Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity: Spiritual Writings, Edited by M. M. Philipon, New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1962.
St Elizabeth was a French Carmelite Nun. She was a contemporary of St Teresa of Lisieux, only a few years younger, and also died at an early age.
Being a mystic, St Elizabeth is easy to read but difficult to understand. Reading her words about union with Christ, devotion to Christ, etc, makes my heart warm. But when I think about what it actually means, I am always puzzled. “If I fix my eyes on Him… I lose myself in Him like a drop of water in the ocean” (p. 58). These words sound puzzling! She quoted from the Bible a lot, especially Paul’s epistles.
In a monastery, these things help one to devote to Christ:
– silence (besides 2 hours of recreation time, all the rest of the time must keep silent)
– solitude
– service doing chores
– regular schedule (begins the day with prayer at 5 am)
Terms seem to have special meaning to Carmelites:
– movement
– recollection
Quotable quotes:
“Let us live for love, always surrendered, immolating ourselves at every moment, by doing God’s will without searching for extraordinary things…”(pp. 54-55)
“Death is the sleep of a child in the arms of its mother.” (p.71)
“(Quoting Father Vallée) The contemplative is a being who lives in the radiance from the Face of Christ, and who enters into god’s mystery, not by light derived from human thought, but by that produced by the message of the Incarnated Word.”(p. 73)
“suffering is the greatest token of love that God can give to His creature.” (p. 114)
The editor has an interesting note to St Elizabeth’s quoting Life of Angela of Foligno: “Such pious exaggerations, though dear to some of the mystics, have no warrant in the Gospels…” (p. 116) I think this caution applies to all mystic writings: pious, but not without exaggerations.
“the secret of happiness I should say it was to care no longer about oneself, to deny oneself all the time.”
“As it is love that unites us to God, the more intense our love the deeper we enter into God, and become centred in Him.” (p. 142)