Saint Elizabeth writes to her brother-in-law, a seminarian:
Nothing tells us more about the love in God’s Heart than the Eucharist. This union, this consummation of Him in us and we in Him, is this not heaven on earth? This is Heaven in faith while awaiting the vision face-to-face for which we yearn. When His glory appears, we will be satisfied for we will see Him in His light. Does not the very thought of such a meeting refresh you, this conversation with Someone so particularly beloved to you? All else disappears. It is as if you already penetrate the very Mystery of God.
May I be wholly ready to respond, wholly vigilant in faith, so that the Master can take me wherever He wishes. I wish to stay close to Him and to learn everything from Him. He knows the whole mystery, “The language of the Word is the gift’s infusion.” Is this not so very true? He speaks to our soul in silence.
I find this precious silence a blessing. We have the Blessed Sacrament exposed in the oratory: what divine hours are spent in this little corner of Heaven. Here, we possess the vision in substance under the humble Host. Yes, one and the same, He who the blessed contemplate in light and He who we adore in faith.
Selected text from Letter 165, to Andre Chevignard, June 14, 1903
https://avila-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Avila-Institute-logo-1.png00Anthony Lilleshttps://avila-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Avila-Institute-logo-1.pngAnthony Lilles2018-11-05 17:35:002024-03-30 13:31:45The Eucharistic Heart of God According to Saint Elizabeth
In 1904, in the days leading up to the Feast of the Presentation of Mary, Father Fages preached a retreat to Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity and the Carmelites of Dijon. In that retreat, the Dominican drew on St. Augustine to describe Mary as a model of contemplative souls. She magnified the Lord because of the love that lived in her heart, “Love, unmindful of its own dignity, thirsts to exalt and to increase the beloved: its only measure is to be without measure.”
Saint Elizabeth sees this kind of love as the standard, rallying point and gravitational center for her life and the lives of her friends. Heaven loves without measure and this force of love is at work in our souls – if only we will make space for God. She identifies love’s measureless measure with the “riches of God’s glory.” The gravitational pull of this glory is drawing us to live “no longer our own life, but the life of Christ in us.” With this in mind, she prays to God “to fill you with this measure without measure.” (see Letter 214).
In a poem, John of the Cross describes the life of the Trinity as a river. He describes how this Personal Presence given to us in the Eucharist flows through the heavens and the earth. He even claims that this brimming River of Life surges through hell. Is God actually present where He is definitively and eternally rejected? If He can be present there, triumphant and just in the face of malice, how much more He reveals when the rejection is only indefinite and still confined by time.
As St John was tormented by his persecutors, he understood hell fire, and yet, he also knew that those fires could not constrain the Divine Presence. Not only through the very heart of evil, but through the evil that we cling to in our own hearts, this Living Water floods forth. How can evil withstand this surge? How long will we resist Mercy’s force?
Those who are moved to confess their sins and to do penance have felt this Almighty River. Ready to burst dams of bitterness and set limits on the power of sin and death for the price of a prayer, the currents of Divine Mercy cannot be contained or predicted. As this overflowing Flood surges through the sinful levies that we raise, tender tears begin to flow and snobs comforted by forgiveness realize a new beginning.
To help us see what the Divine Persons begins and causes to progress, Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity describes not a river but an Ocean. What mysterious Water holds us afloat on these unfathomable seas! Great tides pull us beyond what is comfortable and convenient. Deep currents can suddenly take us where no one can see. Yet, it is not to nothingness but to fullness of life the Divine Persons draw us. Christ, the Radiant Star, captivates us and at the same time helps us navigate these Waters in which we lose ourselves. As we surrender, God surrenders – and the Holy Spirit renews this saving Mystery and the Father overshadows with His creative love anew.
Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, before her death, promised to help her friends from heaven. She claimed that it would increase her joy to do so. What she most wanted for her friends is that they should thrive, and that they should render-vous with her again in our heavenly homeland. Yet this homeland was not something that she envisioned in the distant future or remote from the heart. Instead, our true home, the place where we belong, for Saint Elizabeth, is the “Bosom of the Trinity” which is ours by a mutual indwelling – God in us, and we in God. For her, prayer is meant to lead us out of ourselves and into a great silence that is vulnerable to the Presence of God, and such contemplative prayer knows communion with “infinite beatitude,” not only in the glory that awaits us after this life, but right now, by faith. That is why she is praying for us even now. She has a special mission to lead us out of self-occupation and to open us up to the interior grace of contemplative wonder, its adoration, its mystery, its loving surrender.
Many believe that action and contemplation are mutually exclusive efforts. Some argue that a prayerful life is an escape from the difficult effort of loving service. Others argue that the apostolic life lacks a certain depth and devotion to the Lord. Yet the greatest mystics never saw a tension between apostolic service and contemplative prayer — for them, it would be impossible to have one without the other. The deeper into prayer they went, the greater their apostolic zeal. The more dedicated their love of neighbor, the more they relied on prayer for strength. How is it that these prayerful people did more than those who feel they are too busy for prayer?
In her retreat, Heaven in Faith #40, Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity looked to the Virgin Mary to resolve this paradox. She notes that during the months between the Annunciation and the Visitation, the Virgin is a model for contemplative souls. Indeed, soul who lives by the interior life of love of the Indwelling of the Trinity is especially chosen by God to know the kind of peace that Mary knew in all her activities.
A contemplative who pondered everything in her heart, Mary was ready for action. When a command from heaven arrives, she does not hesitate to makes haste into the hill country to serve her cousin. Putting her love for God into action did not diminish her prayer. As soon as she completes her service to Elizabeth, she returns to her life of contemplation in Nazareth. The reason why she so easily goes between the two is the simplicity of her soul – her soul is simplified, unified, made simple by its wholly loving movement to the Lord whether in service to others or in prayer.
This same loving movement can lead us out of ourselves and into a great silence. In the exquisite silence of faith, every obstacle to such self-donation is removed. In particular, the stranglehold of self-occupation and fear is broken. Stripped of all that can hold it back, in this wonderful stillness, the soul is vulnerable even to God’s slightest wish – and God will never hold Himself back.
The dynamism of the Bride of Christ – the mystical Body constituted by the Gift of the Holy Spirit. Love draw His Love all the more. Here, in this silence, the same silence that Mary knows, whether for love of neighbor or for love of God, the soul is always ready to give itself. Such a self-gift is at the heart of true and mature contemplation. The same self-gift defines true apostolic mission.
This peaceful readiness desires only that the will of the Father be fulfilled. If the Spirit of the Father prompts such a contemplative into action – its efforts are always fruitful. When the action is complete, the Farther delights in the prayerful gaze of such a devoted heart – for He sees His own Son reflected there. Nothing can thwart this kind of love — for Divine Love animates and sets this heart in movement and at rest. The Trinity has become the very life of this soul – and this same soul, for its part, is transformed in its image and likeness to the Three Persons in One God.
of M. Germaine’s 12th Anniversary of her Profession]
Immensus Pater, immensus Filius,
Immensus Spiritus Sanctus
-St. Athanasius
Behold the vessel of Laudem Gloriae,
O Mother, what a splendid journey was made! . . .
Through the peaceful night, all wrapped in silence,
Gently drifting upon the Ocean immense,
All at rest under the vault of Heaven,
“The great voice of God” she hears beckon.
Swept up suddenly by fathomless swells,
The frail little skiff lost under the waves.
It was the Trinity, opening to me His breast,
And I found my center in the Divine Abyss!
Not on shore’s edge will I remain,
Into the Infinite I plunge, my share there contained.
My soul rests in this immensity,
And lives with the Three as in eternity!
O Mother, listen well to the end of this story,
So to rejoice for your Praise of Glory.
Her homecoming to God, celebrates your feast
Her deep longing to stay “in that spacious place.”
All her sojourn always unchanged,
Behold her heart designs a sacred crusade:
Your feast will last until that solemn eve,
When Laudem Gloriae to Heaven flees,
To commence once again, surpassing life’s days,
In the Divine Secret of the Father’s Face.
-St. Elizabeth of the Trinity [Poem 115]
Translated by Julie Enzler (2018)
https://avila-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Avila-Institute-logo-1.png00Anthony Lilleshttps://avila-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Avila-Institute-logo-1.pngAnthony Lilles2018-09-25 08:29:002024-03-30 12:29:49The Vessel of Elizabeth of the Trinity
On Thursday October 13, after an interview with Father Mitch Pacwa on EWTN the day before, I began the long flight to Rome. (Click here to see the interview.) My trip is going to be a little bit of an adventure – but what is a pilgrimage if there is no adventure to it?
As a academic, my travels are often determined by the lowest cost fare that I can find. This time, it was Turkish Airline. I have never flown this particular airline but I am convinced that this is unfolding in accord with Divine Providence. So I am flying to Rome via Istanbul — I cannot help but think of the deep wounds of our times, and that, perhaps, part of the reason the Lord has permitted this journey through Turkey is that I remember to pray for my persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the Middle East, and that I also pray for Muslims, during this difficult moment of history.
My fellow pilgrim was to be Richard Ziegman who works in a hospital down in Southern Colorado. Elisabeth of the Trinity has been a great consolation to him through the years and he told me that he had to make this pilgrimage no matter what. But today, God revealed He had other plans. There were complications with his flight so that he never made it here to LAX.
There are other pilgrims who I will meet in Rome if it is God’s will. For example, EWTN will carry the canonization live. I am hoping to connect with their team in Rome. We will see happens.
Also, my good friend Kris McGregor with Discerning Hearts will be onsite. She was tremendously helpful in helping get out the message and mission of Elisabeth of the Trinity through a series of podcasts she and Mariam Guttierez (the voice of Elisabeth of the Trinity) conducted with me – first on Saint Elisabeth’s retreat she wrote for her sister, “Heaven in Faith” and second on her retreat for her Carmel “Last Retreat.”
There is also some of my former students, now priests, studying at the Pontifical Universities. We promised to meet for pranzo. I believe that I will meet many more friends in Rome — friends of Elisabeth of the Trinity who have been touched by the inheritance she left us: faith in the all loving God intimately present in the soul.
To find out more about Saint Elisabeth of the Trinity, I highly recommend a book by Sr. Giovanna della Croce translated by Julie Enzler A Life of Praise to God. Sr. Giovanna was a intellectual whose own conversion was influenced by Saint Teresa Benecticta of the Cross. After she entered Carmel, she began to write about this great martyr and also discovered the writing of Elisabeth of the Trinity. Her book, translated by Julie Enzler, a wife, mother and instructor at the Avila Institute for Spiritual Formation, introduces the life and some of the most beautiful passages of the Mystic of Dijon.
The Carmelite Sisters of Alhambra will be offering a prayer service before the Mass of Thanksgiving for the Canonization of Elisabeth of the Trinity at 3:30pm on November 6 at St. Teresa’s Parish in Alhambra. Their music is really edifying, so I hope you can come.
https://avila-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Avila-Institute-logo-1.png00Anthony Lilleshttps://avila-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Avila-Institute-logo-1.pngAnthony Lilles2016-10-13 15:29:002024-03-30 12:29:50Pilgrimage to the Canonization of Elisabeth of the Trinity - Mystic of Dijon
For Elisabeth of the Trinity, to surrender ourselves to God in love is to join the Great Canticle echoing from the foundation of the world and resounding in the heights of heaven: the very praise of the glory of God’s merciful love. In her biblical vision of the cosmos, those who pass through the great tribulation of Christ’s passion also raise victorious with Him. They share in His glory and they make it known. And so can we, here and now, if we will choose to live by faith in the midst of the trial that God has permitted in our lives.
The music that Elizabeth of the Trinity proposes is richly relational and engenders a tender reciprocity between Heaven’s glory and the trials of earthly life, time and eternity, the soul as Bride and Christ, the Divine Bridegroom, This chord of reciprocity also resonates out from the soul surrendered to God to all the souls entrusted to it — so that they are all implicated in the eternal plan of the Father. The music of the heavens and the music of the soul can become the same because God dwells in both as in a temple.She describes a secret harmony exchanged not only in the life to come, but presently, right now, hidden in the silence of this humble moment, where eternity is already begun. What is realized perfectly by the souls in heaven is a hymn of praise anticipated now by those who live in the simplicity and humility of faith.
Resounding in a silent fullness of love and communion, this music moves in the soul the more the soul is drawn to Christ. The melody of this mysterious hymn is unfamiliar and strange, but she attempts to find words for it. She describes the Divine Presence as in-flowing, enveloping, establishing and transforming. God’s roaring silence produces peace, self-possession and interior strength. She draws her descriptions from the Bible:
If speechlessness grips those who are pierced to the heart by the love of God, tradition calls this apophasis, she quotes the Bride of the Canticle of Canticles to bring out the relational and bridal dimensions of this failure of human speech: “I know longer know anything” she sings “but Christ crucified.” Not a mental state or a natural mode of consciousness, she describes for us a speechless prayer realized when the soul is overwhelmed by the immensity of God’s love, an immensity that flows through the Cross of Christ and overwhelms the soul. This is a hymn whose secret is known by the soul and shared with heaven.
To help us glimpse the new self-possession it challenges us towards and produces in us, she intones songs that she attributes to Christ Himself: “My soul is always in my hands” and “I shall keep my strength for you.” And for her, the strength that this hymn of praise unveils is found in observing silence. To be silent is to choose not to attempt to influence or control or manipulate. It is to be surrendered to what God is doing in the moment. This is how Christ lived — obedient to the will of the Father.
To live like this, to choose to be humble and to accept the situation for what it is and then to order it to God, this requires dying to our own plans and dreams, to the tyranny of what we think ought to be, and to respond to the love of God being made known in the moment. To live like this, this is to die to self. Elisabeth reveled in this death to self — she not only accepted it, she sought it. As a result Christ’s obedient, vulnerable, and vigilant heart came to reverberate in her own by faith. This is the source of the spiritual music, the rhythm that carried her personal hymn of praise. Because she wants to share the joy that she discovered, she yearns that we might discover this divine heart beat for ourselves.
This vision sees the whole world animated by an eternal Sanctus. This Sanctus evokes surrender and lifts up by God, establishing total forgetfulness of self, total awareness of the Lord. Everything is in the shadow of Christ crucified by love, everything a response, a “thank you” for the immensity of love that He has revealed. Wholly attentive and adoring, a soul that is drawn out of itself by the love of the Lord is vulnerable and ready for a beautiful encounter, for the impact of Divinity into the frailty of humanity.
https://avila-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Avila-Institute-logo-1.png00Anthony Lilleshttps://avila-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Avila-Institute-logo-1.pngAnthony Lilles2016-09-19 18:51:002024-03-30 12:29:50Elisabeth of the Trinity - Mysterious Hymn of Praise
Soon to be canonized Elisabeth believed that with the help of Mary, our lives can become a great hymn of praise. She held this as true for her married sister, a young mother, as she did for her fellow Carmelite nuns. In fact, on the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, she went on retreat and during this retreat began to commit some of her convictions about becoming the praise of God’s glorious grace to paper.
In her wisdom, the very source of our existence is in the mysterious canticle of praise offered by the Son to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. This great canticle is revealed on the Cross and the whole Christian existence is taken up by its mystery. By the Cross of Christ, we have the opportunity to be in harmony with ourselves and to reverberate with divine melodies that echoed before the foundation of the world. Mary, Elisabeth contends, knew this secret more than any other created soul. She stood at the foot of the Cross and heard the melodies echoing in her Son’s heart more than anyone else ever could. Assumed into heaven, she is ready to teach us her secrets. In this way, she is the Gate of Heaven — because to have the hymn in Christ’s heart echo in our own is to know the whole life of heaven already by faith. Today it is very important to allow this teaching to wash over us and baptize the way we see the gift of life.
In opposition to Blessed Elisabeth’s view of life, the most powerful people of our time believe that individuals exist as no more than purely functional cogs for the machinery of the world. There is no real music — for the most beautiful music surprises us. But among the powerful, there can be no room for surprise. In this vision of industrialized and commercialized humanity, government and other societal institutions compete for an absolute claim over one’s own person. Probability and predictable human behavior replace authentic freedom and virtue. Everything is about better technology so that human behavior can be better controlled and manipulated.
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary challenges this industrialized vision of humanity. It is, in itself, a total surprise for before the resurrection of Christ, the witness of humanity caught up in heaven was the rarest of human experiences. No other woman was ever raised up from this world below before. The fact that a poor, humble and uneducated woman was raised above this world is a sign that humanity is made for heaven, above this world, above the visible, above the produceable, above the consumable, above the measurable, and above even the probable. This “above” is not a spacial reality but a reality of power, essence and beauty. Not the slave of material and visible existence, but above it, the uniqueness of each human person, the unrepeatable splendor of this particular enfleshed soul, precisely as an embodied spirit, is a wonderful wholeness known and desired by God. Here, if we let it, the Assumption of the Mother of God and our Mother in Grace can confirm in the most tender and human way that God is the beginning and end of each human heart, that we are only pilgrims in this world below, that our true homeland awaits us in the dawning of a new heavens and new earth — the likes of which no one has ever fathomed or even remotely conceived.
For Blessed Elisabeth, Mary teaches our hearts the secret songs that Jesus offered the Father from the Cross. These are songs of obedient love, a hidden music so subtle and gentle that it is at work changing everything even now. In every hardship and renunciation for love, in every trial and sacrifice for what is good and true, space is made for this music to resound anew. It is the music of an obedient and freely given love, a salvific music that instills hope in the hearts of men and women. With patient kindness, the Lord wants the whole of humanity to know the unspeakable harmonies of his unvanquished love. Created in His Image and Likeness, we are capable of saying “yes” to Him and to allowing Him to radiate our whole existence with these harmonies and even to raise us up to His very life. This is heaven, a state of existence into which we can be assumed by His love at work in us. What He has realized perfectly in Mary, He yearns also to realize in us too.
Because of the “yes” of Mary, His desire to implicate Himself in our plight was realized. Because one heart was completely open to the eternal melodies of God’s heart, all hearts now have the possibility of allowing these same strands to echo within. And assumed into heaven, this Heart beating with maternal love is not remote from us but very close. Indeed, Christ has given us His Mother’s heart as a great gift. For in Christ, the heavens and the earth have embraced – and the praise of His glory is resounding on earth.
https://avila-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Avila-Institute-logo-1.png00Anthony Lilleshttps://avila-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Avila-Institute-logo-1.pngAnthony Lilles2016-08-15 00:00:002024-03-30 13:15:46The Assumption of our Lady and Elisabeth of the Trinity
Pope Francis announced at the June 20, 2016 papal consistory that the date for the canonization for Elisabeth of the Trinity will be October 16, 2016. These developments are being reported at by Dan Burke and Liz Estler at SpiritualDirection.com and there is a press release from the webpage maintained by the Carmel in Dijon. For the official notification click here. Her canonization is a huge grace for the Church because it will help people rediscover her spiritual mission. In a noisy and heartless world that has forgotten God, she is ready to help us find the peace that only devotion to Christ in prayer can provide, and this kind of peace is needed now more than ever.
Before her death she came to believe that she was being given a sort of spiritual maternity over souls who desire a deeper union with God. Aware about how anxiety, scruples and self-torment are dangerous for the life of prayer, she described a kind of priestly role in which she would help those who asked get out of themselves and into a more vulnerable posture before the Lord. Based on her own experience of the power of Christ’s love, she was convinced that souls that recollected themselves in holy silence and were confident in the love of God would be raised up into a transforming union with Him.
Elisabeth of the Trinity’s writings provide a mystagogical catechesis on prayer. That is, she provides instruction for those seeking a deeper encounter with the Lord and who want to grow in their dedication to Him. Her letters and spiritual reflections are filled with quotes from Saint Paul and Saint John — all meant to encourage a simple movement of love toward God. Firmly convinced of the Lord’s benevolence and mercy toward each soul, she understood that progress in the spiritual life requires a humble surrender and abandonment to His will. To move us in this direction, she also draws from Saint John of the Cross, John Ruusbroec, Angela di Foligno and Therese of Lisieux at once reinforcing and explaining why silent prayer and adoration before the mystery of God are essential for the Christian life.
Even in the final days of her illness, the young Carmelite nun was convinced that God’s love in her was so powerful that not even death could stop her from praying for her friends and helping them enter into a deeper relationship with the Holy Trinity. She even said that it would increase the joy of her heaven if her friends asked her to help them. This was compelling to both her friends and her family because they knew her to be sincere, profoundly compassionate and always faithful to her word. With her canonization, God has given Elisabeth of the Trinity to everyone in the Church as a new spiritual friend. If you ask her to help you to pray, you can count that she will not fail to do everything she can.
https://avila-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Avila-Institute-logo-1.png00Anthony Lilleshttps://avila-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Avila-Institute-logo-1.pngAnthony Lilles2016-06-20 10:30:002024-03-30 13:15:46Elisabeth of the Trinity to be Canonized on October 16!
