# Indwelling Spirit of the Holy Trinity - OCDS Ongoing Formation Volume I ## Indwelling Spirit of the Holy Trinity The Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity — What is the Trinity? “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life” (The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 234). “Christians are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: not in their names, for there is only one God, the almighty Father, His only Son and the Holy Spirit: The Most Holy Trinity” (CCC 233). “The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the ‘consubstantial Trinity.’ The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: ‘The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e., by nature one God.’ In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), ‘Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature’” (CCC 253). The most important concept of the Holy Trinity is its mission in the world — God’s revelation and the salvation of all believers. “The ultimate end of the whole 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’ [Jn. 14:23]: O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me forget myself entirely so to establish myself in you, unmovable and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity. May nothing be able to trouble my peace or make me leave you, O my unchanging God, but may each minute bring me more deeply into your mystery! Grant my soul peace. Make it your heaven, your beloved dwelling and the place of your rest. May I never abandon you there, but may I be there, whole and entire, completely vigilant in my faith, entirely adoring, and wholly given over to your creative action” [Prayer of Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity] (CCC 260). In his Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square, on the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity (June 12, 2022), Pope Francis recalls that the Trinity is not a “... theological exercise, but a revolution in our way of life.” The Holy Father stressed that our words must translate into action. “Today we can ask ourselves if our life reflects the God we believe in: do I, who profess faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, truly believe that I need others in order to live, that I need to give myself to others, that I need to serve others? Do I affirm this in words or do I affirm it with my life?” He continues, is the “sign of the Cross we make every day a gesture for its own sake, or does it inspire my way of speaking, of encountering, of responding, of judging, of forgiving?” Pope Francis also says further that “God, who is the author of life, is transmitted not so much through books as through witness of life.” “The Christian begins his day, his prayers, and his activities with the Sign of the Cross: ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.’ The baptized person dedicates the day to the glory of God and calls on the Savior's grace which lets him act in the Spirit as a child of the Father. The sign of the cross strengthens us in temptations and difficulties” (CCC 2157). The concept of transformation and union in the triune God is the primary focus in the writings of Sts. Teresa and John of the Cross. Teresa confirms that the mystery of God in three persons was revealed to her “through a certain representation of the truth.” “When the soul is brought into that (seventh) dwelling place, the Most Blessed Trinity, all three Persons…, is revealed to it through a certain representation of the truth… and through an admirable knowledge the soul understands as a most profound truth that all three Persons are one substance and one power and one knowledge and one God alone” (Interior Castle, VII.1:6). Likewise, St. John of the Cross, in his Spiritual Canticle (Stanza 39, “breathing of the air”), explains the soul’s transformation and union of love in three persons. “By his divine breath-like spiration, the Holy Spirit elevates the soul sublimely and informs her and makes her capable of breathing in God the same spiration of love that the Father breathes in the Son and the Son in the Father. This spiration of love is the Holy Spirit himself, who in the Father and the Son breathes out to her in this transformation in order to unite her to himself. There would not be a true and total transformation if the soul were not transformed in the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity in an open and manifest degree” (Spiritual Canticle, 39:3). Furthermore, the writings of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity highlight the mystery of the Trinity, present by grace in the soul of every baptized person. Her name tells her she is the “house of God” in which live the Three Divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. “She ardently longs to become for Christ ‘another humanity in which He can renew His whole Mystery’ including conformity on the Cross and participation in His saving work in the world” (Elizabeth of the Trinity, The Complete Works, Vol. One, Foreword, ICS Publications). For further understanding of one’s participation in the Triune God, the members will read and reflect on the letters and major writings of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity. ## **Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity — a Brief Biography** Elizabeth Catez, known to her family as “Sabeth,” was born July 18, 1880, near Bourges (France), the daughter of a military officer. Her sister Marguerite was born three years after. Early in her life (1887), Elizabeth’s father and maternal grandfather, Raymond Rolland, both died, and the two young children were left in the care of their mother, a very energetic and upright woman. The young Elizabeth also had a very pronounced character; her childhood tantrums were fearsome. But at the same time, from a very early age, she tried to conquer her temperament. When her father died, the family moved to a house closer to the Discalced Carmelite Nuns in Dijon. The sound of the convent’s bells and the nuns’ garden gave Elizabeth great solace. The day of her first communion, April 19, 1891, was an all-important one for her: she felt she no longer had hunger as Jesus had fed her. That same afternoon she went to make her first visit to Carmel and the prioress explained to her the significance of her name in Hebrew—Elizabeth means “House of God.” This made a deep impression on the young girl, who understood the profundity of these words. From then on, she was determined to be God’s dwelling place, by controlling her temperament and forgetting about herself. She was very gifted in music and obtained first prize in piano when she was 13 years old. Her soul was sensitive to music and nature; beautiful things always reminded her of God, in which she saw harmonious reflections of the Creator. Elizabeth wanted to be a Carmelite, but her mother forbade it until she reached 21. When reading Saint Teresa, she felt a great connection with her. She understood that contemplation meant to let God act, that mortification had to be interior, and that friendship is an attitude of putting other people’s interests before one’s own. Elizabeth was also greatly helped by reading Story of a Soul, by which the young Thérèse of Lisieux, recently deceased, inspired her with her “Little Way” of trust in God. On August 2, 1901, Elizabeth entered the Dijon Carmel as a postulant and was given the name Elizabeth of the Trinity. Mother Germaine was her prioress, her Mistress of Novices, and finally became her admirer and disciple. Elizabeth lived a life that was completely ordinary, a life of faith, without revelations or ecstasies. However, this young girl immediately attracted the attention of the whole community through her faithfulness and commitment. In her turn, she submerged herself in reading and deepening her understanding of Scripture (mainly Saint Paul) and Saint John of the Cross. Under their guidance she found her own interior way and her faith matured. Reading Saint Paul, she felt a deep call to be the Praise of the Glory of the Triune God, by living every moment of the day in constant thanksgiving. She came to identify with this ideal, so much so, that at the end of her life she signed some letters with the name: “Laudem Gloriae” [the Praise of Glory]. During Lent in 1904, Elizabeth became ill (effects of Addison’s disease), and after a painful and long sickness, she died on November 9, 1906. Her last words were, “I am going to Light, to Love, to Life.” Her life and writings became surprisingly widespread. They consist of her Diaries, her Letters, her Poems, and some prayers, among which is her famous “Prayer to the Trinity.” Other writings include Heaven in Faith, which moved her to live heaven here on earth by adoring God in faith and love, and what she wrote to her sister Marguerite, housewife and mother, The Greatness of Our Vocation, Last Retreat, and Let Yourself Be Loved (dedicated to her prioress). Courtesy: [https://www.carmelitaniscalzi.com/en/who-we-are/our-saints/bl-elizabeth-of-thetrinity/](https://www.carmelitaniscalzi.com/en/who-we-are/our-saints/bl-elizabeth-of-the-trinity/) Required Reading: Elizabeth of the Trinity, The Complete Works, Vol. One: General Introduction, Major Spiritual Writings. ICS, 1984, 2014. Elizabeth of the Trinity, The Complete Works, Vol. Two: Letters from Carmel. ICS, 1995. **Read-along discussion materials (included at the end, after the bibliography):** Fr. Saverio Cannistra, The Superior General Letter to the Order, on the occasion of the canonization of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity. His Holiness Pope Francis, Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square, on the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, June 12, 2022. Sister Margaret Dorgan, D.C.M., “The Message of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity,” Spiritual Life Magazine, Washington Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars, Inc., Winter, 1984. Note: Participants may include in their ongoing discussion the essential points of the above referenced articles. These materials and the essential points of this study could be used effectively for community formation/discussion as well. Additional Reading: He is My Heaven: The Life of Elizabeth of the Trinity by Jennifer Moorcroft. ICS Publications, 2001. Indwelling Spirit of the Holy Trinity – Session One 85 ### Heaven in Faith (HF), Major Spiritual Writings, I (Elizabeth of the Trinity, the Complete Works, Vol. One, Pages 85-120) Prayerfully read and reflect on the entire Ten Days of Prayers. (May take multiple sessions, as needed.) Recommended: “Discerning Hearts” YouTube podcasts: “Beginning to Pray – Heaven in Faith” by Dr. Anthony Lilles. In these 18 videos, Dr. Lilles begins the spiritual explorations of prayers of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity. (The podcasts may be found by searching YouTube for “Anthony Lilles.”) Explanatory Note: Elizabeth of the Trinity still has three months to live when, in the first half of August 1906, she writes the first of her four spiritual treatises — Heaven in Faith (HF). These prayers are addressed to her sister, Guite (Marguerite). Elizabeth organized her souvenir for her sister as a retreat of ten days, like the Carmelites make each year. Each day consists of two prayers. “To be able to appreciate the true value of this retreat, we must hear within us the echo that each word, each quotation, touched by faith, awoke in Elizabeth” (Introduction, pg. 86). Each prayer begins with a scriptural quotation followed by her explanation and reflection. Points for discussion/reflection: First Day First Prayer Elizabeth begins her “First Prayer” with the last wish of Jesus: “Father, I will that where I am they also whom You have given Me may be with Me, in order that they may behold My glory, the glory you have given Me because You have loved Me before the creation of the world” [John 17:24]. “Such is Christ’s last wish, His supreme prayer before returning to His Father” (Heaven in Faith, #1). She then goes on, “He wills that where He is we should be also, not only for eternity, but already in time, which is eternity begun and still in progress” (Heaven in Faith, #1, emphasis added). Side note: For some people, the most significant part of Elizabeth’s message is this assurance that heaven can begin on earth. If a foretaste of heaven is available to us in advance, what is the meaning of time? How does time function in this perspective? Elizabeth sees the temporary as flowing into the eternal. The temporal is our means of access to the eternal. It passes on, and yet through it we reach what does not pass on. “Time then is of supreme value. But how does it take on aspects of the eternal? It does so through the now of this moment which holds God for me. She says, ‘He (God) requires of me to live in an eternal present without before or after, to be wholly at one in myself in this eternal now.’ Here we have an asceticism of time that requires full attention to the unfolding moment. I do not indulge myself by wandering in thought or desire to what has been or to what might be. I keep my energy focused on what this moment communicates to me – whether it be the call to serve others, the duty of work, the enjoyment of beauty” (The Message of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, by Sister Margaret Dorgan, D.C.M.) Second Prayer “‘Remain in Me.’ It is the Word of God who gives this order, expresses this wish. Remain in Me, not for a few moments, a few hours…, but ‘remain’... permanently, habitually. Remain in Me, pray in Me, adore in Me, love in Me, suffer in Me, work and act in Me. Remain in Me so that you may be able to encounter anyone or anything; penetrate further still into these depths. This is truly the ‘solitude into which God wants to allure the soul that He may speak to it,’ …” (HF #3). “In order to understand this very mysterious saying, we must not, so to speak, stop at the surface, but enter ever deeper into the divine Being through recollection.... It is there in the very depths that the divine impact takes place,... There we will find the strength to die to ourselves and, losing all vestige of self, we will be changed into love...” (HF # 4). Second Day First Prayer “‘The kingdom of God is within you’ [Lk. 17:21]. A while ago God invited us to ‘remain in Him’…; and now He reveals to us that we do not have to go out of ourselves to find Him… St. John of the Cross says that ‘it is in the substance of the soul where neither the devil nor the world can reach’ that God gives Himself to it; then ‘all its movements are divine, and although they are from God they also belong to the soul, because God works them in it and with it’ [Living Flame of Love, Stanza 1.9]” (HF #5). Second prayer “‘Hurry and come down, for I must stay in your house today…’ [Lk. 19:5] The Master unceasingly repeats this word to our soul which He once addressed to Zacchaeus.... But what is this descent that He demands of us except entering more deeply into our interior abyss? This act is not an external separation from external things, but a ‘solitude of spirit,’ a detachment from all that is not God” (HF #7). Third Day First prayer In this prayer, Elizabeth explains that love alone brings the soul closer to God. “‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home in him’ [Jn. 14:23] … It is love that attracts, that draws God to His creatures: not a sensible love but that love ‘strong as death that deep waters cannot quench’ [Eph. 3:9]” (HF #9). “‘Because I love My Father, I do always the things that are pleasing to Him’ [Eph. 1:4]. Thus spoke our holy Master, and every soul who wants to live close to Him must also live this maxim.... Each incident, each event, each suffering, as well as each joy, is a sacrament which gives God to it; so it no longer makes a distinction between these things; it surmounts them, goes beyond them to rest in its Master, above all things. … ‘The property of love is never to seek self, to keep back nothing, but to give everything to the one it loves’ [Heb. 4:9]” (HF #10). Second prayer “‘You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God’ [Col. 3:3].” Elizabeth here explains the meaning of the phrase, “you have died.” She says the soul must withdraw from all that is not God and remain in holy recollection. “‘I die daily’ [1 Cor. 15:31]. I decrease, I renounce self more each day so that Christ may increase in me and be exalted … I no longer want ‘to live my own life, but to be transformed in Jesus Christ so that my life may be more divine than human,’ so that the Father, in bending attentively over me can recognize the image of His beloved Son in whom He has placed all His delight” (HF 11-12). Fourth Day First prayer “Our God, wrote St. Paul, is a consuming Fire, that is ‘a fire of love’ which destroys, which ‘transforms into itself everything that it touches’ [Living Flame, Stanza 2:2]” (HF #13). Second prayer “But to attain to this love the soul must first be ‘entirely surrendered,’ its ‘will must be calmly lost in God’s will’ so that its ‘inclinations,’ ‘its faculties’ ‘move only in this love and for the sake of this love. I do everything with love, I suffer everything with love…’ Then ‘love fills it so completely... that everywhere it finds the secret of growing in love,’ ‘even in its relations with the world’; ‘in the midst of life’s cares it can rightly say: “My only occupation is loving”!’” (HF #16). As St. John of the Cross stated: “Now that my every act is love” (Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 28). Fifth Day First prayer “‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone listens to My voice and opens the door to Me, I will come in to him and sup with him, and he with Me.’ Blessed the ears of the soul alert enough, recollected enough to hear this voice of the Word of God; blessed also the eyes of this soul which in the light of a deep and living faith can witness the ‘coming’ of the Master... But what then is this coming? It is an unceasing generation, an enduring hymn of praise. Christ ‘comes with His treasures, but such is the mystery of the divine swiftness that He is continually coming, always for the first time as if He had never come; for His coming, independent of time, consists in an eternal “now,” and an eternal desire eternally renews the joys of the coming’” (HF #17). Second prayer “‘He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood, remains in Me and I in him’ [Jn. 6:56]. The first sign of love is this: that Jesus has given us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink. ‘The property of love is to be always giving and always receiving … and this love burns us, consumes us, and draws us into unity where beatitude awaits us’” (HF #18). Sixth Day First prayer Faith: “‘To approach God, we must believe.’ Thus speaks St. Paul. He also says, ‘Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things not see’... St. John of the Cross says that it serves as ‘feet’ to go ‘to God,’ and that it is ‘possession in an obscure manner.’ ‘It alone can give us true light’ concerning Him whom we love, and our soul must ‘choose it as the means to reach blessed union’” (HF #19). Second prayer Simplicity: “‘If your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light’ [Mt. 6:12]. What is this single eye of which the Master speaks but this ‘simplicity of intention’ which ‘gathers into unity all the scattered forces of the soul and unites the spirit itself to God. It is simplicity which gives God honor and praise; it is simplicity which presents and offers the virtues to Him... I call simplicity of intention that which seeks only God and refers all things to Him...’ ‘It is the interior slope’ and ‘the fountain of the whole spiritual life’” (HF #21). Seventh Day First prayer Predestination: “‘God chose us in Him before creation, that we should be holy and immaculate in His presence, in love’ [Eph. 1:4]. ‘The Holy Trinity created us in its image, according to the eternal design that it possessed in its bosom before the world was created,’ … In the beginning was the Word; and we could add: in the beginning was nothing, for God in His eternal solitude already carried us in His thought” (HF #22). “‘Our created essence asks to be rejoined with its principle.’ The Word, ‘the Splendor of the Father, is the eternal archetype 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.’ ‘The immense riches that God possesses by nature, we may possess by virtue of love, by His dwelling in us and by our dwelling in Him’” (HF #23). Second prayer “‘Be holy for I am holy’ [1 Pet. 1:16]. It is the Lord who speaks. ‘Whatever may be our way of life or the clothing we wear, each of us must be the holy one of God.’ Who then is ‘the most holy’? ‘The one who is most loving, who gazes longest on God and who most fully satisfies the desires of His gaze.’ How do we satisfy the desires of God’s gaze but by remaining ‘simply and lovingly’ turned towards Him so that He may reflect His own image as the sun is reflected through a pure crystal” (HF #24). “‘The highest perfection in this life … consists in remaining so closely united to God that the soul with all its faculties and its powers is recollected in God.’ … ‘The image of God imprinted in the soul is formed by reason [intellect], memory, and will... The form of the soul is God who must imprint Himself there like the seal on wax, like the stamp on its object. Now this is not fully realized unless the intellect is completely enlightened by knowledge of God, the will captivated by love of the supreme good, and the memory fully absorbed in contemplation and enjoyment of eternal happiness.’ … To ‘realize this ideal’ we must ‘keep recollected within ourselves,’ ‘remain silently in God’s presence,’ ‘while the soul immerses itself, expands, becomes enkindled and melts in Him, with an unlimited fullness’” (HF #25). Note: The entire teaching of St. John of the Cross (The Ascent, Books 1, 2, and 3) focuses on purification of the intellect (by faith), the memory (by hope), and the will (by love). Eighth Day First prayer “...we have become His through baptism, that is what Paul means by these words: ‘He called them’; yes, called to receive the seal of the Holy Trinity... So let us contemplate this adored Image, let us remain unceasingly under its radiance so that it may imprint itself on us; let us go to everything with the same attitude of soul that our holy Master would have. Then we will realize the great plan by which God has ‘resolved in Himself to restore all things in Christ’ [Eph. 1:9-10]” (HF #27). Second prayer Elizabeth quotes Paul, “‘It seems to me that all is loss since I have known the excelling knowledge of my Lord Jesus Christ. For love of Him I have forfeited everything. I have accounted all else rubbish that I may gain Christ. What I want is to know Him, to share in His sufferings, to become like Him in His death. I pursue my course striving to attain what He has destined me for by taking hold of me. My whole concern is to forget what is behind and to strain forward constantly to what is ahead. I run straight to the goal, to the vocation to which God has called me in Christ Jesus’” [Phil. 3:8, 10-14]. “That is: I want only to be identified with Him: ‘Mihi vivere Christus est.’ ‘Christ is my life’! [Phil. 1:21]” (HF #28). “The object of this retreat is to make us more like our adored Master, and even more, to become so one with Him that we may say ‘I live no longer I, but He lives in me’ [Gal. 2:20]. Oh! Let us study this divine Model: His knowledge, the Apostle tells us, is so ‘excelling’ [Phil. 3:8]” (HF #28). Ninth Day First prayer Spirit and Truth: “Christ said one day to the Samaritan woman that ‘the Father seeks true adorers in spirit and truth’ [Jn. 4:23]. To give joy to His Heart, let us be these true adorers. Let us adore Him in ‘spirit,’ that is, with our hearts and our thoughts fixed on Him, and our mind filled with His knowledge imparted by the light of faith. Let us adore Him in ‘truth,’ that is, by our works, for it is above all by our actions that we show we are true: this is to do always what is pleasing to the Father whose children we are. And finally, let us ‘adore in spirit and in truth,’ that is, through Jesus Christ and with Jesus Christ, for He alone is the true Adorer in spirit and truth” (HF #33). Second prayer Humility: “‘If anyone should affirm to me that to find the bottom of the abyss is to be immersed in humility, I would not contradict him. However, it seems to me that to be plunged into humility is to be plunged into God, for God is the bottom of the abyss. That is why humility, like charity, is always capable of increasing.’ ‘Since a humble heart is the vessel needed, the vessel capable of containing the grace God wants to pour into it,’ let us be ‘humble.’ ‘The humble can never rank God high enough nor themselves low enough.... Whoever possesses humility has no need of many words to be instructed; God tells him more things than he can learn; such was the case with the Lord’s disciples’” (HF #37). Tenth Day First prayer Faithful Virgin: “‘If you knew the gift of God,’ Christ said one evening to the Samaritan woman [Lk. 4:10] … There is one who knew the gift of God, one who did not lose one particle of it, one who was so pure, so luminous that she seemed to be the Light itself…One whose life was so simple, so lost in God that there is hardly anything we can say about it. ‘Virgo fidelis’: that is, Faithful Virgin, ‘who kept all these things [and pondered them] in her heart’ [Lk. 2:19]. She remained so little, so recollected in God’s presence, in the seclusion of the temple, that she drew down upon herself the delight of the Holy Trinity…The Father bending down to this beautiful creature, who was so unaware of her own beauty, willed that she be the Mother in time of Him whose Father He is in eternity. Then the Spirit of love who presides over all of God’s works came upon her; the Virgin said her fiat: ‘Behold the servant of the Lord, be it done to me according to Your Word,’ and the greatest of mysteries was accomplished. By the descent of the Word in her, Mary became forever God’s prey” (HF 38-39). Note: In this retreat prayer, Elizabeth meditatively reflects upon the Gospel story to unveil the workings of the Holy Trinity in the ordinariness of one’s life. Elizabeth goes on to reflect that the habitual recollection of the Virgin Mary in God did not prevent her from spending time with her family and those in need. “It seems to me that the attitude of the Virgin during the months that elapsed between the Annunciation and the Nativity is the model for interior souls… In what peace, in what recollection Mary lent herself to everything she did! How even the most trivial things were divinized by her!... The Gospel tells us that Mary went in haste to the mountains of Judea to visit her cousin Elizabeth [Lk. 1:39-42]. Never did the ineffable vision that she contemplated within herself in any way diminish her outward charity… If an order from Heaven arrives, contemplation turns towards men, sympathizes with their needs, is inclined towards all their miseries; it must cry and be fruitful” (HF #40). Second Prayer Elizabeth dedicates her entire “Tenth Day” of second prayer to “the praise of His glory.” Inspired by the words of St. Paul, she confirms that “We have been predestined by the decree of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we may be ‘the praise of His glory’ [Eph. 1:11-12]” (HF # 41). Indwelling Spirit of the Holy Trinity – Session One 91 Side note: One of the things this prayer addresses is us! We are to be the praise of God’s glory, “even here below!” — not just to praise God with our lips, but to make our choices, our behavior, and our everyday life a source of praise of God. Elizabeth calls us to offer praise to God with our conduct, not just our words. Praise of Glory “A praise of glory is a soul that lives in God, that loves Him with a pure and disinterested love, without seeking itself in the sweetness of this love; that loves Him beyond all His gifts and even though it would not have received anything from Him...” (HF #43). “A praise of glory is a soul of silence that remains like a lyre under the mysterious touch of the Holy Spirit so that He may draw from it divine harmonies; it knows that suffering is a string that produces still more beautiful sounds; so it loves to see this string on its instrument that it may more delightfully move the Heart of its God” (HF #43). “A praise of glory is a soul that gazes on God in faith and simplicity; it is a reflector of all that He is; it is like a bottomless abyss into which He can flow and expand; it is also like a crystal through which He can radiate and contemplate all His perfections and His own splendor. A soul which thus permits the divine Being to satisfy in itself His need to communicate ‘all that He is and all that He has,’ is in reality the praise of glory of all His gifts” (HF #43). “Finally, a praise of glory is one who is always giving thanks. Each of her acts, her movements, her thoughts, her aspirations, at the same time that they are rooting her more deeply in love, are like an echo of the eternal Sanctus” (HF #43). “In the Heaven of glory, the blessed have no rest ‘day or night, saying: Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty... They fall down and worship Him who lives forever and ever...’” (HF #44). “In the heaven of her soul, the praise of glory has already begun her work of eternity. Her song is uninterrupted, for she is under the action of the Holy Spirit who effects everything in her; and although she is not always aware of it, for the weakness of nature does not allow her to be established in God without distractions, she always sings, she always adores, for she has, so to speak, wholly passed into praise and love in her passion for the glory of her God. In the heaven of our soul let us be praises of glory of the Holy Trinity, praises of love of our Immaculate Mother. One day the veil will fall, we will be introduced into the eternal courts, and there we will sing in the bosom of infinite Love. And God will give us ‘the new name promised to the victor.’ What will it be?” “LAUDEM GLORIAE” (HF #44) Indwelling Spirit of the Holy Trinity – Session Two 92 ### The Greatness of Our Vocation (GV), Major Spiritual Writings, II Pages 121-130 Prayerfully read and reflect on the entire letter. (May take multiple sessions as needed.) Explanatory note from the Introduction, pg. 121: This “spiritual treatise” of September 1906 is written to a young lady of Dijon, Francoise de Sourdon (Framboise), age nineteen. The letter to Francoise becomes a long meditation, a little treatise: “Let’s treat humility first …,” begins Elizabeth on a serious note. This letter is filled with helpful insights. Read the entire letter slowly and meditatively. Points for discussion/reflection: On Humility:  “…nothing can ‘disturb’ the humble. He possesses ‘invincible peace for he has plunged into such an abyss that no one would go that far to look for him’” (GV #2).  Humility leads to self-knowledge. “…the humble person finds his greatest pleasure in life in feeling his own ‘weakness’ ‘before God’” (GV #2).  Humility leads to forgetfulness of ourselves. “‘Quotidie morior’ exclaimed St. Paul, ‘I die daily’ (GV #2). This doctrine of dying to self is the law for every Christian” (GV #3).  Our self-forgetfulness leads to transformation. “That is what St. Paul meant when he wrote: ‘Strip off the old man and clothe yourselves anew in the image of Him who created you’ (Col. 3:9-10). This image is God Himself” (GV #3).  Our transformation and union with Christ make us aware that we are the sharers of His divine nature. “St. Peter writes in one of his epistles that ‘we have been made sharers in His divine nature’ (2 Pet. 1:4)” (GV #3).  This awareness and participation in His divine nature make us free and peaceful. “It seems to me the soul that is aware of its greatness (self-knowledge) enters into that ‘holy freedom of the children of God,’ of which the Apostle speaks, that is, it transcends all things, including self (Rom. 8:21). The freest soul, I think, is the one most forgetful of self. If anyone were to ask me the secret of happiness, I would say it is to no longer think of self, to deny oneself always. That is a good way to kill pride” (GV #4).  “You see, pride is love of ourselves; well, love of God must be so strong that it extinguishes all our self-love. St. Augustine says we have two cities within us, the city of God, and the city of SELF [for clarification, see endnote, no. 13]. To the extent that the first increases, the second will be destroyed” (GV #4).  “A soul that lives by faith in God’s presence, that has this ‘single eye’ that Christ speaks of in the Gospel (Mt. 6:22), that is, a purity of ‘intention’ that seeks only God; this soul, it seems to me, would also live in humility: it would recognize His gifts to it – for ‘humility is truth’ — but it would attribute nothing to itself, referring all to God as the Blessed Virgin did” (GV #4).  Again, Elizabeth goes on to explain the “movements of pride” in the soul. “Framboise, all the movements of pride that you feel within yourself, only become faults when the will takes part in them! Without that, although you may suffer much, you are not offending God… What God asks of you is never to entertain deliberately any thought of Indwelling Spirit of the Holy Trinity – Session Two 93 pride, and never to act on the inspiration of pride, for this is wrong” (GV #5). Note: Here, Elizabeth echoes the teaching of St. John of the Cross: “I am speaking of the voluntary appetites because the natural ones are little or no hindrance at all to the attainment of union, provided they do not receive one’s consent or pass beyond the first movements, those stirrings in which the rational will does not take part either before or after” (Ascent, 1.11:2).  “…to attain the ideal life of the soul, I believe we must live on the supernatural level, that is, we must never act ‘naturally.’ We must become aware that God dwells within us and do everything with Him, then we are never commonplace, even when performing the most ordinary tasks, for we do not live in these things, we go beyond them! A supernatural soul never deals with secondary causes but with God alone… Everything for it is reduced to unity, to that ‘one thing necessary’... (Lk. 10:42). Then the soul is truly great, truly free, for it has ‘enclosed its will in God’s’” (GV #8).  Elizabeth goes on to proclaim: “Walk in Jesus Christ, rooted in Him, built up on Him, strengthened in faith and growing in Him in thanksgiving.” (GV #10)  “Be rooted in Him. This implies being uprooted from self…” (GV #10)  “Be built upon Him, high above everything that is passing, there where everything is pure, everything is luminous” (GV #10).  “Be strengthened in faith, that is, never act except in the great light of God, never according to impressions or your imagination” (GV #11).  “And, finally, grow in thanksgiving… If you walk rooted in Christ, strengthened in your faith, you will live in thanksgiving: the love of the sons of God!” (GV #12). Elizabeth concludes the letter with a final parting word to Framboise: “As for me, I feel already as if I were almost in heaven here in my little cell; alone with Him alone, bearing my cross with my Master. Framboise, my happiness increases along with my suffering! If you only knew how delicious the dregs are at the bottom of the chalice prepared by my Heavenly Father!” (GV #13). “A Dieu, beloved Framboise; I cannot go on. And in the silence of our rendez-vous you will guess, you will understand, what I do not tell you” (GV #13). Elizabeth signs the letter adding, Laudem Gloriae (Praise of Glory) stating, “This will be my new name in Heaven.” Indwelling Spirit of the Holy Trinity – Sessions Three, Four, and Five 94 Note: For Sessions Three, Four, and Five, use the same pattern as the above sessions, focusing on major points and concepts. Participants are asked to make notes of points they would like to discuss with the group. Alternatively, the local Council may choose to appoint an individual or a team to create discussion points. Last Retreat, Major Spiritual Writings, III (May take multiple sessions, as needed.) Read, reflect, and meditate on the pages of the Last Retreat in its entirety (pages 141-173). Explanatory Note: Last Retreat is one of the major writings of Elizabeth of the Trinity and it’s divided into fifteen days of spiritual treatise. “It is a cry of love before the ‘exceeding love’ of God, a cry issuing from the ‘depths of the bottomless abyss.’ The Breath of God passes from the heart to the pen” (Introduction, pg. 138). Let Yourself be Loved, Major Spiritual Writings, IV (May take multiple sessions, as needed.) Read, reflect, and meditate on the pages of Let Yourself Be Loved in its entirety (pages 175182). Explanatory Note: Let Yourself Be Loved is a very rich text. It’s written during the last days of October 1906 and was found in 1934 on the deceased Prioress’ table (Mother Germaine). Elizabeth’s posthumous mission to help others to live ‘in communion with love’ was more clearly formulated than ever in this text. We must place these pages in the context of an almost sacramental spirituality which developed greatly during her last illness (see Introduction, pgs. 175-177). Elizabeth of the Trinity, The Complete Works, Vol. Two, Letters from Carmel (May take multiple sessions, as needed.) Explanatory Note: “Though never intended for publication, her letters and writings for friends and family, in which she shares the secrets of her soul, have come to inspire countless Christians searching for a deeper relationship with the ‘divine Three,’ the indwelling Trinity” (Translator’s Preface, vii). Recommended “Discerning Hearts” YouTube podcasts: “The Letters of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity – Beginning to Pray” by Dr. Anthony Lilles. In these episodes, Dr. Lilles begins the spiritual explorations of selected letters of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity published by ICS. The selected letters for the podcast: #111, 157, 158, 162, 165, 169, 184, 185, 214, 224, 269, and 335 (episodes Parts I and II). Dr. Anthony Lilles currently serves as the Academic Dean of St. Patrick’s Seminary and University in Menlo Park, CA. Having taught graduate level theology for over 20 years, Dr. Lilles specializes in Spiritual Theology and various classics of Catholic Spirituality. His expertise is in the spiritual doctrine of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity and the Carmelite Doctors of the Church: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Indwelling Spirit of the Holy Trinity – Concluding Session 95 ### Concluding Session: The Message of Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity by Sister Margaret Dorgan, D.C.M. Courtesy, Spiritual Life Magazine, Ics Publications, Winter, 1984 Note: the entire article is included below in the read-along materials. Excerpts are given here to serve as discussion points.  Elizabeth of the Trinity is already for many people the patron saint of their inner life with God.  Her message, like Thérèse’s, is directed at anyone who longs to take hold of their personal existence and find deeper meaning in the ongoing flow of ordinary time.  Elizabeth was aware that what she comprehended of the mystery of an indwelling God was not for herself alone. Eleven days before her death on November 9, 1906, she wrote about her mission in heaven: “I have found heaven on earth, because heaven is God and God is within me. The day I understood that everything became clear to me.” Nothing complex, nothing extraordinary, nothing that requires a long, arduous application of the mind to comprehend.  She did not dilute her message when she wrote to relatives and friends beyond her monastery walls. What she experienced in such fullness was equally available to them. A letter to her mother says, “think of the fact that your soul is the temple of God. At every moment of the day and night, the three divine Persons are dwelling within you. When one knows that, one is no longer ever alone. It is so simple. There is no need of beautiful thoughts, only an outpouring of the heart.”  Elizabeth’s pondering of Scripture, especially the New Testament passages of Saints Paul and John, deepened her realization that to live in the divine presence is to anticipate heaven.  For some people, the most significant part of Elizabeth’s message is this assurance that heaven can begin on earth. “Heaven is within us, because He who is the joy of the blessed in the beatific vision gives Himself to us in faith and mystery. It is the same thing.”  If the foretaste of heaven is available to us in advance, what is the meaning of time? How does time function in this perspective? Elizabeth sees the temporary as flowing into the eternal. The temporal is our means of access to the eternal. It passes on, and yet through it we reach what does not pass on.  Elizabeth wants us to focus our attention on each moment, each event and what’s happening now. “Each incident, each event, each suffering, as well as each joy, is a sacrament which gives God to us. We no longer make a distinction between these things.”  Elizabeth is not urging us to get away from everyday existence but to dig down to the deepest dimensions of life. She opens our eyes to what is hidden in the too familiar places. She shows the mark of God on it; that all earthly things radiate an inner peace, the way time points inwardly to the everlasting.  Of all schools of spirituality none is more firmly set on the ground than Carmel’s, with its insistence on taking life exactly as it is without asking for the creation of special circumstances. At the same time, it offers the invitation to taste divine realities, not merely to know them from afar. Elizabeth resonated with this tradition long before she sensed her own mission to add to it.  In the final mystic vision, which celebrates the Christ-life in us leading to the depths of the triune God, Elizabeth still speaks of the ordinary as the vehicle of our communing with the divine. O God of bountiful mercy, You revealed to St. Elizabeth of the Trinity the mystery of Your secret presence in the hearts of those who love You and You chose her to adore You in spirit and in truth. Through her intercession may we also abide in the love of Christ, that we may merit to be transformed into temples of Your life-giving Spirit to the praise of Your glory. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. ## Bibliography Elizabeth of the Trinity, The Complete Works, Vol. One: General Introduction, Major Spiritual Writings. ICS, 1984, 2014. Elizabeth of the Trinity, The Complete Works, Vol. Two: Letters from Carmel. ICS, 1995. Moorcroft, Jennifer. He is My Heaven: The Life of Elizabeth of the Trinity. ICS, 2001. Fr. Saverio Cannistrà, Superior General. Letter to the Order, on the canonization of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity. 2016. His Holiness Pope Francis. Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square, on the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, June 12, 2022. Dorgan, Margaret, D.C.M. “The Message of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity,” Spiritual Life Magazine, Washington Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars, Inc., Winter, 1984. Lilles, Dr. Anthony. The Letters of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity – Beginning to Pray w/ Dr. Anthony Lilles – “Discerning Hearts” YouTube Podcast, 2022. ***** ## Read-along Materials Father Saverio Cannistrà, Superior General, Letter to the Order On the occasion of the canonization of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity Dear brothers and sisters in Carmel, At a distance of one year from the canonization of the Martin husband and wife, we are getting ready to celebrate another grace-filled happening filling us with joy. On the 16th of October, one hundred and ten years after her death, our sister Elizabeth Catez was written into the canon of saints of the Church, entering this way, with full rights, to form part of the great and glorious family of the saints of Carmel. Many are the motives for thanking the Lord and reflecting upon the significance that this event can have in the journey our Order has embarked upon. The rich and stimulating teaching that Pope Francis proposes with his words and initiatives — I am thinking of the encyclical Laudato si’ and the jubilee year of Mercy — can help us to gather various aspects of the relevance of the witness and spiritual teaching of this our famous sister, so loved and appreciated in spiritual circles, but still little known to the greater part of the faithful. And yet, what ought to render her interesting is her life as a vivacious young girl, sensitive, attractive, talented, generously committed to the life of the Church, tied to her family, exuberant in affection and capable of friendship, a lover of beauty and in all this conquered and focused upon the mystery of the Trinity which Jesus Christ revealed to us! Elizabeth can help us to reach the abundant and ever fresh source of the Trinity, which gives vitality, significance, joyful perseverance in our consecration and mission. She offers to everyone a stimulating example of how immersion in the mystery of divine life allows us to find total fulfillment. In this letter I wish to propose to you keys for rereading the writings of Elizabeth for the purpose of gathering from them their relevance, keeping in mind contradictory phenomena of the present age, always less capable of being characterized by good relationships because it is confused and discouraged; the anxiety of making oneself present to feel alive, by means of media visibility, that however does not manage to make us present to ourselves; the frenetic and noisy filling of time with activities that preoccupy and disturb us, which take away from us the time to listen, to talk and reflect in depth; the use of beauty and the selective astaticism of reality for the purpose of consumption, which rejects gratuitousness by impeding the reception of the beauty inherent in things, as well as disfiguring nature; the widespread feeling of being on the edge of a precipice, in the power of unknown and uncontrollable forces, which renders vain every effort for good, in a world always marked more and more by violence, misery and uncertainty, without the possibility of getting near peace; suffering and death seen as a disgrace, emphasized or vainly fled from in our culture, which does not manage to realize the value of them. How to consolidate our life? A main line of thought unites the experience of Elizabeth from when she was a small child until, still young but more mature, she was to die: the intuition that the one important thing is “to live for love. The God who is capable of overcoming her fiery and choleric temperament and to captivate her sensitive heart thirsting for beauty, she found in Jesus crucified for love (cfr. letter #133). In Him she saw and touched a love that was passionate and thrilling, which overcame her and, at a tender age, made her decide to be totally His. It is the contact that would happen on the most beautiful day of her life, the day of her first communion. “in which Jesus placed his dwelling place in me/ in which God took possession of my heart/ so much and so well that from that hour/ from that mysterious conversation/ from that delightful, divine encounter/ my only desire was to give my life/ to give back a little of his great love/ to the Beloved in the Eucharist/ who reposes in my weak heart/ inundating it with all his Favours” (Poetry, 47). The difficulties she had to face in the process of becoming mature — such as the contrast between the desire to enter Carmel and the opposition of her most loved mother; the desire to remain recollected in intimacy with Jesus and to take part in the feasts by dancing, where young men fascinated by her beauty paid attention to her; the feeling of being called to solitude, which required detachment and separation, and being involved in so many artistic and social activities; giving her whole heart to God and at the same time being ready to help and be affectionate with her friends — they found their solution in the attraction exerted on her by “the too great love” of Christ, which shines forth from the cross, the wood that is capable “of lighting the flame of love” (letter #138). Among the passages most loved by Elizabeth is the beginning of the hymn in the letter to the Ephesians, where Saint Paul announces the glorious destiny of man by saying that we have been thought of, blessed, and predestined from eternity “to be holy and faultless before him in love” (Eph. 1:4). Because of this “souls who chat about their own self, who are preoccupied about their sensitivity, dally with a useless thought or whatever desire, scatter their strength, “as it is not ordered towards God” (Last Retreat, 3). All that is not done for God is worthless (cfr. letter #340). It empties instead of filling; it scatters instead of gathering. It is not activity that disperses, but not believing “that a Being called Love dwells in us” (letter #330), not being united to the Being who loves us, to the Father who in Christ who awaits us in his house and with his Spirit who sustains us on our journey. The great act of faith — Elizabeth reminds us, echoing the evangelist John — is to believe in this immense love God has for us (cfr. Heaven in Faith, 20). The unification of the person comes about then through the potency of the act of faith and reverberates in the feelings. Therefore, to grow harmoniously, to be healed from the wounds of life and mature as a person, our objective ought not to be the cure of one’s own self or the overcoming of our own weakness but, rather, to come out of ourselves, to leave aside our own self (cfr. Last Retreat, 26) in an advantageous exchange with the self of Christ who “wants to consume our life to change it into his own: our own full of vice and his full of grace and glory, prepared exactly for us, if only we renounce ourselves” (Heaven in Faith, 18). The secret then is to recognize how much we are loved, fixing our eyes on the Master who came to light the fire of love and wants to see it burn in his disciples, so that it might spread visibly throughout the whole world. Divine love is so excessive and without measure, that it carries away the soul that permits him to do so, making it constant, no longer subject to the unforeseeable and inevitable disturbances of life, “because it sees the Invisible” and so then “it is no longer stopped by tastes or feelings”; it actually happens “that the more it is tried the more its faith grows, because it knows, so to say, how to overcome all obstacles so as to go to rest itself on the breast of infinite love, who does only works of love” (Heaven in Faith, 20). On the other hand, this is the human experience of the Son sent by the Father upon the earth and accepted by the humble Mother, this is the longing written into the being of every person, this is the grace of baptism which therefore constitutes a new birth, a permanent enlightenment for those who keep it in mind, the beginning of life eternal (cfr. Heaven in Faith, 2). At the base of her immaturity lay indecision with respect to union with God, remaining centered upon herself and not choosing love. The action with which God transforms and unites us is a quasi-physical phenomenon, a consummation of self-love, of the fear of suffering, of vices, of aversion towards God, all of this requires us to let go our will in order to be grafted into love, the “double current between the One who is and the one who is not” (letter #131). Wretchedness, a place blessed by mercy If we want to become — with our consecration and our work — an efficient sign of the Father’s action, “we are called to keep our gaze fixed on mercy” (Misericordiae vultus, 3). Often, in fact, whether we formulate it, or it remains implicit, a question hovers in our mind which renders us sterile, weakening our thrust and taking enthusiasm from us: what do I get out of my weakness? How much better it would be if it were not there, if only I were much stronger; if I were unassailable, how many problems less....and the ideal becomes unreachable! Thus, the life of discomfort and frustration is set up before us. Elizabeth reasons in a completely different manner, as also Pope Francis does, when contemplating the mystery of Jesus’ passion She says that the strength of tenderness is known only by accepting to enter into contact with the real life of others, without standing back at a distance from the human drama, by touching the suffering flesh of ourselves and others (cfr. Evangelii gaudium, 269-270). Speaking to her sister Guite, our saint suggests to her to cancel the word discouragement from her vocabulary: the more weakness is felt, and the Lord seems hidden, the more it is necessary to rejoice, reminding yourself that “the abyss of your misery attracts the abyss of his mercy” (letter #298). The interior life is fathomless because in it is the God who loves us without any shadow of change, an abyss of love that we possess within us (cfr. letter #292). If we use the light of faith, we find trust and love, which permit us to descend into our depths, instead of remaining rigid on the rippling surface of the sea of life. In this way we experience the abyss that is God, inseparably tied to our being and, reaching the bottom, “the divine impact will take place; it is down there that the abyss of our nothingness, of our destitution will encounter the abyss of mercy, the immensity of all of God” (Heaven in Faith, 4). Only by recognizing this truth, which is the heart of the Gospel message, is it possible to recognize “God under the veil of humanity” (Last Retreat, 4) and to hear from him the word in the present. If we want to find peace, we have to prostrate ourselves and throw ourselves “into the abyss of our nothingness”: from this will be born adoration, “from the ecstasy of love” (Last Retreat, 21). From this derives trust: fear of our own weakness disappears, because “the Strong One is in me and his virtue is all-powerful; it operates, says the Apostle, far beyond what we could hope for” (letter #333). Therefore, how much hope is it possible to have if it is true that “the weakest soul, even the most guilty is the one that has more reasons to hope”, given that “it possesses in itself a Saviour who wants to purify her in every moment” (letter #249), since “his mission is that of pardoning” (letter #145). We must see our nothingness, our poverty and powerlessness, recognizing calmly that we are not capable of progress and perseverance and place them before the mercy of the Master (cfr. Heaven in Faith, 12). In this way we can find freedom and peace which are the expression of reconciliation with ourselves in Christ — “He is in me, I am his sanctuary/ Oh, is it not the “vision of peace?” (Poetry, 88) — desiring [that] He grows in us and, through this growth, becomes known to mankind. Therefore, sanctity is truly within reach because it is found in a movement of descent, not of elevation: “The All-powerful needs to descend/ to pour out the torrents of his love. / He is searching for a heart that wants to understand him/ and in this one he makes his abode. / [.....] “Look at me, you can better understand/ the gift of yourself, the annihilation/ To exalt myself I must always descend, / that your repose might be in a basement! / It is always here that meeting happens” (Poetry, 91). The Eucharist is the All of the Trinity who invades us The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the abyss into which Elizabeth, losing herself, finds herself (cfr. letter #62). He is “an Immensity of love overflowing” (letter #199), which soaks into and gives life to every fiber of being; that is poured into the soul in the measure that the person draws with faith on baptismal grace and is progressively conformed to Christ. The horizon of reality continues always to expand (cfr. letter #89) and light is shed on everything, because Christ enters into the depths of the soul, “into those abysses in which only He lives” (letter #125), making us participate in his way of looking at things, in his feelings, in his heart: He fascinates, carries us away; under his gaze the horizon becomes so beautiful, so vast, so luminous....” (letter #128). “The Trinity is not an abstract and complicated truth, but it is the life of the Three — as they are called — who in their happy communion create the world and humanity involving them in the splendor of Love, Light and Life. God is the Father, his Son and their Spirit: our home, our intimacy, the paternal home from which we ought never leave” (Heaven in Faith, 2). In the logic of faith, the existential roots and consequences of being Christian are strictly connected: to live in faith, to know the love of Christ crucified for us, to live in a light which renders beautiful even the most painful moments of life, to be transformed by the Spirit as happened in Mary, to live inhabited by the Trinity, to find the peace of heaven upon earth, for Elizabeth were synonymous. The Eucharist is the key to this luminous and prophetic vision of life. In the experience of Elizabeth, from the day of her first Communion, sacramental Communion with Jesus and prolonged adoration of his constant giving of self to us were the experimental source, the door of communication, the place where flowed together all the illuminations and graces she received in her brief and most intense life. Entering the chapel while the Blessed Sacrament was exposed seemed to her “like glimpsing heaven, as it truly was, since the One whom I adore in faith is the same that those in glory contemplate face to face” (letter #137). “Nothing tells us more about the love that is in God’s heart than the Eucharist: it is union, consummation, it is he in us and us in him, is this not heaven upon earth? Heaven in Faith, in expectation of the vision face to face so desired”. The wait for this encounter really makes “everything disappear, and it seems you are already penetrating into the Mystery of God” (letter #165). In the Eucharist the reality of heaven is made present, communicated and made personal for every soul by the Spirit, because heaven is “that which the Spirit creates in you” (letter #239). The Eucharist is a reality so essential that Elizabeth committed herself to reach the goal of being worthy to receive the Eucharist daily (in a time when it was not the habitual practice): “Well then, my God, I have realized all my desires: to receive You every day and, between one Communion and the next, to live in union with You, in intimacy with You. Oh! This is Paradise on earth!” (Diary, 150). Like St. Francis, Elizabeth considered the Eucharist strictly connected to Christmas, from which emanates the splendid light which makes visible to our eyes the disturbing Mystery of the Incarnation, the beginning of the fulfillment of salvation and the glorification of humanity through the outpouring of charity and intimate union with God, which by means of faith is accomplished in the human heart (cfr. Poetry, 75, 86, 88, 91). In this intimate transfusion of love, human experience changes radically. What can we discover and “touch with the hand” — of ourselves, of God, of others, of reality — by communicating with full confidence in the mystery of faith? 1) We are another humanity. If we think for a moment of the increasing burden there is — in our relationships, in complying with public opinion, in the growing up of young people — the visibility of our own image and making oneself “available” through snapshots of our own daily life showing our wish to be “for others”, all this makes us aware of how different is what Elizabeth has to tell us and her own personal experience. For her it was not possible to be truly oneself and make oneself present to the other in a real and not transient manner, except by placing oneself in the depths in which we find our human image in the divine person of Christ — the visible image of the Father. When a person does not know herself or does not become known as a space of personal communication, she does not represent and is not worth anything. Instead, by opening herself to the splendors of faith, the person “discovers her God present, living in her; she in turn remains present in him, in holy simplicity, and He guards her with jealous care” (Last Retreat, 5). Everything becomes precious if we discover this invisible intimacy and seek to join our human experience with his, fixing our gaze on the mysteries of his life, seeking to intuit his feelings, which stand out in the Gospels, in order to make them our own: “it seems to me that it is necessary to come so close to the Master, to communicate with your soul, to make yourself aware of all of his movements and then depart like him into the Father’s will” (letter #158). The worth of our quotations would shoot up to the stars becoming through interior identification “the sacrament of Christ”; in every expression of our existence — joyful or sad, strength or weakness — we can “give to our all-holy God, all loving God crucified”. This entails “allowing oneself to transform into the one same image with him” by means of “faith, which gazes and prays without ceasing; the will, imprisoned and which no longer turns back; a true heart, pure, which beats under the blessing of the Master” (Intimate notes, 14). This Pauline-Carmelite mystic overcomes the vain attempt to find oneself in the recognition of others, by which we expose our superficiality and our inability; we find ourselves and the other by searching for the Other, keeping ourselves aware that we are — all of us — made in the image of Christ: “That I may be for him another humanity in which he renews all his Mystery. And you, O Father bend down upon your poor little creature, ‘cover her with your shadow’ (cfr. Mt. 17:5) and see in her nothing but the ‘Beloved in whom you have placed all your delight’ (cfr. ivi)” (Intimate notes, 15). 2) To become persons of communication, who radiate him. Every person carries within himself those who have played an important part in his life: the persons who generate him, those who have contributed to his formation, those who have been at his side in the crucial moments of life. On meeting together, we encounter and communicate also something of the persons we carry in our being. The sublime mystery of the “new incarnation”, that is accomplished in the soul, allowing oneself to love from the Crucified one, right down to one’s own wretchedness, loving him in our turn out of gratitude “until we are drained”, is the “no longer I, it is He who lives in me” (Poetry, 75), which allows Love incarnate in Christ to radiate out (cfr. Intimate notes, 15). The communion, which people of good will are searching to build and which in our epoch continues to be wounded and offended, can be realized only in the measure the divine will of “restoring all things in Christ” is realized. The road is marked out and Elizabeth describes it in this manner: “Let us contemplate this adored image, holding ourselves without ceasing under the light which emanate from it so that it becomes imprinted in us; then we will face up to everything with the same attitude our holy Master would use” (Heaven in Faith, 27). Love of Christ, the Church and people go hand in hand and support each other in turn. Unifying ourselves with Christ in order to have “the soul full of his soul, full of his prayer, all the being captured and given” and “enter into all his joys, share all his sadness”, makes us “to be fruitful, co-redeemers, generating souls to grace, multiplying the adopted children of the Father, Christ’s redeemed, coheirs to his glory” (Intimate notes, 13). To render glory to God is to render Christ visible — his life — in our existence. Here is revealed that inconstancy and listlessness in prayer are proportional to how much we are not aware of this vocation which is our identity: “I will be in communion by it with the One who is a consuming fire, so that by this he transforms me continually into himself, so that she may render him glory” (letter #328). But the soul, touched by the Holy Spirit, “will become like a flame of love that spreads out into all the members of the Body of Christ which is the Church” (letter #250). Only thus “by our generosity/ will we help holy Church/ and love will be seen to reign/ a prelude of divine dwelling” (Poetry, 94); “to live by love, to live by his life/ is what makes us his apostles./ So great is the power of a captive soul/ I believe that she obtains everything” (Poetry, 77). 3) Living suffering as a blessing. It is true that we are not created to suffer but to be joyful, not to die but to live, and we should add: not to possess ourselves egoistically but to give ourselves generously. At the basis of fear and refusal of suffering can be found a closing off, a deep solitude, the idol of physical beauty and efficiency, arrogance, in the last analysis the lack of an unfathomable experience — to put it as Elizabeth would — of divine-human love. Elizabeth had lived this, she was immersed in it, and it was let overwhelm her so much as to request it insistently for herself and persons dear to her, in her intimate conversations with the Three. Terms which — just to hear them said — evoke sentiments of sadness, make us suspicious and do not please us, such as victim, sacrifice, immolation, renunciation, forgetfulness of self are the only ones which set out, in Scripture and spiritual experience, that necessity of Easter and the truth of love for someone. Elizabeth understood this well and so she said: “Let us ask him to make us true in our love, that is to transform us into victims of sacrifice, since it seems to me that sacrifice is no other than to translate love into action” (letter #250). For this, it is a source of happiness to think “that the Father has predestined me to be conformed to his crucified Son” (letter #324). The Eucharist is a sacrament of communion, a banquet of heaven, a joyful feast because someone has been immolated, sacrificed, annihilated for us. We can then perceive the theological spiritual centering of expressions such as the following and the beauty of the Eucharistic perspective that opens: “Adored Master, you search for a host/ and in your charity want/ because you dream that there rise up to the Father/ sacrifice and adoration” (Poetry, 91). Peace and repose are not born from the absence of problems and sufferings, but when you “know how to appreciate the happiness of suffering and see in it the revelation of “immense love” (Eph. 2:4) of which St. Paul speaks (letter #323 bis); if “pain is the revelation of love” it becomes precious and blessed and can become “my favorite dwelling place, it is there that I find peace and repose, there where I am sure to meet my Master and to live with him” (letter #323). Because of this, a Christian should not have any other ideal than that of “being transformed into Jesus crucified” (letter #324): by discovering that Christ dwells in pain, she will receive strength in the painful and frustrating happenings in life. So in the light of eternity, sacrifices, struggles, troubles are reasons for joy, not for sadness (cfr. Heaven in Faith, 30); the secret is to learn to take refuge always “in the prayer of the Master; on the cross he saw you, prayed for you and that prayer and this prayer is eternally alive and present before the Father, and this will save you from your suffering” (letter #324). Suffering, from being a “proof” of the lack of love, becomes an “echo” of divine life which knocks to enter into the heart and shed light on humanity. In the most painful sickness, he becomes signs of hope for those who stand beside us and the one who suffers without hoping, if we live the sickness as the mystery of Christ dead and risen from the dead, who celebrates his Mass with his disciple (cfr. letter #309). 4) Time is redeemed. The light of eternity gives the correct perspective on reality because, giving to life the sense of a good origin and end, it places them within a process in which the single happenings are made relative and redeemed by a process of receiving absolution that would make them break open, overloading them with expectations. At the same time, the fulness of personal being is being prepared by all the choices we make, the actions we commit, the words we utter: “life is such a serious thing: every minute is given to us to ‘take root’ even more in God” (letter #333) and to arrive at resembling in life the divine model, in a union always more intimate with Him. The Trinity “desires to have us with itself, not only in eternity, but now in time, which is eternity commenced and yet always in becoming” (Heaven in Faith, 1). What should we do so that this process happens in us? The secret is “to forget about yourself, to abandon yourself, not to rely on yourself, to look only at the Master, look only to him, to receive in the same way that joy or pain come directly from his love” (letter #333). In this contemplative dimension it becomes possible to read happenings, from the smallest to the greatest, as an expression of the Father’s will — as Christ did — so that for those who believe “every circumstance, every happening, every suffering as every joy is a sacrament” (Heaven in Faith, 10). In everything it is possible to communicate with him, reality becomes meaningful, events become connected, points come together allowing us to see into a beautiful texture, wise, suitable for our own human growth. If the eternal Word has entered into reality and is united in some manner to every person, then “through everything I can, right from this earth, / contemplate him in the light of faith/ [...] unite myself to him, touch him with faith” (Poetry, 91). Elizabeth had learnt this in the long wait to enter the monastery, which favored an interiorization of the place of contemplation and of union with God, so as to live it in mundane circumstances, being concentrated on what was essential in the vocation and Christian witness: the realities of faith, the realism of the divine will, the presence of God in the midst of daily events. It is no longer possible to experience that “there is not enough time” or have experience that what we are doing is draining our life away, because we do not find any meaning or because it represents an escape from ourselves. Faith, if we have not tamed it, keeps us awake, attentive to gather God’s graces which cross our path every day, gathered “in the light of his creative word, in that faith ‘in the excess of his love’ (Eph. 2:4) which enables God to fill the soul ‘according to its capacity’ (Eph. 3:19)” (Heaven in Faith, 34). 5) To live “from within”, grateful and connected to true life. Sanctity is to live “in contact with him in the depths of an unfathomable abyss, from within” (Heaven in Faith, 32). “From within” is the expression which sums up the charism and eternal mission of Elizabeth of the Trinity: to live in relationship with God, the mystery of the Church, friendships, activities, the worries of existence, the events of one’s own era, deliberately and tenaciously within the most strict union with the Word incarnate, crucified and risen, who is being given constantly to every creature. Dwelling within the Mystery of faith corresponds to passing from one’s own ego to the shore of the divine ego and the consequent opening out of life’s horizon and view; to be consolidated in faith is the only thing necessary for our life, since it allows us to “not act except under the great light of God, never according to impressions and imagination” (The Greatness of Our Vocation, 11). It is the experience of heaven upon earth, of the realism of divine life in the communion of saints, of perceptible realization — already present, even if not yet in fulness — of the words of truth and life that revelation hands over to us as our luminous inheritance as children of God. Praying to be entirely present in the adored Trinity, awake in faith and abandoned to its creative action, Elizabeth desired that “every instant carry me deeper into the depth of your Mystery” (Intimate notes, 15); to live “from within” means to rest your being totally in the Trinity, “God wholly love”: this intimacy “has been the beautiful sun shining on my life, making it an anticipated heaven; it is what sustains me today in suffering” (letter #333). If we permit infinite beauty to imprint itself on us it is possible, even in a world where “everything is contaminated”, to be persons “beautiful with his beauty, luminous with his light” (letter #331), who grow in gratitude and always share in the joy of God’s children (cfr. The Greatness of Our Vocation, 12), capable of catching a reflection of his beauty and love in nature and persons. A healthy relationship with creation entails “the recognition of our errors, sins, faults and failures, and leads to heartfelt repentance and desire to change” (Laudato si’, 218), by recognizing gratefully that the world is a gift received from the Father’s hands. This recognition propels us to act with spontaneity and respect, without surprise towards whatever actuality, aware that all beings form together a wonderful universal communion. The world “is not contemplated from without but from within, conscious of the bonds with which the Father has united us to all beings” (ivi, 220), secure that “Christ has taken unto himself this material world and now, risen, is intimately present to each being, surrounding it with his affection and penetrating it with his light” (ivi, 221). Thanks to the sacraments — particularly in the Eucharist — in which nature is assumed into God and transformed into mediation, “we are invited to embrace the world on a different plane” (ivi, 235) than that of profit and exploitation. It is extraordinary the agreement between Elizabeth and Pope Francis, who aims at laying the foundation of an integral ecology: “The Lord, in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter. He comes not from above, but from within, he comes that we might find him in this world of ours. In the Eucharist fulness is already achieved; it is the living center of the universe, the overflowing core of love and of inexhaustible life. […] The Eucharist joins heaven and earth; it embraces and penetrates all creation. The world which came forth from God’s hands returns to him in blessed and undivided adoration” (ivi, 236). Mary, a model of listening which makes fruitful “Recollect yourself, within your soul/ the mystery is fulfilled. / Jesus, Splendor of the Father, / has taken flesh in you. / With the Virgin Mother/ clasp your Beloved/ he is in you” (Poetry, 86). Mary is the creature who cannot be related but only contemplated, because she has penetrated in a unique way the mystery of Christ; her help can be invoked, we can learn from her how to guard the gift by placing oneself in her maternal hands: “This Mother of grace will form my soul so that her tiny daughter may be a ‘radiant’, living image of her first born, the Son of the Eternal one, he who was the perfect praise of glory of his Father” (Last Retreat, 2). “In her everything happens within and for this reason she is the model of the disciple who allows himself to be reached and transformed by the living Word of the Father, remaining docile to the creative action of the Spirit; Mary, that disciple of her Son, teaches us to adore in silence, to suffer and stand beneath the cross, to contribute to the work of redemption; humble, free from oneself, forgetful of self, full of charity and ready to hasten to help, always recollected “within herself with the Word of God” (Last Retreat, 40). Elizabeth had a deep admiration for the Virgin Mother, displayed wonderment at her humble greatness, which had made heaven open, the one in whose womb the Three were able to find in their creature a dwelling place (cfr. Poetry, 79): “Think what ought to be in the soul of the Virgin when, after the Incarnation, she possessed in herself the Word incarnate, the Gift of God... In what silence, in what recollection, in what adoration she must have buried herself in the depth of her soul to clasp that God whose Mother she was” (letter #183). Mary is the intrepid witness to an enormous event; which took place in the strength of silence which made her capable of listening deeply, who consented to the Spirit imprinting in her the eternal Son: she teaches us how to prepare “a very calm dwelling place in our soul, in which always resounds the canticle of love, of thanksgiving” (letter #165); she tells us how to listen: “Make it so that I listen to you always,/ unchangeable in my faith,/ that in everything I adore you/ and live only for you” (Poetry, 88). The passion to listen to him is a taste for harmony, a capacity to be in tune with the soul of Christ, aware that He “has so many things to tell us” (letter #164). In fact, like Mary, we too are “at One” with the Lord, who gives himself to us and dwells in our soul. From this arises the need for silence, which is so difficult to reach, “in order to listen to him always and to penetrate deeper and deeper into his infinite being; identified with Him who loves, she found him everywhere, she saw him shining in everything” (letter #133). In the person is born a praise without end, an adoration of the gift of God that increases charity and the passion to make Christ known, to the point that “praise of glory” becomes the new identity: “A praise of glory is a soul who dwells in God, who loves him with a pure and disinterested love, without looking for herself in the sweetness of this love; who loves him beyond all his gifts and also when none have been received; [...] she is a soul of silence which is held like a lyre under the mysterious touch of the Holy Spirit, so that he makes divine harmonies come out of it; she is a soul who gazes at God in faith and simplicity, she is a mirror that reflects in everything that which he is; she is like a fathomless abyss in which he can run, expand himself; [...]in the end a praise of glory is always occupied in thanksgiving. All her actions, her movements, her thoughts, her aspirations, while they make her take root more deeply in love, are like an echo of the eternal Sanctus” (Heaven in Faith, 43). Conclusion Elisabeth of the Trinity is a precious gift for us and for the Church in this age marked by crises of identity, depression, indifference, unrestrained yearnings, defacement of nature, and manipulation of what is human. She gives in a strong, beautiful and convincing manner witness to the realism of the truths in which we believe, and she helps us to grasp that, if we do not recover the eschatological dimension of our faith, this loses effectiveness and becomes usele ss, without biting and transforming strength. We know what her mission is, what she is doing, in what she requests us to collaborate, with ardent and thankful love to the Trinity: “In heaven my mission will be to attract souls, helping them to come out of themselves to cling to God in a wholly simple and loving manner and to keep them in this great interior silence, which allows God to imprint himself in them, to transform them into himself” (letter #335). Let us thank her for the words written in her last letter that, knowing her heart, we know are also directed to us: “Dear little brother, before going to heaven, your Elizabeth wants to tell you yet another time of all her affection and her desire to assist you, day by day, until you reach heaven [...] You will have to put up with struggles, you will meet obstacles along the road of life, but do not become discouraged, call me! Yes call your little sister, in this way you will increase the happiness of her heaven: she will be so happy to help you to win, to remain worthy of God..... When I will be close to God, recollect yourself in prayer, we will find one another even better” (letter #342). ***** ### Pope Francis’ Angelus (on the Trinity) Saint Peter’s Square Sunday, 12 June 2022 Dear brothers and sisters, buongiorno and blessed Sunday! Today is the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, and in the Gospel of the celebration Jesus presents to us the other two divine Persons, the Father and the Holy Spirit. He says of the Spirit: “He will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come”. And then, regarding the Father, he says: “All that the Father has is mine” (Jn. 16:14-15). We notice that the Holy Spirit speaks, but not of himself: he announces Jesus and reveals the Father. And we also notice that the Father, who possesses everything because he is the origin of all things, gives to the Son everything he possesses: he keeps nothing for himself and he gives himself fully to the Son. That is, the Holy Spirit speaks not of himself; he speaks about Jesus, he speaks about others. And the Father does not give himself, he gives the Son. It is open generosity, one open to the other. And now let us look at ourselves, at what we talk about and what we possess. When we speak, we always want others to say something good about us, and often, we only speak about ourselves and what we do. How often! “I have done this and that…”, “I had this problem…”. We always speak like this. How different this is from the Holy Spirit, who speaks by announcing others, and the Father the Son! And how jealous we are of what we possess. How hard it is for us to share what we possess with others, even with those who lack the basic necessities! It is easy to talk about it, but difficult to practice. This is why celebrating the Most Holy Trinity is not so much a theological exercise, but a revolution in our way of life. God, in whom each Person lives for the other in a continual relationship, in continual rapport, not for himself, provokes us to live with others and for others. Open. Today we can ask ourselves if our life reflects the God we believe in: do I, who profess faith in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, truly believe that I need others in order to live, that I need to give myself to others, that I need to serve others? Do I affirm this in words or do I affirm it with my life? The Triune God, dear brothers and sisters, must be manifested in this way — with deeds rather than words. God, who is the author of life, is transmitted not so much through books as through witness of life. He who, as the evangelist John writes, “is love” (1 Jn. 4:16), reveals himself through love. Let us think about the good, generous, gentle people we have met; recalling their way of thinking and acting, we can have a small reflection of God-Love. And what does it mean to love? Not only to wish them well and to be good to them, but first and foremost, at the root, to welcome, to be open to others, to make room for others, to give space to others. This is what it means to love, at the root. To understand this better, let us think of the names of the divine Persons, which we pronounce every time we make the sign of the cross: each name contains the presence of the other. The Father, for example, would not be such without the Son; likewise, the Son cannot be considered alone, but always as the Son of the Father. And the Holy Spirit, in turn, is the Spirit of the Father and the Son. In short, the Trinity teaches us that one can never be without the other. We are not islands; we are in the world to live in God’s image: open, in need of others and in need of helpin g others. And so, let us ask ourselves this last question: in everyday life, am I too a reflection of the Trinity? The sign of the cross I make every day — the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit — is that sign of the cross we make every day a gesture for its own sake, or does it inspire my way of speaking, of encountering, of responding, of judging, of forgiving? May Our Lady, daughter of the Father, mother of the Son and spouse of the Spirit, help us to welcome and bear witness in life to the mystery of God-Love. Courtesy: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/angelus/2022/documents/20220612angelus.html Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione – Libreria Editrice Vaticana ***** **Indwelling Spirit of the Holy Trinity – Read-Along Materials, Dorgan 111** The Message of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity (by Margaret Dorgan) Originally in Spiritual Life, Spring 1985 Sister Margaret Dorgan, D.C.M., the author, is a member of a small contemplative community in Orland, Maine. Previous articles by her have appeared in the Fall 1976 and Winter 1981 issues of Spiritual Life. Elizabeth of the Trinity is already for many people the patron saint of their inner life with God. Her beatification on November 25, 1984 highlighted the importance of this French nun who is Carmel’s most significant gift to the roster of sanctity since St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Her message, like Thérèse’s, is directed to anyone who longs to take hold of personal existence and find deeper meaning in the ongoing flow of ordinary time. She teaches the eager seeker how to grasp the passing moments, dramatic or drab, and plunge down below their surface to the underlying depths where God is waiting to be found. Elizabeth was aware that what she comprehended of the mystery of an indwelling God was not for herself alone. Eleven days before her death at the age of 26 on November 9, 1906, she wrote about her “mission in Heaven.” Her secret was so simple that it could be conveyed to anybody. “I have found heaven on earth, because heaven is God and God is within me. The day I understood that everything became clear to me.” Nothing complex, nothing extraordinary, nothing that requires a long arduous application of the mind to comprehend. “God in me. I in Him. That is my life,” she said. Plain words. One-syllable words. They expressed for Elizabeth the key to living fully — how to experience heaven already, how to taste in advance what eternity will give in completion. As a child of ten, Elizabeth Catez was delighted to learn that her first name meant “dwelling place of God.” She grew up with her widowed mother and only sister in a middle-class family that moved in military circles. The divine presence within her was even then the focus of her awareness. When she entered the Discalced Carmelite Monastery of Dijon at the age of twenty-one, she found there an affirmation of the way she already lived as a layperson. In Elizabeth, there is no sense of a break in her life, a clearly defined before and after once she had entered the cloister. She obviously felt the opportunities for intimacy with God that her married sister’s life offered were not radically different from what was possible for herself as a nun. She did not dilute her message when she wrote to relatives and friends beyond her monastery walls. What she experienced in such fullness was equally available to them. A letter to her mother says, “Think of the fact that your soul is the temple of God. At every moment of the day and night, the three divine persons are dwelling within you. When one knows that, one is no longer ever alone. It is so simple. There is no need of beautiful thoughts, only an outpouring of the heart.” In the same letter, she recognizes that awareness of God can take other forms. “If you prefer to think of the good God as close to you rather than within you, follow your attraction, provided you live with him.” So it can be God-within-us or equally God-with-us. In either case, it is a matter of turning our attention Godward. Elizabeth’s pondering of Scripture, especially the New Testament passages of Paul and John, deepened her realization that to live in the divine presence is to anticipate heaven. She quotes Ephesians 2:19, “You are no longer guests or strangers but you belong to the city of saints and the house of God.” For some people, the most significant part of Elizabeth’s message is this assurance that heaven can begin on earth. We don’t have to wait for eternity to draw on our divine inheritance as sons and daughters of God. Elizabeth writes, “Heaven is within us, because He who is the joy of the blessed in the beatific vision gives Himself to us in faith and mystery. It is the same thing.” If a foretaste of heaven is available to us in advance, what is the meaning of time? How does time function in this perspective? Elizabeth sees the temporary as flowing into the eternal. The temporal is our means of access to the eternal. It passes on, and yet through it we reach to what does not pass on. Reflecting on time, the French Carmelite begins with a quotation from John 17:24, “Father, I will that where I am they also whom you have given me may be with me.” She then goes on, “Such is Christ’s wish.... He wills that where He is we should be also, not only for eternity but already in time which is eternity begun and ever in progress.” Time then is of supreme value. But how does it take on aspects of the eternal? It does so through the now of this moment which holds God for me. She says, “He (God) requires of me to live in an eternal present without before or after, to be wholly at one in myself in this eternal Now.” Here we have an asceticism of time that requires full attention to the unfolding moment. I do not indulge myself by wandering in thought or desire to what has been or to what might be. I keep my energy focused on what this moment communicates to me — whether it be the call to serve others, the duty of work, the enjoyment of beauty. Elizabeth’s words “to be wholly at one in myself” express the unity of attention. A dissipated imagination, the rise and fall of fantasies — all of this scatters my inner strength. It breaks up my attentiveness, pulling me this way and that. A focused attention, on the contrary, brings me back to myself and then leads me to my rootedness in God. Elizabeth tells us, “Each incident, each event, each suffering, as well as each joy, is a sacrament which gives God to us. We no longer make a distinction between these things.” In offering us the possibility of living in the now of the present moment in an anticipation of heaven, has this young nun simply worked out a romantic spiritual artifice? Is she urging us to become so spiritual that we function in a separate sphere, removed from commonplace human contact and turned in on a personal universe? All of that could happen to an imprudent enthusiast embracing Elizabeth’s message with unbalanced abandon. But every principle of sanctity can be pushed to an extreme where it no longer functions effectively for human beings. The Little Way of St. Thérèse, which takes the ordinary and makes it totally for God, can be twisted out of shape and turned into trivialization. Littleness then becomes obsessive. Someone could spend the day picking up pins for Jesus and never do anything significant with the stuff of living. Elizabeth’s doctrine would take a different kind of twisting. The risk would be to make it into a form of angelism in which heaven so dominates the mind that an abnormal absorption results. I would then build myself a psychic penthouse in order to retreat from the hurly-burly of daily interaction. Though bodily present to events and situations, I would make a mental jump to remove myself from them. This dangerous spacing-out has nothing to do with living in the divine presence. Elizabeth is not urging us to get away from everyday existence but to dig down to the deepest dimension which undergirds its being. She opens our eyes to what is hidden in the too familiar. She shows us the mark of God on it, the quality of heavenwardness that all earthly things radiate, the way time points inwardly to the everlasting. A balanced understanding of Elizabeth perceives her doctrine as simply taking the gift of grace with utmost seriousness. If grace is a participation in the divine nature and if with the created gift comes the uncreated giver, what are the implications for a human life? Limited as she was by a very inadequate secular education, Elizabeth brings out these implications by drawing on the basic theology of the Trinity, on her own experience of the indwelling, and also on her long pondering of scripture. Add to this the guidance of John of the Cross and the Flemish mystic Blessed Jan van Ruysbroeck. These are the primary building stones that support her spiritual edifice. She constructs on carefully surveyed territory, as any Carmelite would. Of all schools of spirituality none is more firmly set on the ground than Carmel’s with its insistence on taking life exactly as it is without asking for the creation of special circumstances. At the same time, it offers the invitation to taste divine realities, not merely to know them from afar. Elizabeth resonated with this tradition long before she sensed her own mission to add to it. Her spiritual vision makes her particularly valuable today for Catholics who have turned to Buddhist and Hindu teachers. For Elizabeth, all enlightenment is found in Christ Jesus. With her, every psychological process that helps us to advance in meditative practice rises out of a Christian matrix. The mystic way she points to, more and more illuminates the contents of Christian faith with each significant step forward. This advance in faith makes Elizabeth a much-needed mentor to contemporary Christian prayer movements that have been able to lead their members through the first stages of praying but haven’t always known how to deal with the passage into a more contemplative mode of prayer. In the last year of her life, a passage in Ephesians 1:6 acted like a spark to set her on fire with a new sense of vocation. The phrase “praise of glory” gave her a new name which she saw as fulfilling the promise of Revelation 2:17, “I will give a stone with a new name written on it.” As with all her enrichments by God, she shares this call to praise with others, explaining how they, too, can fulfill the same role. Her final retreat, mostly written during the sleepless nights before she died of Addison’s disease, leaves these words like a legacy for distribution. “One who does everything in Him, with Him, by Him and for Him with that limpid gaze which gives a resemblance to His simple being — this person by every movement, longing, and action, however ordinary it may be, is rooted more deeply in Him who is loved. Everything within pays homage to the thrice-holy God. This is to be, as it were, a perpetual Sanctus, an unceasing praise of glory.” In the final mystic vision which celebrates the Christ-life in us leading to the depths of the triune God, Elizabeth still speaks of the ordinary as the vehicle of our communing with the divine. --- **Source:** Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites, *Ongoing Formation Volume I: The Path of Mount Carmel, The Perfect Spirit* (US National Formation Program, 2025).