Heaven in Faith (Part 1)

Blessed Elizabeth of the Holy Trinity

First Day

1. “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, to see the glory you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”¹ Such is Christ's last will, his final request before returning to the Father. He wants us to be where He is, not only for eternity but already in time, which is the beginning of eternity that is continually unfolding. To fulfill His divine desire, it is therefore essential to know where we are to live with Him. “The place where the Son of God is hidden is the womb of the Father,² which is divine essence, foreign to all mortal eyes and hidden from every human mind,”³ prompting Isaiah to say:⁴ “Truly, You are a God who hides.”⁵ And yet, it is His will that we remain in Him, that we be where He is, in unity of love, so to speak, His own shadow.
   “Through baptism,” says St. Paul, “we have been grafted into Jesus Christ.”⁶ And again: “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace.”⁷ And furthermore: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”⁸ The Trinity is our dwelling, our “home,” the father’s house, from which we are never to depart. The Master once said: “The slave does not stay in the house forever; the son stays forever” (St. John).⁹
2. “Abide in me.”¹⁰ This command is given to us by the Word of God, expressing His will. Abide in me, not for just a few moments, a few hours that will pass, but abide... constantly, without interruption. Abide in me, pray in me, worship in me, love in me, suffer in me, work, act in me. Abide in me and approach every person and everything like this; penetrate ever deeper into this abyss. Truly, this is the “solitude where God wishes to draw the soul to speak to her,” as the prophet sang.¹¹
   But to hear this mysterious word, we cannot remain on the surface; we must enter further into the Being of God through recollection. “I run my race,” exclaims St. Paul,¹² so must we descend daily along this path into the Abyss that is God; let us be led down this slope with love-filled trust. “Deep calls to deep.”¹³ There in the depths, a confrontation with God will occur, where the abyss of our nothingness and our misery meets the Abyss of mercy, the greatness of God. There we find the strength to die to ourselves, and there, losing our own form, we will be transformed into love. “Blessed are those who abide in the Lord!”¹⁴

Second Day

1. “The kingdom of God is within you.”¹⁵ Yesterday God called us to “abide in Him,” to live our soul in His inheritance of glory,¹⁶ and now He reveals to us that we need not go outside of ourselves to find Him. “The kingdom of God is within.” St. John of the Cross says that God gives Himself to the soul “in the essence of the soul, where neither the world nor the evil spirit can touch,”¹⁷ and that then “all of its movements become divine, and although they are from God, they are also its own, because our Lord forms them in it and with it.”¹⁸
   The same saint also says that “God is the center of the soul. When the soul fully knows God with all ‘its’ strength, loves Him, and fully enjoys Him, it is then at the deepest center that it can reach in God.” Before it reaches there, the soul is already “in God, who is its center,” but is not yet at His deepest center because it can still go further. Since it is love that binds the soul to God, then as this love becomes more intense, all the more deeply does the soul dwell in God and plunge into Him; as soon as “it possesses a single degree of love, it is already in His center,” but when this love reaches its perfection, the soul penetrates into His deepest center. There it will be transformed, becoming very similar to God.¹⁹ This soul, which lives within, can take the words of Father Lacordaire to St. Mary Magdalene: “Do not ask the Master of anyone on earth, of anyone in heaven, for He is your soul, and your soul is He.”
2. “Hurry down, for today I must stay at your house.”²⁰ The Master constantly repeats this word, which He one day addressed to Zacchaeus, to our soul. “Hurry down.” But where are we to descend according to His wish, if not deep into our inner abyss? This act is not “an exterior separation from external things,”²¹ but “the solitude of the spirit,” the detachment from everything that is not God.
   “As far as our will has longing for foreign attachments with God, fantasies of consent and rejection remain, we stay in a state of childhood, we do not take great steps in love, for the fire has not yet burned away all impurities; the gold is not pure, we are still searching ourselves, God has not consumed our enmity towards Him. But once the boiling in the cauldron burns away all unholy love, every unholy pain, every unholy fear, then “love will be perfect, and the golden ring of our engagement will be greater than heaven and earth. This is the mysterious chamber, where Love hides its chosen ones; this love leads us through ways and paths that only it knows, and leads us without return, we will not return the same way.”²²

Third Day

1. “If anyone loves me, he will keep my commandments, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”²³
   Here the Master again expresses his desire to dwell within us. “If anyone loves me!” Love draws Him, it brings God to His creation, not emotional love, but love “as strong as death, which many waters cannot quench…”²⁴ “Because I love the Father,”²⁵ “I always do what pleases him.”²⁶ Thus spoke the Holy Master, and every soul that wishes to live in contact with Him must live by this sentence. What pleases God is to be her food, her daily bread; she should allow herself to be sacrificed to the image of her beloved Christ through every Father’s will; every incident, every event, every suffering, and every joy is a sacrament that God gives her, and thus she makes no distinction between these things, transcending them, overcoming them, to rest in all of them, right at the feet of her Master; raising Him high “to the mountain of her heart,” yes, “above His gifts, His comforts, and the tenderness that come from Him.”²⁷ “The quality of love is never to seek oneself, to leave nothing for oneself, but to give everything to the one whom one loves.” “Blessed is the soul that truly loves,” “the Lord has become the captive of her love.”²⁸
2. “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”²⁹ Here St. Paul gives us light to illuminate our way into the abyss. “You have died!” And what does this mean, if not that the soul striving for life in contact with God “in the impregnable fortress of holy recollection” must be “separated, stripped, and distant from all things”³⁰ (concerning the spirit). This soul “finds within itself the simple slope of love towards God, despite creatures, is invincible in matters that pass away, for it rises above them and aims at God.”³¹
   “Quotidie morior.” “I die daily,”³² I decrease,³³ each day renounce myself, so that He may grow in me and be glorified, “I dwell” “little” “in the depth of my misery,” I see “my nothingness, my misery, my helplessness, I see that I am incapable of progress, perseverance, I see the multitude of my neglects, my deficiencies, I see myself unworthy,” “I fall on my knees in my wretchedness, I acknowledge my distress, I lay it before the mercy”³⁴ of my Master. “I die daily,” I place the joy of my soul (not in feelings, but in will) into everything that can destroy, humiliate me, whatever I must sacrifice because I want to make space for my Lord. It is no longer I who live, but He lives in me:³⁵ I do not wish “to live my own life anymore, but to be transformed into Jesus Christ, so that my life may be more divine than human” and so that the Father, when He bends down to me, can recognize in me the image of his beloved Son in whom He is well pleased.³⁶

Fourth Day

1. “Deus ignis consumens.” Our God, wrote St. Paul, is a consuming fire,³⁷ this means “the fire of love,” which destroys, which “transforms everything it touches into itself.”³⁸ “The delights of divine igniting are renewed in us by a work that never tires; it is the inflaming of love in mutual and eternal delight. It is a renewal that takes place at every moment in the bond of love.”³⁹ Some souls “have chosen this refuge to abide there forever, and this is the silence in which they are as if lost.” “Freed from their prison, they sail on the ocean of Godhood, without any creature being able to hinder or disturb them.”⁴⁰ For these souls, that mystical death, spoken of yesterday by St. Paul, becomes so simple, so sweet! They think much less of the effort of destruction and denuding that lies ahead than of immersion into the furnace of Love that burns within them, which is nothing else than the Holy Spirit, Love itself, who is in the Holy Trinity, the bond of the Father and His Word. They “enter Him through living faith and peacefully and simply,” “they are carried beyond things, beyond impressions and feelings” into “sacred darkness” and are “transformed into the image” of God. According to St. John’s expression, they live in “communion”⁴¹ with the three worship-worthy Persons, their life is “common,” and this is the “contemplative life,” that contemplation which leads to “possessing.” “This simple possession is eternal life experienced in the boundless space. There above reason awaits us a deep peace of divine stillness.”⁴²
2. “I have come to cast fire on the earth, and oh how I wish it were already kindled!”⁴³ The Master Himself expresses to us His desire to see the fire of love burning. In reality, all our works, our efforts are nothing before Him. We cannot give Him anything, nor satisfy His only desire, which is to restore the dignity of our soul. Nothing pleases Him quite as much as seeing her “grow.” And nothing can elevate her more than when she becomes in some way equal to God. That is why He requires from her the payment of her love, for the quality of love is to make equal as far as possible the one who loves with the one who is loved. A soul that possesses this love seems to stand on equal footing with Jesus Christ because their mutual affection makes everything in common between them. “I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”⁴⁴
   But to attain to this love, the soul must first “give itself entirely,” the “will must gradually lose itself in the Divine will,” so that its “inclinations,” its “capacities” function only in this love and for this love. Everything I do is out of love, everything I suffer is out of love, this is the meaning of what David sang. “To You I will keep my strength.”⁴⁵ Then love so fills, envelops, and protects the soul that it finds the mystery of further growth in love everywhere, even in the relationships it has with this world, amid the concerns of life it may rightfully say: “My only occupation is to love!”⁴⁶

Fifth Day

1. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”⁴⁷ Happy are the ears of a soul sufficiently alert, sufficiently recollected, to hear this voice of the Word of God, happy also the eyes of this soul, which, in the light of living and profound faith, can be present at the “coming” of the Master into his intimate sanctuary. But what is this coming? “They are infinite hosts, glory without end.” Christ “comes with His treasures, but in the mystery of God’s swiftness, He comes again and again, always as at first, as if He had never come, for His coming, independent of time, rests in the eternal ‘now’ and eternal longing ever renews the joy of His coming. The delights He brings are infinite, for they are Himself.” “The capacity of the soul, delighted by the Master’s arrival, seems to emanate from itself and pass through the walls in the Infinity of Him who comes, and reaches this phenomenon: God within us receives God coming to us and God contemplates God! God, in whom bliss rests.”⁴⁸
2. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in them.”⁴⁹ “The first sign of love is that Jesus gives us His body to eat, His blood to drink.” “The property of love is to constantly give and constantly receive. Christ’s love is generous. Everything He has, everything He is, He gives; everything we have, everything we are, He takes away. It asks for more than we can give ourselves. He has an enormous hunger that wants to completely consume us. He enters into the marrow of our bones, and the more love we allow Him in, the more fully we savor Him.” “He knows that we are poor, but does not take it into account and does not spare us at all. He Himself becomes in us His bread, but first burns away in His love the vices, the faults, and the sins. Then, when He sees that we are pure, He swoops in like a vulture that wishes to devour everything. He wants to consume our life to transform it into His life, full of vice ours transformed into His grace and glory, prepared for us, if only we would surrender ourselves. If we had good enough eyes to see that insatiable craving of Christ, who hungers for our salvation, no effort would prevent us from rushing directly into His open mouth.” It seems “absurd, but those who love will understand.” When we receive Christ “with inner devotion, His warm blood full of glory flows into our veins, igniting a fire in us; we gain resemblance to His virtues, and He lives in us and we live in Him, He gives us His soul with fullness of grace, through which the soul endures in love and praise of the Father!” “Love brings its object to itself; we draw Jesus to ourselves, Jesus draws us to Himself. Then, seized beyond ourselves in the inner love, we aim at God, going toward Him, toward the Holy Spirit, who is His love, and this love burns, consumes, and attracts us to unity, where bliss awaits us.” “This is what Jesus Christ meant when He said: “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you.”⁵⁰

Sixth Day

1. “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”⁵¹ This is what St. Paul tells us, and this: “To believe in God means to rely on what we hope for and to be sure of what we do not see.”⁵² This means that “faith gives us such certainty of future goods that, through it, in our soul they are born and endure, when we do not yet rejoice in them.”⁵³ St. John of the Cross says that “faith serves us as feet to walk toward God,” and still, “that it is possession in a dark state.”⁵⁴ It is she who “can give us real light about Him whom we love, and our soul must choose her as the means to achieve blessed union.”⁵⁵ “It throws us into an inner flood of spiritual goods.” Jesus Christ, in conversation with the Samaritan woman, spoke of faith when He promised to all who believe in Him, “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”⁵⁶ And thus, faith gives us God even in this life, though veiled, which covers Him, yet still God Himself. “When the perfect comes,” that is, clear vision, “the imperfect,” in other words, the knowledge given by faith, “will pass away.”⁵⁷
   “We have come to know and believe the love that God has for us.”⁵⁸ In this is the great act of our faith, it is the means to give our God love for love, it is “the hidden mystery”⁵⁹ in the Father’s heart, which St. Paul speaks of, which we will ultimately penetrate, and our whole soul will tremble with joy.” Once we believe in this “too great love,”⁶⁰ which God has for us, we can say of her what is said about Moses: “He was steadfast,⁶¹ as if he saw the Invisible.”⁶² The soul no longer clings to affections and feelings; it cares little whether it feels God’s presence or not, whether He sends it joy or suffering; it simply believes in His love. The more it is tested, the more its faith grows, for it has to cross all obstacles to rest in the womb of Infinite Love, which only performs acts of love. And to this soul, vigilant in faith,⁶³ the voice of its Master may say in hidden intimacy the word He once said to Mary Magdalene: “Go in peace; your faith has saved you.”⁶⁴
2. “If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.”⁶⁵ What is this good, simple eye that the Master speaks of, if not the simplicity of intention, which “unifies all the scattered powers of the soul and connects the spirit to God Himself? This is the simplicity that gives honor and praise to God, that offers Him virtues. Then penetrating and transcending itself, transcending and penetrating all creatures, it finds God in its depths. It is the beginning and end of all virtues, their splendor and glory. By a simple intention, I mean that which directs only to God, that which concerns all things in relation to God.” “It places man in God’s presence, it gives him light and courage, it empties him and frees him from every fear, today and on the day of judgment.” “It is the inner slope⁶⁶ and the foundation of every spiritual life.” “It tramples down the wicked nature, gives peace, and brings about silence instead of the clamor of vanity that arises in us.” “It increases our likeness to God hour by hour. And then above all intermediaries, it is again she who introduces us into the depth where God dwells and gives us deep rest. The inheritance that eternity has prepared for us will be handed over to us by simplicity. All the life of the spirit, all its virtue lies together with its likeness to God in simplicity, and its highest rest takes place on the heights of simplicity.” “And according to the measure of its love, each spirit seeks God with greater or lesser depth in its own depths.” “The simple soul rises through her inner gaze, returning to herself and contemplating in her depths the dwelling that the Most Holy Trinity has touched her.” Thus she penetrates her depth, “to her foundation, which is the gate of eternal life.”⁶⁷

Translated from French and the opening paragraph written by Elizabeth Graubner.