Daily Surrender According to Edith Stein
By Margaret Peppiatt
“When we entrust all the troubles of our earthly existence confidently to the divine heart, we are relieved of them. Then our soul is free to participate in the divine life” (Edith Stein, “The Ethos of Women’s Professions, Essays on Woman”).
As someone who often struggles with anxiety, reading this quote by Edith Stein encouraged me but also elicited uncertainty about how to practically live this out in my daily life. I had picked up Stein’s Essays on Woman during the Christmas season, which opened my eyes to the nature and spirituality of the Catholic woman. Yet this quote left me wanting practical steps to live out Stein’s beautiful expression of surrender, trust, confidence and freedom found only in the Lord.
I wasn’t left wondering for long. Several essays later, a three-page letter by Stein appeared which she wrote in January 1932. She apparently penned the letter for a contemporary monthly journal called “Societas Religiosa,” which was targeted to a group of women practicing a specific religious lifestyle. However, the content of the letter particularly applied to my life, leading me to hope that it will aid other women as well.
The Goal
In her letter, Stein provides a basic structure for day-to-day life that allows the female soul to flourish. The female soul is warm, expansive and empty of self, to use a few words of her own. Stein explains in other essays that women are meant to open themselves to others with a serving love, drawing out the best in those they encounter.
Before we as women can do this, we must “open ourselves to grace.” Without the grace that comes with trusting God, a woman cannot achieve the full potential of her nature. Every woman is created to give of herself, which could lead to disappointment, discouragement and tiredness if she does not first give herself to God. This is because, as Stein writes in another work, only God is capable of receiving a woman completely.
Stein thus outlines three daily checkpoints in her letter that allow women to practice this surrender.
Morning
Stein describes what many of us experience in the morning: anxiety about everything that we must accomplish that day. “The duties and cares of the day ahead crowd about us when we awake in the morning (if they have not already dispelled our night’s rest),” writes Stein. “Now arises the uneasy question: How can all this be accommodated in one day? When will I do this, when that?”
The answer: giving ourselves to Christ first thing in the morning. Stein recommends going to mass at this time, so that we can lay our troubles down “along with the sacrifice on the altar.” For those who cannot attend mass due to various duties such as motherhood and work, making a spiritual communion is another way of uniting ourselves to Christ.
Then, writes Stein, the soul “will be empty of that which could assail and burden it, but it will be filled with holy joy, courage, and energy.” We find freedom from our worries by handing it all to the Lord. Giving them to Christ makes room for the gifts of the divine life that He wishes to share with us. For instance, Stein writes that the Lord enkindles a love in our hearts that urges the soul “to render love and to inflame love in others” as we go about our morning.
Midday
By midday, fatigue hits hard with half of the day still remaining. Written at a time when workers headed home for lunch, Stein accurately describes, “It is the noon hour. We come home exhausted, shattered. New vexations possibly await there. Now where is the soul’s morning freshness?” A whole afternoon faces us, tempting us to rush onto the next activity.
Now is the time to stop and find peace, says Stein. Each woman “must for a moment seal off herself inwardly against all other things and take refuge in the Lord.” Pausing amid the craziness is hard sometimes, but it’s essential to once again surrender ourselves to the Lord. Stein suggests going to our room, or perhaps we have a favorite spot to pray. This might be impossible on those really busy days—what truly matters is spending a single moment lifting our heart to Him.
“Thus the remainder of the day will continue, perhaps in great fatigue and laboriousness, but in peace,” writes Stein. Our soul is reoriented to participate in the divine life, and Christ renews our inner peace to strengthen us for the remainder of the day.
Evening
The sun is setting. How did the day go? Maybe we completed everything on our to-do list. Maybe we can see all the good that the Lord worked through us. But more often than not, we focus on the tasks that we did not accomplish. Or we consider the times that we fell, such as expressing frustration or speaking unkindly to others.
Stein says to give everything to the Lord. In order to do this, performing an examination of conscience may help us bring the events of the day before Him. The complete, the incomplete. The good, the bad. The joys, the sorrows. Stein writes, “And when night comes and retrospect shows that everything was patchwork and much which had planned left undone, when so many things rouse shame and regret, then take all as it is, lay it in God’s hands, and offer it up to Him.”
This surrender allows us to “rest in Him, actually to rest in Him, and to begin the new day like a new life.” We can then lay our head on the pillow in relief, sleeping in the arms of Him who will carry us to the next day.
Conclusion
“This is only a small indication how the day could take shape in order to make room for God’s grace. Each individual will know best how this can be used in her particular circumstances.”
Stein points out that each woman must discern how to carry out these principles in her own life. Despite differences in vocation, her letter makes it clear that all women must give their hearts to God again and again and again. With our hearts, we offer to Him our troubles.
The basic structure laid out by Stein is useful for recognizing the importance of surrender multiple times a day, which aligns with our nature as women. In it there is a constant rhythm of emptying and filling, giving and receiving. When we lay down our burdens, Christ fills the resulting space with His grace and love. And this is where freedom is found—through participation in the divine life.
