Van Den Driessche, Thibault
Between Ethics and Mysticism
- 2007.
56
Edith Stein and Etty Hillesum were both Jewish, and both died in the same hell. But unlike Etty Hillesum, Edith Stein belonged to a deeply religious family. Each woman followed a specific spiritual path which, in reality, brought them closer together. Their itineraries have had a significant ethical impact; they were both women who desired and thirsted after truth. Ordeal was a bond of grace to both of them. Meeting others and reading were sources of meditation on their spiritual paths until the moment when God appeared to them with searing intensity. Each in her own way practiced a form of inner life: retreat, prayer, listening. Unlike Etty, Edith was disappointed by the psychology of her times, while Etty was more hesitant and ambivalent when speaking of God. Both of them saw spiritual life as having an impact on action. For Etty, it allowed her to reform her affective existence – much more disconcerting than that of Edith Stein. Stein wanted to pass from ”the love of one single man to the love of humanity“. Etty, too, could perceive the fecundity of a life given to others. Each woman with her own charisma radiated love toward her entourage. What they have bequeathed to us is, in fact, a meta-ethic. Their spiritual experience opens onto an economy of disinterestedness and giving, revealed at the pinnacle of total asceticism.