Cardinal Albert Florent Augustin Decourtray
The following text is taken from a booklet published in 1979 in Dijon. It is worth mentioning a few words about its author. Cardinal Decourtray (born April 9, 1923) was first an auxiliary bishop (1971–1974) and then a residential bishop (1974–1981) in Dijon, the city associated with the life of Blessed Elizabeth. Since 1981, he was the Archbishop of Lyon and was appointed cardinal in 1985. He died on September 16, 1994.
The Relevance of Her Message
Three fundamental ideas of Elizabeth of the Holy Trinity's spiritual message seem particularly relevant to me: the importance of a personal and evident love for God, the place of the laity, and the sense of true Christian prayer.
Personal and Evident Love for God
Elizabeth of the Holy Trinity is primarily a living reminder of a value that is too often forgotten: a personal and evident love for God. We are discovering more and more earthly realities and human solidarity; we are so busy creating universal brotherhood that we sometimes forget the one who is the heart of the world, the Father of all people, and our Father: God. After all, we cannot erase from the Gospel the words of Jesus, according to which love for God is the first commandment! To “love” God does not only mean to conquer the world and earn a living but also to love God for His own sake. If God reveals Himself as love (“pure love,” as Elizabeth liked to say), He expects mutual love, in acceptance, in presence, in attention, in prayer.
We have Jesus’ example: from His love for His Father comes His love for prayer and love for others. Does He not open us to human brotherhood by giving us access to an unimaginable intimacy with God in the Spirit? He said: “The Father seeks such people who will worship Him in spirit and truth” (John 4:23). Jesus’ “thirst” on the cross was a thirst for understanding His dual message: about the Father and about others.
Evident love for God reveals to us how deeply we are loved; obedience to His word “come to me all” provides us with the “rest” that Jesus promised (cf. Matthew 11:28). “His joy will be in us” (John 15:11) and “peace,” different from what this world gives (John 14:27).
Love for God, love for Jesus is the central point of Elizabeth's reality and her teaching. He is “my Friend at every moment,” she says (D 243). “He is my Infinite, in Him I love, in Him I am loved, and in Him I have everything” (D 117). “Do you not think that when the heart is captured by Christ, it can give itself completely?” (D 130).
At her religious profession, she wishes “that this would be the beginning of a single adoration that will never end in my soul” (D 150). Her vocation is a loving attention to God, prolonged in all: “A Carmelite is a soul that looked at the Crucified, that saw Him giving Himself as a sacrifice to the Father for souls, and who, gathered in this great sight of Christ's love, understood the passion of her soul's love and wanted to give herself like Him! (...) And on Mount Carmel, in silence, in solitude, in a prayer that never ends and continues in everything, the Carmelite already lives as if in heaven: from God Himself” (D 133).
To a friend, she confides where she draws strength and advises her to do the same: “I will tell you how I do it when I’m a little tired: I look at the Crucified, and when I see how He gave Himself for me, it seems to me that for Him I cannot do less than to spare no effort, to exhaust myself to give Him back a little of what He gave me! In the morning, during Holy Mass, let us receive His spirit of sacrifice (...), we must be like Him. Then, all day, let us remain in Him. And so, when we faithfully live from His life, when we identify with all the movements of the soul of the Crucified, simply, we need not fear our weaknesses, for He will be our strength” (D 156).
Three weeks before her death, in great suffering, she reveals in her last letter to her mother the secret that turned her young life into a single flame of love: “There is a being who is Love and desires that we live in communion with Him. He keeps me company, helps me to suffer, teaches me to rise above pain and rest in Him; do it like I do, and you will see how it all changes!” (D 327)
The Place of the Laity
The second thought—particularly relevant—will surely surprise us: the message of love and the inner life of Elizabeth of the Holy Trinity addresses first and foremost, almost preferentially, to the laity! To understand this, it might be good to recall that before Elizabeth communicated this message in letters from Carmel, she lived it in the midst of the world. Was she not this young Christian, this young laywoman who experienced God's presence so intensely in the ordinary environment of many young people of her time and spread this gift among a wide circle of friends, even then a mystic? In any case, when she became a Carmelite, she did not stop conveying to her lay friends what constitutes the soul and joy of her new life, her experience of God in silence and solitude. A glance at the recipients of her 342 preserved letters reveals that among them are 6 priests and seminarians, 13 religious sisters, but 39 laity. But how can we explain that the content of her message is so open, so broad, so adapted to life “in the world”? Elizabeth had a special gift for understanding, experiencing, living, and conveying what is fundamental to every Christian life: the Word of God, which is offered to us in Sacred Scripture. Elizabeth nourished herself on the texts of Saint Paul and Saint John, even though she did not study theology or exegesis or read the numerous commentaries we have available today. It is love for God, for Jesus, and her desire to be a good Christian that leads her to listen to the New Testament; with faith, she receives the revealed Word with all her heart and dedicates herself to it with the logic of the saints. By meditating on the New Testament, she deepens all the fundamental lines of our Christian life. How often she repeats to us that our God is a God of love and that we are called from eternity to participate in the divine life that Jesus has earned for us!
Let us listen to how she tells her sister Guite, a young married woman and mother of two children (she will eventually have nine!) about her joy in being a child of God. “I just read some wonderful things from Saint Paul about the mystery of God's acceptance as sons; naturally, I was thinking of you, and it would be strange if it were otherwise: you, who are a mother and know what depths of love for your children God has placed in your heart, can understand the greatness of this mystery: we are children of God, my Guite; does not this fill you with joy? Listen to what my dear Saint Paul says: ‘God chose us before the foundation of the world. He predestined us to be His children so that His grace might shine in us’; this means that in His omnipotence He could not do anything greater” (D 239).
Through baptism, as she liked to say, we are all “the temple of the Holy Trinity” (D 197) and life with God, in God, through God becomes possible for everyone. “This best lot, which seems to be a privilege in my beloved solitude of Carmel,” she writes to another young married woman, “God offers to every baptized soul. He offers it to you in your motherly care and in your concerns. Believe that His whole will is to lead you ever deeper into His mystery” (D 129).
In the Eucharist, which is also accessible to all, Elizabeth draws strength that transforms her life. Union with Jesus' sacrifice on the cross supports her during great physical suffering. She writes to her mother about it: “This Mass, which God celebrates with me and whose priest is His love, can last a long time. Your ‘little sacrifice’ does not find in the hand of the One who offers it, time too long and can say that if it goes along the path of suffering, it remains much more on the way of true happiness, dear mommy, a happiness that no one can take from you. I rejoice, Saint Paul said that I can in my body complete what is still lacking in the sufferings of Christ for His body, which is the Church” (D 309).
Following Jesus’ example, Elizabeth sees the foundation of love in obedience to the specific will of the Father. “To love is so simple,” she says, “it is to give oneself to every His (that is, Jesus') will, just as He gave Himself to the Father's will” (D 288). “The happiness of my Master is enough for me to be happy too, and I give myself to Him so that He may do in me what He wishes” (D 271). “Every little thing, every event, every pain, and every joy is a sacrament that God gives me” (NV 10). Yes, for Elizabeth, the very Christian becomes a sacrament of God, a bearer of grace for his brothers. “God bends over us with all His love, day and night, wanting to transmit to us, to infuse His divine life, to make us divine beings that will radiate Him” (D 124).
Even as a child, she dreamed of being this reflection of God: “Ask Him to be in me in such a way that people can feel Him when they come near me, and that they think of Him” (D 54). And to a young future mother, she explains that giving life to a new human being should also be a gift of divine life: “I ask the divine Master, He who dwells in your soul like a small host in a tabernacle, to give you more than an abundance of His divine life, so that you may give it to your little angel, for whom you will be a mother” (D 186). She admirably summarizes this in a letter to her sister Guite, a young twenty-two-year-old mother: “When He passes through you, He wants to be loved” (L 233).
Translated from French by Elizabeth Graubner.
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