Life (1880-1906)

Elizabeth Catez was born in 1880 in Avor, France.  Her father was an army captain and died when she was seven.  She had a younger sister, Guite, and they were very close to each other and their mother.  At the age of seven, Elizabeth told a friend of the family, Canon Angles, that she would be a religious.  She was a precocious child with a flashing temper until she made her First Communion.  From that time on she was noticeably calm in temperament.  She was an accomplished pianist.  Her family was middle class, and they enjoyed parties and other social activities. 

From the time of her First Communion in 1891, she “wanted to give her life and to return a little of His great love.”  At the age of thirteen she bound herself to Jesus was a vow of virginity.  Elizabeth’s heart had been captured, and now she could think only of Him.  On her twenty-first birthday she had her mother’s blessing at last to enter the Carmel in Dijon, close to her home.  Elizabeth expresses in her letters a deep joy at being in Carmel.  Everything led her to her “Three,” the Trinity.  She offered herself unconditionally to “Him”; He accepted. 

Elizabeth became ill shortly after entering Carmel and suffered for five years from a stomach ailment, now thought to have been Addison’s disease.  Her suffering was intense both spiritually and physically; this caused her love for Jesus to increase, and also her desire to offer these sufferings to Him. 

In her writings Elizabeth refers often to the words of Saint Paul.  She speaks of her vocation: “To be a bride, a bride of Carmel,” means to have the flaming heart of Elijah, the transpierced heart of Teresa, to be His “true bride,” because she was ”zealous for His honor.”  St. Elizabeth of the Trinity had true depth of prayer, was a mystic, a great lover of Jesus, and a real friend to her sisters in Carmel and her family.  She referred to herself as Laudem Gloriae, Praise of Glory.  She died November 9, 1906.  Her last words were:  “I am going to Light, to Love, to Life!” Her canonization took place in Rome on October 16, 2016.

Source: https://www.carmelitedcj.org/carmel/saints-of-carmel/160-bl-elizabeth-of-the-trinity

Scripture (Eph 1:3-10,13-14)

(Year C). When I think of my name, my soul is conducted by the great vision of the mystery of mysteries into that Trinity Which even in this world is our cloister, our dwelling-place, the infinite Being enclosed in which we can traverse all things. I am just reading the beautiful teaching of our Father St. John of the Cross about the transformation of the soul into the Three Divine Persons. To what sublime glory we are called! I can understand the silence and recollection of the saints who could not withdraw from their contemplation, so that God could lead them to the divine mount where union is made perfect between Hr and the soul, which is His mystic bride. What an adorable mystery of charity that God should call us by our vocation to live in such knowledge ! . . . I should like to respond to it by passing through this world like our Lady, keeping all these things in my heart,' retired, as it were, into the depth of my soul, so as to lose myself, to be transmerged into the Blessed Trinity Who dwells there; then my device, my radiant ideal, as you call it, would be realized, and I should really be Elizabeth of the Trinity. I am, that is to say, Elizabeth disappearing, submerged in the Three. Let us give ourselves up to Them, sacrificing ourselves every moment without seeking for anything extraordinary. Let us make ourselves small, allowing Him Who is our all to carry us in His arms as a mother does her child. Yes, we are weak —indeed, I may say we are nothing but misery ; but He well knows that. He delights in forgiving and raising us up, in bearing us in Himself, in His purity and infinite sanctity. In this way He purifies us by continual contact with Him. He wishes us to be stainless, and He Himself will be our purity! We must allow our- selves to be transformed into His image, which will be accomplished simply by loving Him ceaselessly with such a love as causes unity between those who love. I wish to be a saint that I may glorify my Divine. Master; ask Him to make me live for love alone, which is my vocation. Let us unite ourselves to Him, so that our days may be in continual communion with Him; let us awake in love, deliver ourselves to love all day by doing the will of the good God, in His sight, with Him, in Him, for Him alone; let us give ourselves incessantly in the way in which He wishes ; then, when night comes, after a colloquy of love in our heart throughout the time, let us sleep again in love. Perhaps we may know of faults and infidelities on our part; let us abandon them to love which is a consuming fire, and thus we shall have our purgatory. (Various)