Novena to Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) Day 5

Novena to Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

Day 5 ­ Tuesday, August 4th to August 5th, 1942
From Amersfoort to Westerbork

On Tuesday evening, August 4th, the prisoners were loaded on to a railway-coach and taken to the railway-station at Amersfoort, under strict orders not to raise the curtains of their compartments. From the cries of the station-master they gathered that their train was on its way to Westerbork. Passing Apeldoorn, Zwolle, Meppel Hogeven, the train reached Hooghalen, in North Holland, so many fresh names on their way of the cross.

The Westerbork assembly camp may be five kilometers from the Hooghalen railway-station. The train carrying our prisoners came to a stop in an open stretch of country, where they descended from the coaches; it must have been about three o’clock in the morning. A detachment of twenty men wearing armbands was waiting to help them transfer their luggage to two horse-drawn wagons, on to which the sick, the old and the religious also mounted. The others were herded in the dark across fields, through woods and hedges for an hour till they reached the camp. By now, it was the morning of August 5th, Wednesday.

Gospel Reading

"Pilate’s soldiers then took Jesus into the Governor’s headquarters, where they collected the whole company round him. First they stripped him and dressed him in a scarlet mantle; and plaiting a crown of thorns they placed it on his head, with a cane in his right hand. Falling on their knees before him they jeered at him: ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ They spat on him and used the cane to beat him about the head. Finally, when the mockery was over, they took off the mantle and dressed him in his own clothes." Matthew 27: 27-31

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be
(Any suitable prayer may be said here)
Saint Edith, Pray For Us!