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.  

Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving - in harmony with human nature

Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are works of piety that make space for a right use of reason. Many spiritual people do not connect works of piety with reason or love or freedom.  Without making good use of reason, freedom and love, our works of piety will fall short of our Lenten Observance, and the healing that this season offers us will not be realized.

We must confront some popular misconceptions about our human reality. Reason is presumed as cold and calculating, the dispassionate part of our psychology whose purpose is exhausted in minimizing risks and maximizing opportunities. Freedom is associated with selfish indulgence and escape from responsibility.  Love is often thought to be irrational or opposed to reason or simply a feeling. Although to the extend that they are isolated from one another some of these presumptions about these spiritual realities might be true, God created these wonderful powers to be related in a kind of sacred harmony resonating in the spiritual interior of our lives.

Frequent confession and extra-sacramental penance like making a pilgrimage or observing Friday abstinences are aids to this difficult work.  It is a manner of asceticism, of spiritual practice, out of love for the Lord. It is not a matter of accomplishment or achievement, but a matter of vulnerable surrender and humbling ourselves before an inestimable gift. To fully realize our God-given human vocation, we must do everything we can to tune and discipline our use of reason and piety, love and freedom until they are made to resound in divinizing harmony through our spiritual exercises this Lent.

The harmony of reason, freedom and love with works of piety is gift upon gift - restoring and perfecting the image and likeness of God in us.  The gift of human reason is given by God so that we might use our freedom to love in a manner that gives Him glory. Through the Holy Spirit who prays in us, the gifts of prayer, fasting and almsgiving expand the capacity of reason to find the holy freedom such divinized love demands -- a freedom that gives space to everything that is good and authentic in our humanity and that frees us from everything that is not worthy of the noble calling that we have received.

Because of sin and its limiting power, unaided reason by itself cannot secure this kind of freedom.  So we surrender to the Holy Spirit who convinces us of sin and the deep things of God. He prompts us to be merciful when we are otherwise thoughtless or resentful, and He moves us to venture with love into situations that we would otherwise find inconvenient and repulsive. When the Holy Spirit raises reason up in prayer, when the limited designs of our hearts are pierced by the limitless designs in His, the vast expanse of human frailty is laid bare and capacities unfamiliar to us are revealed.  It is here, in this desert wilderness, that the music of heaven is waiting to fill.  It in this emptiness and poverty of heart that the divine harmony of human reason, freedom, love and piety resounds.

The Music of Divine Mercy

Hidden in the mystery of my neighbor's greeting is a stream of divine music that resounds with tenderness and that rings with goodness. The sacredness of human life is validated when I recognize its call and empathize with its heart piercing dynamism. Under the enchantment of this tolling theme, the individual is not ever an accidental and isolated note, but a delicate part of a divinely purposed chord in which we are all caught up. In this resonance of life and truth, our very core reverberates if we let it. In the silence of my neighbor's glance, a symphony is ready to break forth as if for the first time -- when and only when I learn to listen.

Just as all true music expresses stirrings in the heart that time cannot contain, the wonder of this particular neighbor before me is the object of Divine jubilation -- an exquisite expression of joy so serious that the whole reality of heaven and hell weighs in this moment of encounter. Even a chance meeting bears this existential weight. This is because these moments have height and depth. At a moment's precipice, eternity can break in with its thunderclap of meaning. Hardly a word exchanged, the silence binds souls together. Or else, with the wrong word, what was to be a moment of grace devolves by neglect or indifference into lifeless banality. Yet, this risk on which God pauses is what makes His music so beautiful.

This particular person whose path I have crossed is for God a new turn, a surprising twist in a never heard before symphony, an irreplaceable part of a whole that I too am caught up in. A melody from above this world waits to catch us off guard if only we will bring this encounter into tune with its subtle movements. Yes, divine harmonies play out in the real life concrete historical choices we make. They are heard not by escaping or surmounting life, but plunging into it with an attentive heart, with a living faith, with humble vulnerability, with the readiness to do something beautiful for God. 

The eternal hymn that could resound requires a harmony in which both word and silence be raised to love and by love and for love. If earthly music resonates in the connection of rhythm and sound with the heart, this heavenly canticle relies on the Holy Spirit stirring our hearts, liberating our wills. With a gentle touch He tunes us. He restores the right relation of encounter and recognition, empathy and truth, forgiveness and reconciliation. In these ways, the Spirit of Love fills the silent emptiness of human misery with melodies of Divine Mercy, setting a limit to evil to make space for a new love to be born -- if only, in this moment, especially this difficult moment, we will offer our "fiat." 

The life giving presence of the Holy Spirit is why whenever any soul cries out to God for help, the Father never sees anything other than His own embodied image and likeness, and hears only the voice that the Son has joined to His own. Within the space of a humble prayer, with great respect for our liberty, the Trinity tenderly embraces us like delicate musical instruments, patiently waiting for us to sanction the immense and subtle movement of Infinite Love that the Divine Persons desire to unleash. The music of God's Heart is ready to forgive and to help us forgive, to plant new hope and to help us bring hope to others. Love's own melodious fullness is ready, ready to sound a new and unvanquished beginning to what we thought to be destroyed.

The Trinity waits for us, on our side, on the side of humanity, as the One God who longs to see each man and woman thrive in a new solidarity of life and love. Through the movements we allow the Trinity to raise in our souls, God's very presence resounds by a knowledge and love too great for this life to contain. On this Divine Hymn of Mercy, the story of our humanity finds sure footing, ground firm enough to hold its weight as the music of its frail prayer echoes on earth as it is in heaven.

The Voice of Angels and the Witness of our Faith in England

This Christmas I had the joy of making a pilgrimage to the Tyburn Convent in London together with an English spiritual theologian David Torkington. He took me to this convent of contemplative nuns who keep vigil together at the sight of heroic witness to the Catholic Faith. The Benedictine Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre are there to intercede perpetually for the whole world, all of humanity -- for its reconciliation, healing and peace. Throughout the day, the nuns offer a  tour and presentations of the Shrine of the English Martyrs over which they keep watch. While there were many powerful stories shared during my time with them, the story of the Carthusian martyrs was particularly poignant.

Earlier in the day, Dom John Houghton and his Carthusian brothers together with a diocesan priest were marched in their vestments from the tower of London to the Tyburn. They were partially hung and mutilated before their death. After this public torture and exhibition, the executioners cut out their hearts to kill them.

John Houghton was first. When his heart was cut out, they placed it in his hands. He is reported to have offered it to God with his dying words, "Lord, what wilt thou do with my heart?"

The context of this execution is striking. When Henry VIII had asked the Carthusians to support his succession as "Head of the Church," the hermits took this request to prayer. At this time, doctrines concerning the Chair of Peter were not as clear as they are today. We can guess that they had wanted to be good subjects to the King. We can also guess that they did not want to cut themselves off from communion with the universal Church.  Finally, we can also surmise that they had some sense that defying their King would have disastrous consequences.  They needed to sanctify this ambiguity by discovering the most appropriate means of serving God in the midst of it. So they offered the Mass of the Holy Spirit.

During Mass, through the Eucharistic prayer and the descent of the Holy Spirit, the priest consecrates the offering of bread and wine with his own hands and the power of the Holy Spirit. By this action, the bread and wine are earthly bread and wine no more, but become the Body and Blood of Christ - his real presence on earth, heavenly food. In this way, the hands of a priest allow the whole Church to offer through his ministry the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ in a very real and powerful way.

Through this offering, we pray for everything and everybody -- our enemies and persecutors, our neighbors and loved ones, the stranger and the destitute. Not as a nice wish or some vague aspiration, but with confident certitude and firmness of purpose, this spiritual worship allows us to stand before God and know that we are heard. When His whole mystery is offered to the Father for His glory and for the salvation of the world, something from Above breaks into even the most difficult circumstances here below - light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

At this moment of the Mass, the Carthusian heard the singing of heavenly choirs - angels songs were calling to them. This canticle echoing from heaven called to them and they could not be indifferent. Love from heaven above evoked love from their very depths.

Their hearts were pierced with clarity, conviction and confidence. The confusion that they suffered before Mass was dispensed. The inner voice of conscience had spoken in harmony with the music from above. In holy freedom, for their own integrity and dignity as sons of God, they knew what they had to do, even at the price of their own blood because of the Blood that was shed for them.

When Saint John Houghton held his heart in his priestly hands, his executioners might not have understood the sanctifying power of his priestly question, but the glory given to the Father at the Mass was extended into that very moment. The integrity of worship and faith and witness were being held up in the midst of painful obscurity in the frail hands of a dying contemplative and priest. This gesture did not make the evil of that day magically go away, instead the powerful here below were confronted with a wisdom from above -- and at the Tyburn Convent, this wisdom of loved offered for the sake of men, their integrity, and their faith remains unvanquished.