St. Elizabeth of the Trinity
On Sunday, October 16, 2016, Pope Francis declared the barefoot Carmelite from the convent in Dijon, Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880–1906), a saint. To commemorate her personality in the pages of our magazine and thereby strengthen our joy in her canonization, we reprint an excerpt from a booklet published this year on this occasion by the Carmelite Publishers: Milada Jiřina Burgerová, Novena with Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, Prague 2016, pp. 13–16. (The abbreviation AD stands for: Elizabeth's letters.)
I am deprived of the church and holy communion, but the good God does not need the sacraments to come to me. It seems to me that I have Him here just the same. How beautiful is God's presence! It is there, deep down, in the heaven of my soul, where I love to find Him, for He never leaves me. "God in me and I in Him," that is my life...! How wonderful is the thought that apart from gazing at Him we possess Him just as the blessed in heaven do; may we never leave Him and never let anything distract us from Him! (AD 62).
Let us live with God as with a Friend, reviving our faith so that we may connect with Him in everything. This is how saints are born. We carry our heaven within us, because He who nourishes the blessed in eternity gives Himself to us now in faith and in mystery; He is the same. It seems to me that I have found my heaven on earth, because heaven is God, and God is in my soul. On the day I understood this, everything became clear to me and I would like to whisper this mystery to all those I love (AD 122).
Think of the fact that you live in Him and that here on earth you are His dwelling. After all, He is within you, hidden deep in your soul, and there, close to you and within you, you can find Him at any hour of the day or night, in all joys and trials. This is precisely the secret of human happiness and the secret of all saints. They knew very well that they are "the temple of God," and that when they unite with God, they will be with Him – as St. Paul says – "one spirit." This awareness infused everything they did (AD 175).
Every hour, if you remember (if you forget, nothing happens), enter the depths of your soul, where the divine Guest resides. You might think of that beautiful sentence I told you: "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you" (1 Cor 3:16) or the words of our Lord: "Abide in me, and I in you" (John 15:4). It is said of St. Catherine of Siena that even while living in the midst of the world, she always resided in her cell – she lived in that inner dwelling, where my Margaret can also live (AD 239).
At just under eleven years old, Elizabeth receives her first holy communion. This event signifies a deep psychological and spiritual transformation for her. "I am not hungry, Jesus has satisfied me..." – she confides to one of her companions. On the same day, according to local tradition, they go to the parlor of the local Carmel, and the prioress explains the meaning of her name: "Your blessed name hides a mystery that has been realized on this great day. Your heart is already here on earth a house of God. The name Elizabeth means house of God."
Even though the prioress was mistaken in her interpretation of the name, these words deeply influenced the young girl. Elizabeth feels "inhabited." She often repeated to her friend: "It seems to me that He is here", and made a gesture as if she held Him in her arms and wrapped Him to her heart. She longs to understand "what is happening within me", and thus she meets with Fr. Vallée, the confessor of the Carmelites. This meeting became providential. This Dominican, who often spoke of the mystery of the Trinity, explained to her that by baptismal grace we become a spiritual temple, the entire Trinity dwells in us, and takes up residence in us.
The fact that Elizabeth's mother initially refused her daughter's request to enter the Carmel and later conditioned it on being 21 years old was another providential event: during her waiting, Elizabeth desired to live and be a Carmelite in the world. External activities do not prevent her from creating within her soul "an inner cell," a dwelling in which she lives with her God. She becomes "a Carmelite from within" and, following the example of the prophet Elijah, lives "before the face of the living God." This realization becomes the foundation of Elizabeth's spirituality.
(...)
God, our Father, you create your spiritual temple within us, where you desire to dwell constantly with your Son and the Holy Spirit; through the intercession of Saint Elizabeth, hear our plea, which we present to you today ..., and grant us the grace to experience that you are the living God with whom we can live in the deepest dwelling of our souls. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.
