Father Spencer Howe, pastor of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Minneapolis, sent out a new release Aug. 9 on the church's website, remembering the life of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. 

Fr. Howe recapped the sermon, which was based on a reading of 1 Kings 19 in the Bible, of how the Prophet Elijah retreated to Mount Horeb, where he later had an interaction with God. He connected the encounter, which later served as provision for peace and courage, to the anniversary of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (whose given name was Edith Stein) converting to Catholicism and becoming a Carmelite Nun. Unfortunately, she later died a tragic death in an Auschwitz gas chamber.

“This week will conclude with another commemoration of a spiritual giant who died as a martyr of charity at Auschwitz freely offering his life to take another man's place who was to be executed," Howe said in the release. "He was not a Carmelite, but a Polish Franciscan Friar, deeply devoted to the Immaculate Mother Mary. His name was St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe, and his anniversary of death is Aug. 14. With a zealous missionary spirit he spread devotion to the Blessed Mother and stood up for the truths of the Faith as a journalist against the perverse and dehumanizing forces of ideology.”

Howe ended the address with a quote from St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross: "When night comes, and retrospect shows that everything was patchwork and much that one had planned left undone, when so many things rouse shame and regret, then take all as is, lay it in God's hands, and offer it up to Him. In this way we will be able to rest in Him, actually to rest and to begin the new day like a new life."