The life of the Trinity in Saint Elizabeth Catez

Each year on a Sunday in May or June, every Catholic priest is assigned the seemingly impossible task of preaching about the mystery of the Trinity. Considering the number of theological errors about God that have arisen over the centuries, one can sympathize with those priests who merely try to avoid saying anything heretical on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that the mystery of the Holy Trinity is “the central mystery of Christian faith and life” and “the most fundamental and essential teaching.”¹ But how can fallen human beings hope to comprehend “a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone”?² For those who do not delight in reading theological textbooks, a recently canonized saint offers a practical guide to the truth of Trinitarian theology.

Elizabeth Catez was born in 1880 on a military base in France. Her father and mother had married somewhat later in life, but they shared a strong Catholic faith. Elizabeth had a younger sister, who was born almost three years later. Sadly, when Elizabeth was seven years old, both her father and her grandfather died. She, her sister, and their devout, serious mother were forced to move to a smaller, though still comfortable, home.

Elizabeth was a warm, loving child. However, she had inherited her mother’s strong-willed nature and had a ferocious temper as a little girl. She did not outgrow her passionate nature, but she did learn to discipline it. Her mother sent both her children to study at a conservatory.

While Elizabeth was not a musical genius, she was, as a pianist, “gifted with a particular musical sensitivity, a subtlety of interpretation, and an expressive facility in emphasizing a musical phrase, measure, rhythm, or chord.”³ Her mother probably initially thought Elizabeth might become a professional piano teacher.

However, Elizabeth’s devotion was leading her toward a different vocation. She later said that her reception of First Holy Communion was like a conversion experience. Her mother noticed that her normally boisterous daughter became quiet immediately when she entered a church. She was also puzzled about the fact that she often had to drag Elizabeth away from the seaside during family vacations. Natural beauty seemed to draw Elizabeth out of this world and into the next.

In other ways, Elizabeth might have seemed to be a typical teenager. She dressed elegantly, was careful about her appearance, and won prizes for her piano playing. But something about being a Carmelite nun spoke to her heart from the time she was fourteen years old. Her mother tried to discourage this vocation and, at one point, forbade her to continue eep visiting a Carmelite monastery very close to their home. When young men asked for Elizabeth’s hand in marriage, she turned them down. Her heart yearned for Carmel instead.

Elizabeth was nineteen years old when she first read Saint Thérèse of Lisieux’s Story of a Soul, only two years after Thérèse’s death. This book influenced Elizabeth’s prayer life, and she spent two more years patiently trying to win her mother over to her side.

In her mother’s defense, she had good reason to hope that Elizabeth could become a famous pianist, whereas Catholic religious communities were being closed by the French government at the time. Finally, her mother acquiesced, and Elizabeth entered the Discalced Carmelites and was given the name of Sister Marie Elizabeth of the Trinity.

Five short years later, Elizabeth had died in the Carmelite monastery in Dijon due to Addison’s disease, an endocrine disorder. Just like Saint Thérèse, Elizabeth seemed to have accomplished nothing remarkable during her life. But those who knew Elizabeth, and those who read her writings, came to a different conclusion.

Elizabeth kept a diary, and she wrote poems and prayers, as well as letters to family and friends. Granted, she was somewhat creative in her spelling and punctuation, and Elizabeth’s letters to her mother were primarily devoted to helping her accept their lifelong separation. But in her writings, she describes periods of both joy and darkness, stages in her spiritual growth, and the unique Trinitarian spirituality that inspired her.

When Elizabeth was still a novice, some of the nuns in her community were skeptical about the depth of her prayer life. No one could be so recollected in prayer, they thought, so soon after arriving in the monastery. But over time, they recognized that she had a true spiritual gift in her love of silence and contemplative prayer. At one point, as some sisters were discussing what sacrifices and prayers they would offer before a major feast, they glanced over at her and laughingly said, “Oh, for you it’s silence, isn’t it?”⁴ She just smiled.

While her companions testified to the exterior signs of holiness, they saw in Elizabeth’s behavior, her writings show us her profound interior intimacy with the Trinity.

Elizabeth described this intimacy—theosis or divinization or the divine indwelling of God, whatever you prefer to call it—in her letters and encouraged others to seek it in prayer. When an aspirant to her community wrote to Elizabeth with some questions, she replied with the following words, subtly instructing the young woman about how to prayerfully rest in the presence of the Trinity:

I so love, when you lift the veil of your soul for me, to enter into that private sanctuary where you live completely alone with Him who wants you all for Himself and who creates a beloved solitude within you for Himself. Refresh Him there, … by resting in Him; listen to all that is being sung in His Soul, in His Heart; it is Love, Infinite Love that envelops us and wants us to share even here below in all His beatitudes. The entire Trinity rests within us, this whole mystery that will be our vision in Heaven: let this be your cloister.⁵

Elizabeth’s writings also reveal her understanding of the Three Persons of the Trinity. How would you describe your relationship with the Holy Spirit? Elizabeth explained hers in a poem:

Holy Spirit, Goodness, Supreme Beauty!
O You Whom I adore, O You Whom I love!
Consume with Your divine flames
This body and this heart and this soul!
This spouse of the Trinity
Who desires only Your will!⁶

As one would expect of a Carmelite nun, Elizabeth’s relationship with Christ was that of a bride to her heavenly Bridegroom. Yet even before her final illness, she recognized the crosses she experienced as gifts from her Spouse. In a letter she wrote to a married woman who was childless and suffering from health problems, Elizabeth shared this understanding of the Cross of Christ to console her:

I am also praying fervently for you, dear Madame, and I believe that the Master wants to consummate His union with you on the Cross. There is no wood like that of the Cross for lighting the fire of love in the soul!⁷

Elizabeth had been experiencing tiredness and stomach problems for some time before she was diagnosed with Addison’s disease in 1903. The doctors thought that she could make a full recovery with added time for rest and an improved diet. She obeyed their orders, and she obeyed her superior, who asked Elizabeth to pray for a cure. But she seemed to know that God would be calling her home instead.

As her health declined, she could barely keep food down, lost weight, and was so exhausted that she could hardly hold a pen to write. She experienced several ups and downs in her health and was thought to be near death more than once during the three years of her illness. For the last several months of her life, she suffered increasing pain, including an unquenchable thirst, an interior burning, blinding headaches, and an inability to walk or even sleep. The other nuns and her superiors were astonished by her patient acceptance of all these sufferings. Although she was in considerable pain, she continued to smile and speak of her love for the Son of God, who suffered so much for us, until the very end.

A few months before her death in late 1906, Elizabeth obtained permission from her superior to make a personal retreat. She titled it “Last Retreat” because she knew she did not have long to live. She had always loved to meditate on the letters of Saint Paul, and she came across a phrase in Ephesians 1:12: the praise of his glory. This phrase inspired her, and it became both her vocation and her new name. As she explained it:

I will be the unceasing praise of His glory, Laudem gloriae ejus.⁸

Although she was no longer able to do so many seemingly important things, she could still be something far greater: the Praise of God’s Glory.

Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity was canonized in 2016, and biographies and collections of her writings have been widely translated. But perhaps her greatest gift to us can be found in a simple prayer which she jotted down on November 21, 1904, and carried with her in her community prayer book. The abbreviated prayer given below is one that we can all use to try to understand the incomprehensible mystery of the Most Holy Trinity:

O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me to be utterly forgetful of self so as to be rooted in you, as changeless and calm as if I were already in eternity. … O my “Three,” my All, my Bliss, infinite Solitude, Immensity in which I lose myself, I give myself up to you as your prey; immerse yourself in me that I may be immersed in you until I go to gaze forever, in your light, on the boundless depths of your greatness.⁹

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