leon Bloy who led them to this ultimate Truth about God, which changed their lives!

They were also friends with Edith Stein ( now St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, O.C.D., one of my favourite Saints !! ). In a letter she wrote to Jacques and Raissa, Edith Stein thanked them for the friendship, which she seemed to have cherished much:


http://hannahstears.net/2013/08/my-cross-my-blessing/edith-stein-saint-teresa-benedicta-of-the-cross/

All during the past month I have been greatly consoled by the thought of having such good friends united to us by the bond of faith. I no longer have my position with the Pedagogical Institute and I will be leaving Münster in a few weeks. But do not be concerned about me: ... (‘All things work together for the good of those who love God.’).

Thanks my good Angel, for introducing this group of “intellectual” Catholics of France (The Thomist Study Circles,Munster) 
. I wish I had known them years back, in those days when I was so fascinated (foolishly) by those atheistic Bloomsbury intellectuals! How blissfully ignorant I was of these great thinkers, who were contemporaries of those Bloomsburians!

Pope Francis, in his first Homily has quoted Bloy,

“When one does not confess Jesus Christ, I am reminded of the expression of Léon Bloy: ‘He who does not pray to the Lord prays to the devil.’ When one does not confess Jesus Christ, one confesses the worldliness of the devil.”

And let me conclude with a poem by Raissa      

O Cross you divide the heart,
O Cross you split the world,
Cross divine and wood of bitterness,
Bloodstained price of the Beatitudes,
Royal rood, imperious impress,
Most sombre Cross,gibbet of God,
Star of Mysteries,
Key to certitude. 

The star of Bethlehem shines in the night of sin. The shadow of the Cross falls on the light that shines from the crib. This light is extinguished in the darkness that is Good Friday, but it rises all the more brilliantly in the sun of grace on the morning of the Resurrection. - Edith Stein ( St. Teresa benedicta of the Cross)