The Eucharistic Heart of God According to Saint Elizabeth

Saint Elizabeth writes to her brother-in-law, a seminarian:

Nothing tells us more about the love in God’s Heart than the Eucharist. This union, this consummation of Him in us and we in Him, is this not heaven on earth? This is Heaven in faith while awaiting the vision face-to-face for which we yearn. When His glory appears, we will be satisfied for we will see Him in His light. Does not the very thought of such a meeting refresh you, this conversation with Someone so particularly beloved to you? All else disappears. It is as if you already penetrate the very Mystery of God.

May I be wholly ready to respond, wholly vigilant in faith, so that the Master can take me wherever He wishes. I wish to stay close to Him and to learn everything from Him. He knows the whole mystery, “The language of the Word is the gift's infusion.” Is this not so very true? He speaks to our soul in silence. 

I find this precious silence a blessing.  We have the Blessed Sacrament exposed in the oratory: what divine hours are spent in this little corner of Heaven. Here, we possess the vision in substance under the humble Host. Yes, one and the same, He who the blessed contemplate in light and He who we adore in faith. 

Selected text from Letter 165, to Andre Chevignard, June 14, 1903

The Measureless Measure

In 1904, in the days leading up to the Feast of the Presentation of Mary, Father Fages preached a retreat to Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity and the Carmelites of Dijon. In that retreat, the Dominican drew on St. Augustine to describe Mary as a model of contemplative souls. She magnified the Lord because of the love that lived in her heart, "Love, unmindful of its own dignity, thirsts to exalt and to increase the beloved: its only measure is to be without measure."

Saint Elizabeth sees this kind of love as the standard, rallying point and gravitational center for her life and the lives of her friends. Heaven loves without measure and this force of love is at work in our souls - if only we will make space for God.  She identifies love's measureless measure with the "riches of God's glory." The gravitational pull of this glory is drawing us to live "no longer our own life, but the life of Christ in us."  With this in mind, she prays to God "to fill you with this measure without measure." (see Letter 214). 

The Flowing Presence of the Holy Trinity

In a poem, John of the Cross describes the life of the Trinity as a river. He describes how this Personal Presence given to us in the Eucharist flows through the heavens and the earth. He even claims that this brimming River of Life surges through hell. Is God actually present where He is definitively and eternally rejected? If He can be present there, triumphant and just in the face of malice, how much more He reveals when the rejection is only indefinite and still confined by time.

As St John was tormented by his persecutors, he understood hell fire, and yet, he also knew that those fires could not constrain the Divine Presence. Not only through the very heart of evil, but through the evil that we cling to in our own hearts, this Living Water floods forth.  How can evil withstand this surge? How long will we resist Mercy's force?

Those who are moved to confess their sins and to do penance have felt this Almighty River. Ready to burst dams of bitterness and set limits on the power of sin and death for the price of a prayer, the currents of Divine Mercy cannot be contained or predicted. As this overflowing Flood surges through the sinful levies that we raise, tender tears begin to flow and snobs comforted by forgiveness realize a new beginning.

To help us see what the Divine Persons begins and causes to progress, Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity describes not a river but an Ocean. What mysterious Water holds us afloat on these unfathomable seas! Great tides pull us beyond what is comfortable and convenient. Deep currents can suddenly take us where no one can see. Yet, it is not to nothingness but to fullness of life the Divine Persons draw us.  Christ, the Radiant Star, captivates us and at the same time helps us navigate these Waters in which we lose ourselves. As we surrender, God surrenders - and the Holy Spirit renews this saving Mystery and the Father overshadows with His creative love anew.

Saint Elizabeth's Promise

Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, before her death, promised to help her friends from heaven. She claimed that it would increase her joy to do so.  What she most wanted for her friends is that they should thrive, and that they should render-vous with her again in our heavenly homeland. Yet this homeland was not something that she envisioned in the distant future or remote from the heart. Instead, our true home, the place where we belong, for Saint Elizabeth, is the "Bosom of the Trinity" which is ours by a mutual indwelling - God in us, and we in God.  For her, prayer is meant to lead us out of ourselves and into a great silence that is vulnerable to the Presence of God, and such contemplative prayer knows communion with "infinite beatitude," not only in the glory that awaits us after this life, but right now, by faith. That is why she is praying for us even now. She has a special mission to lead us out of self-occupation and to open us up to the interior grace of contemplative wonder, its adoration, its mystery, its loving surrender. 

Action and Contemplation

Many believe that action and contemplation are mutually exclusive efforts. Some argue that a prayerful life is an escape from the difficult effort of loving service. Others argue that the apostolic life lacks a certain depth and devotion to the Lord. Yet the greatest mystics never saw a tension between apostolic service and contemplative prayer -- for them, it would be impossible to have one without the other.  The deeper into prayer they went, the greater their apostolic zeal. The more dedicated their love of neighbor, the more they relied on prayer for strength. How is it that these prayerful people did more than those who feel they are too busy for prayer?

In her retreat, Heaven in Faith #40, Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity looked to the Virgin Mary to resolve this paradox. She notes that during the months between the Annunciation and the Visitation, the Virgin is a model for contemplative souls.  Indeed, soul who lives by the interior life of love of the Indwelling of the Trinity is especially chosen by God to know the kind of peace that Mary knew in all her activities.

A contemplative who pondered everything in her heart, Mary was ready for action. When a command from heaven arrives, she does not hesitate to makes haste into the hill country to serve her cousin. Putting her love for God into action did not diminish her prayer. As soon as she completes her service to Elizabeth, she returns to her life of contemplation in Nazareth. The reason why she so easily goes between the two is the simplicity of her soul - her soul is simplified, unified, made simple by its wholly loving movement to the Lord whether in service to others or in prayer.

This same loving movement can lead us out of ourselves and into a great silence. In the exquisite silence of faith, every obstacle to such self-donation is removed. In particular, the stranglehold of self-occupation and fear is broken. Stripped of all that can hold it back, in this wonderful stillness, the soul is vulnerable even to God's slightest wish - and God will never hold Himself back.

The dynamism of the Bride of Christ - the mystical Body constituted by the Gift of the Holy Spirit. Love draw His Love all the more. Here, in this silence, the same silence that Mary knows, whether for love of neighbor or for love of God, the soul is always ready to give itself. Such a self-gift is at the heart of true and mature contemplation. The same self-gift defines true apostolic mission.

This peaceful readiness desires only that the will of the Father be fulfilled. If the Spirit of the Father prompts such a contemplative into action - its efforts are always fruitful. When the action is complete, the Farther delights in the prayerful gaze of such a devoted heart - for He sees His own Son reflected there. Nothing can thwart this kind of love -- for Divine Love animates and sets this heart in movement and at rest. The Trinity has become the very life of this soul - and this same soul, for its part, is transformed in its image and likeness to the Three Persons in One God.

The Vessel of Elizabeth of the Trinity

[For 24 September 1906—on the occasion 

of M. Germaine’s 12th Anniversary of her Profession]

Immensus Pater, immensus Filius,

Immensus Spiritus Sanctus

-St. Athanasius

Behold the vessel of Laudem Gloriae,
O Mother, what a splendid journey was made! . . .
Through the peaceful night, all wrapped in silence,
Gently drifting upon the Ocean immense,
All at rest under the vault of Heaven,
“The great voice of God” she hears beckon.
Swept up suddenly by fathomless swells,
The frail little skiff lost under the waves.

It was the Trinity, opening to me His breast,
And I found my center in the Divine Abyss!
Not on shore’s edge will I remain,
Into the Infinite I plunge, my share there contained.
My soul rests in this immensity,
And lives with the Three as in eternity!
O Mother, listen well to the end of this story,
So to rejoice for your Praise of Glory.

Her homecoming to God, celebrates your feast
Her deep longing to stay “in that spacious place.”
All her sojourn always unchanged,
Behold her heart designs a sacred crusade:
Your feast will last until that solemn eve,
When Laudem Gloriae to Heaven flees,
To commence once again, surpassing life’s days,
In the Divine Secret of the Father’s Face.

-St. Elizabeth of the Trinity [Poem 115]
Translated by Julie Enzler (2018)

Pilgrimage to the Canonization of Elisabeth of the Trinity - Mystic of Dijon

On Thursday October 13, after an interview with Father Mitch Pacwa on EWTN the day before, I began the long flight to Rome. (Click here to see the interview.) My trip is going to be a little bit of an adventure - but what is a pilgrimage if there is no adventure to it?

As a academic, my travels are often determined by the lowest cost fare that I can find. This time, it was Turkish Airline.  I have never flown this particular airline but I am convinced that this is unfolding in accord with Divine Providence.  So I am flying to Rome via Istanbul -- I cannot help but think of the deep wounds of our times, and that, perhaps, part of the reason the Lord has permitted this journey through Turkey is that I remember to pray for my persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the Middle East, and that I also pray for Muslims, during this difficult moment of history.

My fellow pilgrim was to be Richard Ziegman who works in a hospital down in Southern Colorado. Elisabeth of the Trinity has been a great consolation to him through the years and he told me that he had to make this pilgrimage no matter what.  But today, God revealed He had other plans. There were complications with his flight so that he never made it here to LAX.

There are other pilgrims who I will meet in Rome if it is God's will.  For example, EWTN will carry the canonization live.  I am hoping to connect with their team in Rome.  We will see happens.

Also, my good friend Kris McGregor with Discerning Hearts will be onsite. She was tremendously helpful in helping get out the message and mission of Elisabeth of the Trinity through a series of podcasts she and Mariam Guttierez (the voice of Elisabeth of the Trinity) conducted with me - first on Saint Elisabeth’s retreat she wrote for her sister, “Heaven in Faith” and second on her retreat for her Carmel “Last Retreat.”

There is also some of my former students, now priests, studying at the Pontifical Universities. We promised to meet for pranzo. I believe that I will meet many more friends in Rome — friends of Elisabeth of the Trinity who have been touched by the inheritance she left us: faith in the all loving God intimately present in the soul.

To find out more about Saint Elisabeth of the Trinity, I highly recommend a book by Sr. Giovanna della Croce translated by Julie Enzler A Life of Praise to God. Sr. Giovanna was a intellectual whose own conversion was influenced by Saint Teresa Benecticta of the Cross. After she entered Carmel, she began to write about this great martyr and also discovered the writing of Elisabeth of the Trinity.  Her book, translated by Julie Enzler, a wife, mother and instructor at the Avila Institute for Spiritual Formation, introduces the life and some of the most beautiful passages of the Mystic of Dijon.

The Carmelite Sisters of Alhambra will be offering a prayer service before the Mass of  Thanksgiving for the Canonization of Elisabeth of the Trinity at 3:30pm on November 6 at St. Teresa's Parish in Alhambra. Their music is really edifying, so I hope you can come. 

Elisabeth of the Trinity - Mysterious Hymn of Praise

For Elisabeth of the Trinity, to surrender ourselves to God in love is to join the Great Canticle echoing from the foundation of the world and resounding in the heights of heaven: the very praise of the glory of God's merciful love. In her biblical vision of the cosmos, those who pass through the great tribulation of Christ's passion also raise victorious with Him.  They share in His glory and they make it known. And so can we, here and now, if we will choose to live by faith in the midst of the trial that God has permitted in our lives.

The music that Elizabeth of the Trinity proposes is richly relational and engenders a tender reciprocity between Heaven's glory and the trials of earthly life, time and eternity, the soul as Bride and Christ, the Divine Bridegroom, This chord of reciprocity also resonates out from the soul surrendered to God to all the souls entrusted to it -- so that they are all implicated in the eternal plan of the Father. The music of the heavens and the music of the soul can become the same because God dwells in both as in a temple.She describes a secret harmony exchanged not only in the life to come, but presently, right now, hidden in the silence of this humble moment, where eternity is already begun. What is realized perfectly by the souls in heaven is a hymn of praise anticipated now by those who live in the simplicity and humility of faith.

Resounding in a silent fullness of love and communion, this music moves in the soul the more the soul is drawn to Christ. The melody of this mysterious hymn is unfamiliar and strange, but she attempts to find words for it. She describes the Divine Presence as in-flowing, enveloping, establishing and transforming. God's roaring silence produces peace, self-possession and interior strength. She draws her descriptions from the Bible:

If speechlessness grips those who are pierced to the heart by the love of God, tradition calls this apophasis, she quotes the Bride of the Canticle of Canticles to bring out the relational and bridal dimensions of this failure of human speech: "I know longer know anything"  she sings "but Christ crucified." Not a mental state or a natural mode of consciousness, she describes for us a speechless prayer realized when the soul is overwhelmed by the immensity of God's love, an immensity that flows through the Cross of Christ and overwhelms the soul. This is a hymn whose secret is known by the soul and shared with heaven.

To help us glimpse the new self-possession it challenges us towards and produces in us, she intones songs that she attributes to Christ Himself: "My soul is always in my hands" and "I shall keep my strength for you." And for her, the strength that this hymn of praise unveils is found in observing silence. To be silent is to choose not to attempt to influence or control or manipulate.  It is to be surrendered to what God is doing in the moment.  This is how Christ lived -- obedient to the will of the Father.

To live like this, to choose to be humble and to accept the situation for what it is and then to order it to God, this requires dying to our own plans and dreams, to the tyranny of what we think ought to be, and to respond to the love of God being made known in the moment.  To live like this, this is to die to self. Elisabeth reveled in this death to self -- she not only accepted it, she sought it. As a result Christ's obedient, vulnerable, and vigilant heart came to reverberate in her own by faith.  This is the source of the spiritual music, the rhythm that carried her personal hymn of praise. Because she wants to share the joy that she discovered, she yearns that we might discover this divine heart beat for ourselves.

This vision sees the whole world animated by an eternal Sanctus. This Sanctus evokes surrender and lifts up by God, establishing total forgetfulness of self, total awareness of the Lord. Everything is in the shadow of Christ crucified by love, everything a response, a "thank you" for the immensity of love that He has revealed. Wholly attentive and adoring, a soul that is drawn out of itself by the love of the Lord is vulnerable and ready for a beautiful encounter, for the impact of Divinity into the frailty of humanity.

The Assumption of our Lady and Elisabeth of the Trinity

Soon to be canonized Elisabeth believed that with the help of Mary, our lives can become a great hymn of praise. She held this as true for her married sister, a young mother, as she did for her fellow Carmelite nuns.  In fact, on the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, she went on retreat and during this retreat began to commit some of her convictions about becoming the praise of God's glorious grace to paper.

In her wisdom, the very source of our existence is in the mysterious canticle of praise offered by the Son to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. This great canticle is revealed on the Cross and the whole Christian existence is taken up by its  mystery.  By the Cross of Christ, we have the opportunity to be in harmony with ourselves and to reverberate with divine melodies that echoed before the foundation of the world. Mary, Elisabeth contends, knew this secret more than any other created soul.  She stood at the foot of the Cross and heard the melodies echoing in her Son's heart more than anyone else ever could.  Assumed into heaven, she is ready to teach us her secrets. In this way, she is the Gate of Heaven -- because to have the hymn in Christ's heart echo in our own is to know the whole life of heaven already by faith. Today it is very important to allow this teaching to wash over us and baptize the way we see the gift of life.

In opposition to Blessed Elisabeth's view of life, the most powerful people of our time believe that individuals exist as no more than purely functional cogs for the machinery of the world. There is no real music -- for the most beautiful music surprises us.  But among the powerful, there can be no room for surprise.  In this vision of industrialized and commercialized humanity, government and other societal institutions compete for an absolute claim over one's own person.  Probability and predictable human behavior replace authentic freedom and virtue.  Everything is about better technology so that human behavior can be better controlled and manipulated.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary challenges this industrialized vision of humanity. It is, in itself, a total surprise for before the resurrection of Christ, the witness of humanity caught up in heaven was the rarest of human experiences. No other woman was ever raised up from this world below before.  The fact that a poor, humble and uneducated woman was raised above this world is a sign that humanity is made for heaven, above this world, above the visible, above the produceable, above the consumable, above the measurable, and above even the probable. This "above" is not a spacial reality but a reality of power, essence and beauty.  Not the slave of material and visible existence, but above it, the uniqueness of each human person, the unrepeatable splendor of this particular enfleshed soul, precisely as an embodied spirit, is a wonderful wholeness known and desired by God. Here, if we let it, the Assumption of the Mother of God and our Mother in Grace can confirm in the most tender and human way that God is the beginning and end of each human heart, that we are only pilgrims in this world below, that our true homeland awaits us in the dawning of a new heavens and new earth -- the likes of which no one has ever fathomed or even remotely conceived.

For Blessed Elisabeth, Mary teaches our hearts the secret songs that Jesus offered the Father from the Cross. These are songs of obedient love, a hidden music so subtle and gentle that it is at work changing everything even now. In every hardship and renunciation for love, in every trial and sacrifice for what is good and true, space is made for this music to resound anew.  It is the music of an obedient and freely given love, a salvific music that instills hope in the hearts of men and women. With patient kindness, the Lord wants the whole of humanity to know the unspeakable harmonies of his unvanquished love. Created in His Image and Likeness, we are capable of saying "yes" to Him and to allowing Him to radiate our whole existence with these harmonies and even to raise us up to His very life. This is heaven, a state of existence into which we can be assumed by His love at work in us. What He has realized perfectly in Mary, He yearns also to realize in us too.

Because of the "yes" of Mary, His desire to implicate Himself in our plight was realized.  Because one heart was completely open to the eternal melodies of God's heart, all hearts now have the possibility of allowing these same strands to echo within.  And assumed into heaven, this Heart beating with maternal love is not remote from us but very close. Indeed, Christ has given us His Mother's heart as a great gift. For in Christ, the heavens and the earth have embraced - and the praise of His glory is resounding on earth.

Elisabeth of the Trinity to be Canonized on October 16!

Pope Francis announced at the June 20, 2016 papal consistory that the date for the canonization for Elisabeth of the Trinity will be October 16, 2016.  These developments are being reported at by Dan Burke and Liz Estler at SpiritualDirection.com  and there is a press release from the webpage maintained by the Carmel in Dijon.  For the official notification click here.  Her canonization is a huge grace for the Church because it will help people rediscover her spiritual mission. In a noisy and heartless world that has forgotten God, she is ready to help us find the peace that only devotion to Christ in prayer can provide, and this kind of peace is needed now more than ever.

Before her death she came to believe that she was being given a sort of spiritual maternity over souls who desire a deeper union with God. Aware about how anxiety, scruples and self-torment are dangerous for the life of prayer, she described a kind of priestly role in which she would help those who asked get out of themselves and into a more vulnerable posture before the Lord.  Based on her own experience of the power of Christ's love, she was convinced that souls that recollected themselves in holy silence and were confident in the love of God would be raised up into a transforming union with Him.  

Elisabeth of the Trinity's writings provide a mystagogical catechesis on prayer. That is, she provides instruction for those seeking a deeper encounter with the Lord and who want to grow in their dedication to Him.  Her letters and spiritual reflections are filled with quotes from Saint Paul and Saint John -- all meant to encourage a simple movement of love toward God. Firmly convinced of the Lord's benevolence and mercy toward each soul, she understood that progress in the spiritual life requires a humble surrender and abandonment to His will.  To move us in this direction, she also draws from Saint John of the Cross, John Ruusbroec, Angela di Foligno and Therese of Lisieux at once reinforcing and explaining why silent prayer and adoration before the mystery of God are essential for the Christian life.

Even in the final days of her illness, the young Carmelite nun was convinced that God's love in her was so powerful that not even death could stop her from praying for her friends and helping them enter into a deeper relationship with the Holy Trinity.  She even said that it would increase the joy of her heaven if her friends asked her to help them.  This was compelling to both her friends and her family because they knew her to be sincere, profoundly compassionate and always faithful to her word. With her canonization, God has given Elisabeth of the Trinity to everyone in the Church as a new spiritual friend.  If you ask her to help you to pray, you can count that she will not fail to do everything she can.

Some Notes about Elisabeth of the Trinity

Pope Francis has approved a miracle performed by Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity. This means that she will be canonized during this Year of Mercy. In order to help us receive the gift of her canonization, it might be good to know a little about her and the spiritual mission that she carries out in the Body of Christ.

As a child, after the loss of her father and grandfather, Elisabeth Catez struggled with a very strong temper. Near her home in Dijon was her parish church of Saint Michael's, a reform school for troubled children, and a Carmelite Monastery. She went to Mass frequently in the first, was often threatened to be placed in the second and felt mysteriously drawn to the last. Through the help of a good confessor and her love for the Mass, she not only learned self-control but also developed a profound love for contemplative prayer. 

She was very popular and influential with her friends. She was a natural leader and the source of a lot of fun for everyone around her.  She also loved to play piano and was familiar with the work of the great composers of her time.  Yet in all of this, it was her love for the Lord that most impressed those who knew her.

Her mother was not pleased when Blessed Elisabeth wanted to become a Carmelite. As a widow who deeply loved her two daughters, the idea of being separated from her was too painful.  Her little "Sabeth" however did not get discouraged but believed that God was using this to prepare her for a deeper life of prayer.  She patiently waited for her mother to change her mind and when she did, Elisabeth Catez entered the Carmelite Monastery to become Sister Elisabeth of the Trinity. 

As a religious, Blessed Elisabeth wrote to her friends and family to encourage them to a deeper devotion to God and openness to His love. She loved the Scriptures and quoted the Bible to help her friends receive the Word of God in a deeper way.  To go deep into God's Word, she spoke of becoming free of ourselves and vulnerable to the immensity of love that the Lord is waiting to impart to us.

The encouragement and prayers she was offering others in this life she believed would continue in the life to come.  She called this the mission that she would have in heaven. She came to this conviction several months into a difficult struggle with Addison's Disease. At the time incurable, she endured a crucible of both physical and spiritual suffering.

Instead of causing her to be self-occupied, she viewed these sufferings as something that she could offer the Lord in love "by a wholly loving movement."  She used this difficult experience to pray for those she loved and to intercede for the Church. In the last letter she was able to write, she told a friend that it would actually increase her joy if she was called on from heaven to help. She died at the age of 26 in 1906 but her writings have become a major influence in the life of the Church today. 

Although her intercession has cured a bishop of cancer and healed a school teacher from Sjogren's Syndrome. this friend in heaven is passionate about more interior miracles of the heart.  She wants us to allow the Holy Trinity to establish us in the sacred stillness of love and she wants to help us focus less on our own inadequacies and more on the radiance of Christ's presence in our lives.  If someone desires a deeper life of prayer, Elisabeth of the Trinity is always ready to intercede. Anyone who takes the time to read her writings will soon discover spiritual food that strengthens the effort to pray. She in fact believes in a contemplation that opens the soul "to unexpected horizons." In the narrow confines of our work-a-day world, we need these horizons, and in the spiritual mission of Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity, we have a heavenly friend who wants to help us find them.

Elisabeth of the Trinity to be Canonized

This is an update to a post a did a few years ago on the canonization process for Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity.  Today, Pope Francis issued a decree approving the healing of Miss Marie-Paul Stevens as a miracle.  A religion teacher afflicted with Sjogren's Syndrome, Miss Marie-Paul Stevens, while on a pilgrimage to Blessed Elisabeth's convent, in Flavignerot, just outside of Dijon, was completely cured. Over the summer of 2011, the Archdiocese of Dijon opened the process for the canonization of Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity, the Carmelite Mystic of Dijon, France (1880-1906) and Pope Francis's action today completes this process. A formal announcement of the date of her canonization is coming in the next few weeks.

Saitn John Paul II identified her as a strong influence on his spiritual life at her beatification in 1984.  Cardinal Decourtray (at the time Bishop of Dijon) attributed his own healing to her intercession at the time.  Yet even more wonderful are the many conversions to a deeper life of prayer attributed to her intercession and spiritual mission in the life of the Church.  Centennial celebrations throughout France ten years ago indicated that many have discovered devotion to the Trinity and deeper contemplative prayer through her life, writings and intercession.   For many, her canonization would express and deepen their sense of gratitude to this pianist become nun at the turn of the last century.

Part of the process leading to the declaration of sainthood requires that a second miracle be obtained by her intercession after her beatification.  The miracle approved today is this second miracle for Blessed Elisabeth.  

Temple of the Holy Spirit Continued: Praise as the Music of the Soul

From October 2-4, 2014, the Society of Catholic Liturgy is meeting in Colorado Springs.  The theme for the conference is "The Temple Transformed."  To this end, I am giving a concurrent address on "The Temple of the Holy Spirit in the Writings of the Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity."  The last post and this one are some of my notes.

Blessed Elisabeth describes praising the glory of the Lord in terms of music.  The soul is a lyre.  Emotions, passions, thoughts and imaginings are the strings that must be tuned.  The Holy Spirit is the musician.  Such praise takes up the inner life, it constitutes the existance of the soul as a temple of the Holy Spirit.

She compares the praise offered by a soul with descriptions of heaven found in the Revelations.  This is an invitation to think about the analogy between the soul as a kind of heaven in faith and the heaven of glory that awaits us.  In each one there a chorus breaking out.  The inner sanctuary of one's very being, like heaven, is meant to be filled with wonder, adoration and the jubilation ceaseless praise.

Such joy is for her a divine harmony played on the strings of the heart.  She describes a secret canticle learned from Mary at the foot of the Cross, and at the same time a heavenly hymn which lifts the soul out of time and into eternity. Such praise clings to the glory of the Risen Lord in the midst of all of life's difficult questions because it discovers itself embraced by love.

Music involves harmony and rhythm, the resonance of deep movements of the heart with vast horizons of the world, a mediaton of beauty, of glory, a shining forth of what is good even when it is difficult to discern.  For the soul filled with the Holy Spirit, canticles of the heart offered to the Lord in praise are born not only in the midst of comfort, consolation and satisfaction, but especially in those piercing moments of personal inadequacy, failures and voids.  This divine music, music that Elizabeth describes as the Holy Spirit playing on the strings of the heart, is not an escape, but an expression of real life, of an existence open to the possibility of hope.

The divine indwelling establishes a center point for the heart. In this axis for the inner world, the power of God is made known even as the circumstances of life spin out of control.  Real life does not threaten the music or diminish such praise. The canticles of a soul animated by the Holy Spirit are born in between this divine reality in the depths of the soul and the earthly, created reality through which the soul is living and enduring.  The temple of the Holy Spirit, a Christian courageous enough to stand in this gap by choosing faith, by choosing joy, mediates grace in the real world through this kind of praise, and in this jubilation renders heaven and earth vulnerable to one another.

Faith accesses this center through what Blessed Elizabeth proposes as a simple loving movement toward God. This is a silent humble adoration of the One who is totally other than me but who loves me exceedingly, and it is this movement toward the personally present God who loves that reverberates and explodes into a praise that must be expressed: a song, a canticle, a hymn of love.  Those who have heard such canticles know that the human heart raised by grace to this true worship is unconquerable. In the midst of every trial and hardship, such a soul is become the praise of glory, a temple where the joy of the Holy Spirit overflows and fills the whole world around it.

The Temple of the Holy Spirit, Praise and Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity

Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity became aware of the indwelling presence of God at her First Communion.  This initial experience was satiating.  Whereas the other children were ready for the wonderful reception prepared for them after the liturgy, witnesses describe Elisabeth captivated by her encounter with the Lord.  She seemed to be filled with wonder over His new presence to her and teachable, open to new words of wisdom for her life.

Witnesses also describe the beginning of a new self-control.  This self-mastery was not all at once, but an unfolding reality whose roots go back to this moment of encounter, this experience of a love that fed her soul.  There is infact a correlation between the transformed life that amazed both friends and family and a growing awareness on her part of the loving presence of the Trinity in her soul.

Years later as a Carmelite she writes a powerful prayer that brings together the doctrine of the Divine Indwelling of the Holy Trinity and her experience of contemplation.   "O My God, Trinity Whom I Adore" is a petitionary prayer, a cry of the heart for the peace and stillness that only God's presence can establish in the soul.  It is a prayer that reaches out to the ultimate end of the divine economy while always remaining mindful of the difficult ambiguities besetting a soul that yearns for God.  This prayer confronts weaknesses, emptiness and inadequacy with hope.

It is important to note that this prayer describes the indwelling not as a completed fact, but as something unfolding, as a work that only God can bring to completion.  Blessed Elisabeth reveals the divine presence as intrinsically dynamic, a reality that raises human nature above itself.  As the presence of God establishes peace in the soul even in the midst of great difficulties, the Holy Spirit renders the Christian capable of participating fully with his own life in the Son's perfect offering to the Father.  In short, the Divine Indwelling dynamically perfects the spiritual worship that faith in Christ makes possible.

This is a theme we find also in the retreats she authored.  These spiritual reflections she wrote in the final stages of what was then a terminal disease.  She returns not only to the theme of the divine indwelling as a source of peace in the soul, but also elucidates the particular activity this heavenly peace makes possible: perfect praise.

One is struck by her conviction that to be the praise of glory is not simply a noble ideal to which she aspires, but her sacred name, her very identity, the secret purpose of her life before God. In her Last Retreat, she begins her reflections in a truly ecclesial voice, the voice of the Bride of Christ.

The song of the Bride for her Bridegroom she describes discloses this kind of praise in terms of a secret longing that Christ and the Church share.  What is more, she understands herself as personally participating in this love.  She sees herself as a kind of personification of the Bride of Christ, a Bride who sings to her Beloved a canticle of love and devotion, and this even as her own life plunges in its final agony.

Here, Blessed Elisabeth expands our understanding of the divine indwelling.   The presence of God in the soul is not only satisfying and morally transforming, it is not only psychologically therapeutic and an answer to difficult interior experiences, this divine presence is also the source of a whole new range of spiritual activity, an ecclesial existence that breaks out in true worship.   The soul filled with the presence of God is being transformed into a kind of heaven, fashioned as a dwelling place for the living God, built up as a temple, a particular and unrepeatable realization of the Church, where the glory of the Lord rests.  In the soul filled with God there is finally the freedom to sing His praise, not in some distant future, but in the vast horizons of the present moment.

Faith Contemplates the Advent Mystery Because He Leads into Captivity All Powers

Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity helps us open our hearts to the coming of Christ.  On the twelfth day of her Last Retreat, she offers a reflection on "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."  Jesus has come to give us peace through opening up access to the Father's house.

Whoever sees Christ sees the Father, and to see this love is to find that for which our hearts most long.  This seeing, this contemplation, this knowledge is by faith.   Here, faith is no mere assent to a body of information but a contemplative reality that seeks the saving truth and savors it.  Faith is an encounter with the One whom the truths of our faith bear to us, and we believe what the Church proposes to us because we want to know Him.  Whoever has surrendered his personal existence in response to the surpassing totality of love revealed by Christ crucified, this soul has gained access to the Father's house, the freedom to go to our real spiritual home, the liberty that leads to our true peace.

Blessed Elisabeth sees the peace of Christ through the eyes of Saint Paul.  Through the Blood of the Cross, the Lord leads all oppressive "Principalities and Powers" away "as captives, triumphing over them in Himself" (Col 2:15).  Without the knowledge of Christ's love, our dignity is vulnerable to all kinds of dehumanizing forces.  But with the surpassing love we know in Christ Jesus, we are free from every form of irrational oppression -- indeed, rather than rob of us dignity, the Lord permits all kinds of spiritual hardships only so that we might know the full extent of the greatness He calls us to and makes possible in our lives.

What the Apostle beheld in terms of oppressive cosmic forces, the Mystic of Dijon applies to our psychological powers.  Our interior battle with ambiguity and darkness in terms of our own patterns of thought and behavior is part of a cosmic struggle where evil powers attempt to overcome the light.  Just as Christ has taken diabolical powers captive, He also takes our psychological powers captive so that the ambiguity and confusion the emerges from them no longer robs us of our dignity as long as we persevere in believing in His love.  Her application  sees beyond the darkness of our interior frustrations to see the limitlessness of His mercy.

Beholding the unsurpassable love of the Lord, she understood how our limited powers of imagination, emotion, intuition, cognition and volition often hold us back.  Without the Word of the Father, these powers subject us to a labyrinth of fears, anxieties, false judgments because they are subject, not to the truth, but to sin and disintegration.  Left to their own, the powers of our soul frustrate that peace for which our hearts truly long.  

Blessed Elisabeth also knew that Christ has the power to captivate, to hold even our own psychological powers captive.  He does not lead our psychological powers by oppression and He is never violent.  He attracts.  He fascinates.  He captivates - because in Him is the fullness of God, in Him all that is good, holy and true about humanity is revealed.  His love is that beautiful and she knew this and longed for her friends to see it too.  To see this love is to be freed from sin, to be raised up, to be capable of true praise.

Techniques and methods rooted primarily in our own powers lack the freedom to achieve moral rectitude and cannot access the peace of the Father's house.  Instead, Blessed Elisabeth invites us this Advent to allow our hearts to be drawn into a greater silence and solitude.  The surpassing love of Christ is known in our weakness, poverty, and thirst.  By humbling accepting this poverty of heart, the beatitude of His presence is ours.

Our faith truly accesses God.   Instead of attempting spiritual feats of devotion, Blessed Elisabeth invites us to simply surrender to His presence breaking in all around us.  To turn our thoughts to His great love is already to lift up our hearts.  To waste time thinking on what He has done for us by humbly entering our human poverty, this is already to begin to taste eternity.

He is the light in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome Him.  So in the inconvenience and difficult of our poverty and lack of love, He remains, waiting for us so that we, each of us, is awaited by an uncommon love.  She invites us to allow ourselves to be captivated: this Word, the Word made flesh, does not disdain humble humanity but cherishes his own birth in its frail freedom.    

As if Already in Eternity: The Wisdom of Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity

Saint Elisabeth of the Trinity is a witness to the primacy of contemplation in the life of the Church and the mystical wisdom contemplation releases into human history.  This is the wisdom that understands how God is present in both the public square as well as in the intimacy of our hearts.   Today, when the whole world needs this wisdom renewed, the Church celebrates her feast day and invites us to consider her powerful spiritual doctrine.

She wrote a famous prayer to the Holy Trinity that has helped many contemplatives recover devotion to the Divine Persons in their life of prayer.  This work is cited to support the  Catechism of the Catholic Church's teaching on the Divine Works and the Trinitarian Missions.  The teaching itself is that God calls every individual to a great and beautiful purpose, to become a dwelling place for His presence in the world:

The ultimate end of the divine economy is the entry of God's creatures into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity.  But even now we are called to be a dwelling for the Most Holy Trinity, 'If a man loves me,' says the Lord, 'he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him' (CCC 260).

This is a rich teaching because it says that our ultimate fulfillment is not simply something waiting for us in a remote future, in a distant afterlife.  Instead, the Catechism proposes that heaven can begin now in faith.   This means that our faith offers us a fullness of life.  We do not have to be content with managing through life's ambiguities and uncertainties with the hope that someday it might get better.  Instead, our faith gives us a real foretaste of the fullness that awaits us -- so that the excessiveness of God's love can pour into our lives here and now, if we will believe in Him.

To encourage this decision to believe in the love that God has for us in the here and now of our lives, the Catechism cites the beginning of Blessed Elisabeth's prayer to the Trinity, "O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me to forget myself entirely so to establish myself in you, unmovable and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity."

Blessed Elisabeth's prayer helps us consider what it means to have faith, to believe in God and what He calls us to become.  This kind of faith is a matter of a love that takes us out of ourselves. It is, in this sense, an ecstatic movement of heart, a decision to lay aside everything so that there is space for God to dwell in us.  Faith helps us see that our own bloated egos need to make way for God.  To love Christ to the point of welcoming His word in our hearts means He can begin to help us forget our very self.  He is the One who frees us so that the fullness of life that awaits us in heaven begins here on earth.

Her words suggest that the biggest obstacle to prayer is not anything outside ourselves, but proclivities within.   The ego has its own specific gravity.  Its force, if left unchecked, its deadly.  Anxieties over our own plans and for security, our lust for control and to put others in their place, our need to be right and esteemed, our obsession with being liked or affirmed, our gluttony for comfort and entertainment; all of this fails to provide any firm ground for rectifying our existence.  Unchecked, these tendencies suffocate the heart, and as long as one's heart is pulled by these forces, it can find no peace.

Only when we can get out of ourselves are we able to breath the fresh air of friendship with God and true solidarity with one another.   At the same time, even after we see how imprisoned we are, left to our own resources, we cannot entirely free ourselves.  The answer is not to be found in our own cleverness or in some Titanic effort to surmount oneself through techniques.  Only Christ can help us leave our old way of life behind.  This is why Blessed Elisabeth's prayer begins with a cry for help.

Clinging to what Christ has revealed about the Father and about humanity, this is the essential movement of faith.  This is His word to us - for He is the saving Word that reveals this inexhaustible mystery.  Those whose hearts are vulnerable to this radiant beauty find true inner freedom.

Souls whom Christ helps to be free of themselves stand firm in love even as everything in life falls apart around them.  This is only because through Christ they have found the ground of their very being in the excessive love flowing from the Holy Trinity into their nights, their voids, their inadequacies and even their failures.  In short, come what come may they know they are loved and that love awaits them.

It by standing on this ground that a soul opens itself to God's presence in ever new and surprising ways.  On this ground, He dwells in them.  With the inflow of His truth and love, it is easy to let go and to trust, and anyone who has discovered this freedom wants to be established there in an unmovable way.

Today is the feast of Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity.  She lived out this truth to her last anguished heartbeat, bedridden with an incurable disease even as the political powers of her day threatened those she loved the most and the Church was rocked by all kinds of scandal.  This Carmelite Mystic, the Mystic of Dijon, believed her mission was to help souls enter to a transforming encounter with Christ, one that requires a journey out of ourselves where we are vulnerable enough to be touched by Him. Her words encourage us to call out to the Word, and to let His great Canticle of love resound in our hearts with all its fulness -- for to know this saving truth is to live as if already in eternity.

Saint Angela di Foligno and Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity

One of the influences on the thought and spirituality of Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity is a Third Order Franciscan widow from the beginning of the 14th Century, Angela di Foligno.  Pope Francis has just included this Master of Theology in the Calendar of the Saints and her feast will be January 4.   Saint Angela's Instructions #36 contains a description of some of her last experiences and words. Drawing from a translation of this work, Blessed Elisabeth quotes these tender words the dying Angela heard from the lips of Jesus, "It is "I" who come, and I bring you unknown joy... I will enter into the depths of your being."

It seems that the Word incarnate spoke to her in this way just before He entered into her in a remarkably beautiful way.  She describes that He touched her and embraced her whole being.  Even as the disintegration of death was consuming her life, she was enveloped by the love of the Word spoken by the Father into humanity for her, personally, intimately, and truly.

For the Mystic of Foligno, the coming of the Word into her was also a very personal event - like the coming of a Bridegroom for his Bride.  What a wondrous grace!  Even in the face of death, the Word of the Father - the source of all meaning and purpose in creation - enters and embraces the life of the saint so that the meaninglessness of death is not the last word.  Instead, at death, she witnesses to being raised into a love that will have no end.  It is in this current of love that the Christian takes his stand - because this love gives a life that nothing can take away.

Blessed Elisabeth understood how important this encounter with the Word of the Father is.  The fact that she would zero in on this passage suggests that something in Jesus's words to Saint Angela also resonated in her own life too.  In fact, when she copied these words in a personal letter to her prioress, Blessed Elisabeth was in the physical agony of her own final illness. What a blessing that today Saint Angela's beautiful witness to Christ's personal presence is recognized by the Universal Church.  Now, with Saint Angela and Blessed Elisabeth we can marvel at a love that is stronger than death.

Elisabeth of the Trinity Episode 14

Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity believes that deeper encounters with the Lord await those who embrace the path of integrity.  The Lord in fact constantly sends his grace to those who believe that He died for them to set them free.  Those who cleave to this saving truth by praying to Him find themselves constantly examining their lives in the light of the Gospel, constantly seeing deeper ways they can follow the Lord.

To have died in Christ means to be raised up in new life in Him.  This is the grace of baptism.  Those who accept this grace are filled with new life.  The old way of life before they believed no longer animates them they way it once did.  The old values are empty and lifeless.  The more they say yes to the new life of baptism in each moment, they also discover in that same moment that they are in fact spiritually dead to everything in this world that once motivated them.

At the same time, these disciples at the beginning of their spiritual lives have not yet entered deep into the peace of the Lord.  They struggle with thousands of imperfections, involuntary habits and sinful inclinations that distract them from what they really want.  The beginning of the spiritual life in fact takes great determination and perseverance.

However, this beginning is not about developing one's own cleverness or ability to be good or even learning how to feel good about oneself.  Instead, beginning the spiritual life is about realizing how completely reliant we really are on the life of Christ.  He Himself is the source of our faithfulness. Here, perseverance and determination are aimed at not simply trying harder but rather generously accepting all the graces the Lord sends at each moment.  It is what God is doing in our efforts and even our failures that is paramount and it is this for which we must constantly give thanks.

What is spiritual integrity and purity of heart?  It is a gift from God given to those who love God enough to ask for it.  Those who learn to rely on the Lord in this effort begin to see how much He is faithful in their weakness.  This kind of openness, this kind of surrender, allows God to be even more generous.  Such souls, by the purity and integrity of their faith, are given an even deeper and more peaceful freedom - a freedom that is like the freedom of God Himself, a freedom that only God can provide.

Making sure we know this is what Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity believed to be an important part of her spiritual mission.  In the retreat she wrote for her sister, she constantly returns to this idea.  The battle for integrity takes great effort and we must constantly encourage each other so that we can all be open to this wonderful gift.

"Our aptitude for receiving His grace depends on the inner integrity with which we move towards Him.  And then God, bringing us His gifts, can give Himself, imprint on us His likeness, forgive, and free us."

To hear the next episode of my pod-casts on Elisabeth of the Trinity's Heaven in Faith, click here. 

Unexpected Horizons - Heaven in Faith Continues

Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity helps those who want to pray enter deep within the Word of God.  Here we discover the wonderful and astonishing will of God for all creation, especially for each of us.  He has desires each of us to take up our part in His beautiful plan conceived before the world began, a plan that reaches beyond the end of time into the unexpected horizons of His love.  


What does God desire for us?  God wants our lives to be beautiful, to be full of life, filled with love.  Blessed Elizabeth believes that prayer is an essential part of this plan.  For her, prayer is reaching out to Jesus who is already reaching out to us - it leads to a tender embrace, a loving communion, a friendship with no end- this is the ultimate end of the plan of God, the splendor He desires to cover us in - not just in the future, but right now in this moment in time - which she describes as eternity begun and still in progress. 

Blessed Elizabeth explains: “God chose us in Him before creation, that we should be holy and immaculate in His presence, in love. “Our created essence asks to be rejoined with its principle”, The Word, “the Splendor of the Father, is the eternal archtype after which creatures are designed on the day of their creation.” This is ‘why God wills that, freed from ourselves, we should stretch out our arms towards our exemplar and possess it,” “rising” above all things “towards our model.” “This contemplation opens” The soul “to unexpected horizons.” 

Click here for Episode 13 Beginning to Pray: “Heaven in Faith” Day 7 Prayer 1 – 


I would like to thank Kris McGregor for conducting these interviews and producing them as well as Miriam Gutierrez for providing “the voice” of Blessed Elizabeth for this series.

The Simplicity of Faith - Heaven and Faith Episode 12

Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity understood something beautiful about contemplation.  As a simple gaze of love on God in faith, this kind of prayer opens us to the simplicity of love, to an interior harmony, to an inner unity with ourselves which allows us to freely give ourselves in love.  This unity, this harmony, this new life comes from God and is in God.  This is because God through the Cross imprints us, touches us, kisses us with his very own divine simplicity.  The Mystic of Dijon believed that when we spend time seeking Him in the silence of our hearts, the One who is immensely simple offers us this loving touch, this holy kiss, that we might know again the simple greatness of our humanity.

Through his Word and by his Holy Spirit, the Father unites the powers of our soul in a work of love.  Through this simple movement of love He inspires, we learn to submit our thoughts, judgments, fantasies, dreams, desires, feelings and choices to Him.  We do this by forgetting all of this and giving ourselves wholly over to the simple acts of love He entrusts to us.  Love envelops us the more we surrender to Him in this way.  This is what we are doing  when we choose to spend time in loving attentiveness to his Presence within.  It is what we are expressing when we choose to implicate ourselves in the plight of those who suffer so that they too might know this exceeding love.

The One who is Incomprehensible and totally Transcendent dwells in our innermost being because in his Omnipotence He has chosen to make Himself that accessible to us.  It was at a great price that He chose to do this -- to the point of making Himself completely vulnerable to our hostility to Him.  Behold the enigma of the Cross where misery and mercy embrace once and for all.  By this mystery, the Most High God has made the lowliness of our hearts his heaven for no other reason than He loves each one of us in a unique and unrepeatable way.

Just as the Word came into the world in the flesh to destroy death, the Victor now comes into each of our hearts in the Power of the Holy Spirit.  He, the Bridegroom of our Souls, comes to free us from the personal hell we have hid ourselves in.  He comes because He did not create us for hell.  He is eager in this quest: to rejoice with us, to delight in us, and to be enamored by us.  Such is the irresistible power of the divine love we were fashioned to share.  He also aches over the complicated pride that attempts to block His simple love.  Yet no height or depth can resist His power - for His love is stronger than death, having descended deeper and ascended higher than all else that is.

The Perfecter of our Faith is come to free us from our bondage.   He opens before us the pathway to holy freedom.  Trust in the Risen Lord is how we journey on this road.  Such trust is born in every humble prayer and grace filled decision to let go of anything and everything that keeps us from Him.  This trust, this prayer, this grace imbued choice is given by gazing on Him in faith, even as we are imprisoned by our own complications, by our own bloated sense of self.

Contemplation, time spent in silence, careful scrutiny of the Presence of God in Word and Sacrament; this kind of prayer is vital for simplicity of life.  In gazing on the One who is recognized in the Breaking of the Bread, in making oneself present to the incomprehensible gift of his Presence, in making the God who thirsts the priority of one's heart, one discovers the secret by which irrational desires for lesser things lose their power.  The heart is pure, the eye single, each effort unified, every moment of life full.

Yet this kind of prayer involves great effort, difficult trials, and all kinds of purifying hardships.  As long as we are entertaining fantasies, as long as we are driven by what seems to satisfy, as long as we are given to little power games, as long as we are tormented by righteous indignation, as long as we wallow in resentment, as long as our hearts linger on what is not for the honor and glory of God; we are not gazing on the One who gave Himself up for us.  If such failure seems certain, more certain is the victory.

It is in the very center of our failures and inadequacies where He stands victorious. Even the faintest glimmer of the Lord's radiance draws us forward, through every darkness and void.  This Word is the Light that shines in our darkness and we must vigilantly seek this divine radiance to find our freedom.  He is the substance of our hope and we possess Him by cleaving to Him in faith.  By keeping our eyes fixed on His radiance, His victory is realized again and again in each concrete, here and now circumstance, no matter how overwhelming or impossible it seems.

Only the humble, contrite gaze of faith permits the Word to share His very life with us.  Indeed, the light of faith exposes the complications in our hearts for what they truly are.  When we see such things in the light of God's love, it is easier to repent, to rethink, to let go, to accept, to forgive, to hope.

God is love.  Love is immensely simple.  Cleaving to God by faith makes us simple too. Here, the saving truth really does free us from all that is not worthy of our dignity.  Here God's power raises us up and causes all that is simply wonderful about our frail humanity to shine.

Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity  takes her younger sister Marguerite through these powerful truths in the retreat she left for her.  To continue to follow my reflections with Kris McGregor on these beautiful teachings, please click here.