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August has always been a difficult month for us ever since when farmers wait for their crops to bloom while parents have spent most of their savings for enrollment and other expenses in the family; now, the pandemic has made August more difficult with the imposed lockdown due to pandemic.
But you have blessed us, O God our Father in this month of August with so many great saints in our midst to inspire us, to pray for us in our difficulties like St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross who rallied her fellow prisoners at Auschwitz to keep their faith in you, our God even she had been a Catholic nun having left Judaism after becoming an atheist for some time.
"Those who seek truth seek God, whether they realize it or not." -St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
Teach us to be like St. Teresa Benedicta, Lord, who always sought the truth, and once finding you, remained in you like what Moses had asked your people: "And now, Israel, what does the Lord ask you but to fear the Lord, your God and follow his ways exactly, to love and serve the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul." (Deuteronomy 10:12)
How good it is to know from a survivor at Auschwitz that “Every time I think of her sitting in the barracks, the same picture comes to mind: a Pieta without the Christ.” Like Jesus her Master, she died with him and like him for her people and for their persecutors, paying everything with her life worth more than any amount of tax money (cf. Mt.17:27).
St. Teresa Benedicta lived during the darkest and most troubled time in modern history, almost eclipsed today by this COVID-19 pandemic; we pray, God our Father, for the victims of violence and exploitation that their plight be addressed and finally be stopped, never to happen again in whatever form in the future. Amen.
