JMJT!
Praise be Jesus Christ! Now and Forever!
As we journey along and complete this first full week of Lent, I thought I'd provide a few beautiful thoughts and quotes from Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity, who was able to always hold the Crucified Chiet, Her Beloved, in her heart. She expressed these thoughts frequently to her family and friends whom she wrote letters to.
To her dear friend, Germaine: A Carmelite, my darling, is a soul who has gazed on the Crucified, who has seen
Him offering Himself to His Father as a Victim for souls and, recollecting
herself in this great vision of the charity of Christ, has understood the
passionate love of His soul, and has wanted to give herself as He did! ... And
on the mountain of Carmel, in silence, in solitude, in prayer that never ends,
for it continues through everything, the Carmelite already lives as if in
Heaven: "by God alone." The same One who will one day be her beatitude and will
fully satisfy her in glory is already giving Himself to her. He never leaves
her, He dwells within her soul; more than that, the two of them are but one. So
she hungers for silence that she may always listen, penetrate ever deeper into
His infinite Being. She is identified with Him whom she loves, she finds Him
everywhere, she sees Him shining through all things! Is this not Heaven on
earth! You carry this Heaven within your soul, my little Germaine, you can be a
Carmelite already, for Jesus recognizes the Carmelite from within, by her soul.
Don't ever leave Him, do everything beneath His divine gaze, and remain wholly
joyful in His peace and love, making those around you happy!
In one of her poems she expressed her union with Christ on the Road to Calvary in poignant terms:
The Carmelite is a given soul,
One immolated for the glory of God.
With her Christ she is crucified;
But how luminous her calvary!
While gazing on the divine Victim,
A light blazed forth in her soul
And, understanding her sublime mission,
Her wounded heart exclaimed, '"Here I am!"
The Carmelite is an adoring soul,
Wholly surrendered to the action of God
Intently communing through all things,
Her heart uplifted and her eyes full of heaven!
She has found the One Thing Necessary,
The divine Being, Light, and Love.
Enfloding the world in her prayer,
She is an apostle of truth. (June 29, 1902)
During her Last Retreat (Day 13), Elizabeth writes in her spiritual journal as follows:
The soul that wants to serve God day and night must be resolved to share fully in its Master's passion. It is one of the redeemed who in its turn must redeem other souls. 'I suffer in my body what us lacking in the passion of Christ for the sake of His body, which is the Church." She walks the way of Calvary at the right of her crucified, annihilated, humiliuated King as HE goes to His passion "to make the glory of His grace blaze forth." He wants to associated His bride in His work of redemption and this sorrowful way which she follows seems like the path of Beatitude to her, not only because it leads there but also because her holy Master makes ger realize that she must go beyond the bitterness in suffering to find in it, as He did, her rest.
Bl. Elizabeth's offerings to Christ were indeed heroic and might even seem overwhelming or nearly impossible for us to pursue and achieve. BUT we can start with the little things in our lives this Lent. By giving up little comforts and preferences, and suffering little insults, setbacks, contradictions, and our own wills we begin to be shaped and molded more and more into the humble servant that Elizabeth speaks of and became. Indeed her interior way of practicing the constant presence of the Trinity meets with St. Therese's Little Way to teach us that each moment gives us an opportunity to love and to offer our joys and sufferings to God. If we simplify and break down our days into continual present moments waiting to unfold, we can more easily walk our own path of sanctification via the Cross, and give our own daily fiat moment by moment.
