For St. Edith Stein, divine beauty is “the ultimate ground or cause of everything that is beautiful” and the remedy to the emptiness and superficiality of a world that seeks beauty without recourse to God.
This is according to Elizabeth Mitchell, author of the 2025 book St. Edith Stein’s Aesthetic: Beauty and Sanctity, Masterpiece of the Divine Artist — a seminal work on the Jewish convert to Catholicism who became a Carmelite nun, took the name St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, and died a martyr at Auschwitz in 1942. Stein was canonized by Pope St. John Paul II in 1998.
Stein saw God as “the Eternal Artist, the Divine Artist” who is “always creating, always shaping, always perfecting His creation,” Mitchell explains in this Aug. 11 interview with the Register. She also discusses the saint’s conversion, how her life and teaching can help us understand suffering, and what practical lessons artists, writers and everyday believers can learn from her heroic life today.
Mitchell, who wrote her doctorate on Stein, currently serves as principal of Trinity Academy, a private Catholic school in Pewaukee, Wisconsin.
Dr. Mitchell, what first drew you to St. Edith
