VATICAN (CWNews.com) -- At his regular weekly public audience on Wednesday, May 3, Pope John Paul II cited the words of St. Edith Stein as he spoke on "the glory of the Trinity in the Passion."

    On the Cross, the Holy Father said, Jesus "fully offered his anguished human being to the action of the Holy Spirit, which gave him the power he needed to make his death a perfect offering to his Father."

    The Pope then recalled the words of St. Edith Stein, the Jewish convert and Carmelite nun who died at Auschwitz in 1942 and was canonized in 1998. "We cannot count on human action alone, but we can count on the Passion of Christ," she wrote. She added that she wished to unite herself with the sacrifice of the Cross, and toward that end she wrote: "I now accept, with my full will, whatever death God has destined for me. Lord, accept my life and my death, for the intentions of the Church, and the increase of your glory."

    The Pope concluded his catechetical talk by observing that Christians must live with the reality of the Cross, but also with the joy of the Resurrection. He urged the pilgrims who had assembled to hear him, "welcome the presence of the Resurrection ever more deeply into your lives, and bear witness to it generously with others."