TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, my name is Sister Helena of Mary.

I’m a Carmelite sister for the aged and infirm.

I first met at that time blessed Elizabeth of the trinity in 1984.

And this was right out of college.

I was um with the uh Carmelite uh nuns in Carmelite Monastery in the Philippines um just as a a visitor.

I used to go and visit them every afternoon.

I was in the back of chapel and I saw on the board was a picture, a news clipping of a woman, a young woman uh on the piano with very long hair, dark long hair and turned to the camera.

So, she was having her picture taken and I was intrigued and I started to read the article and it was an article announcing the beatification of a young woman named Elizabeth Kates.

Um, so I got intrigued by her story and from that time on I was very interested in her.

So I I want to talk a little bit about Elizabeth of the Trinity today.

So Elizabeth uh Kates was was born in France.

She was born in July 18, 1880.

She was born to a military family really.

Her father was a um a captain the French army and her mother Marie Ruland was also the daughter of a uh um a commonant in the French army.

She has a sister or she had a sister Margarite who was younger than her and the two girls were very close growing up really close.

Um, Elizabeth was um known to have very really uh bad tantrums as a child, burst of anger and difficulty controlling herself and that was a struggle um with her growing up as her self-consciousness and spiritual awakening was deepening.

Uh when Elizabeth was um 7 years old or so, her father died uh of a sudden heart attack and the family moved to Djon, France.

And the family uh a home was situated very close to a Carmelite monastery.

It was so close that from her bedroom window she could actually see the bell tower of the monastery.

She uh had her first communion and uh after that experience everything changed for her.

She uh you know there was if you read her many books that were written about her, she had a famous line that said uh when when the other children were asking her she was staying a long time in the chapel and the children were trying to get her to join them and uh she famously said that I’m being fed by Jesus that she wasn’t hungry that she was fed by Jesus.

From that time on things changed for her.

She she the grace of God I guess really kind of worked in her.

She developed a sense of a keen awareness of being possessed by Jesus.

And um in one of her visits to uh a Carmelite monastery, she was informed at that time and pleasantly surprised when she was told that Elizabeth meant um the house of God.

So it’s was almost like an appropo statement uh being that that became her mission.

Um she had wanted to um uh really enter Caramel early on but her mother was very much against it.

She felt drawn to uh the life of Carmel, the intimacy with Jesus.

She felt more and more the presence of God within her, that divine indwelling of the Trinity within her.

It was very unusual I I think in her case because we can take it in faith but she had a almost like a a physical awareness that she was being inhabited possessed by this divine indwelling because her mother refused to her permission for her to enter Carmel.

She uh was obedient to that and she lived in the world.

She had many friends.

She loved to tra travel.

She loved beautiful clothes.

You know, you could see pictures of her in the books written about her vacationing with her friends, going to parties, living the life of a young woman in the world, and yet very much conscious of the fact that Jesus was within her, that she had this this uh intimacy with Jesus.

Well, that the time came for her to have the permission of her mother and she entered Carmel in um 1901 and she was 21.

Um she Elizabeth of Trinity is was the contemporary of St.

TZ and you can see a picture of her as a postulate next to her novice mistress um mother Germaine with holding the book of St.

Terz the story of a soul.

So it’s very interesting to see that you know like the two of them really right there in that picture.

U she was a postulant and it was you know not really pretty much significant but when she became a novice she entered very deeply into the dark night experience that St.

John of the Cross talked about in in his books. um very dry prayer life, doubts, a lot of uh inner anxiety and struggling with different weaknesses and flaws that that she perceived in herself.

But by the grace of God, you know, she was able to to um enter into a very deep self-awareness. she was able to master herself and in the end she she had self conquest.

Um when she made her final vows after maybe three 3 years 3 4 years or so she was diagnosed with Addison’s disease which is a uh a disorder or an an illness of the the adrenal glands.

She uh was very sick from it.

Fatigue, weakness, weight loss.

So she suffered much from from this disease and um she offered everything to God and she encountered in the writings of St.

Paul who was her favorite writer you know the mission that that she is to have and in the one of the writings of St.

Paul where he mentioned that we as baptized children of God are his praises of glory and she found in that phrase praise of glory her mission in Carmel that we are to be uh she gave herself the name Lord Glorier praise of glory and she signed herself in that way uh in her writings um Elizabeth of the trinity I think can teach us this reality that as baptized people, baptized person that God in reality, not just imaginatively but real that we become temples of God that the the Trinity dwells in us.

The father, son, and holy spirit are in us as baptized persons.

And in in in Elizabeth that is very real.

Um the father being the creator continually creates in us.

Jesus as as the second person of the blessed trinity continues his mystery in us.

She loved to to say that our mission is to recreate the humanity of Jesus.

We are another Jesus in this world and we recreate the mystery of the son by accepting the sufferings that he had gone through himself.

And the holy spirit, the sanctifier is constantly renewing us.

And to appreciate that presence, we need to enter into this silence that she’s very famous for.

I I call Elizabeth as the apostle of of the interior life.

Silence in itself is not just the end.

It’s not just the acqu the acquisition of silence.

For Elizabeth, silence is is the means means to enter into this relationship.

And unless we keep that interior quiet, we will never really hear the voice of God because in our Carmelite tradition, you know, God is the silent whispering voice or sound.

So unless we enter into that silence, you know, we will really miss on what God is trying to say to us or do to us.

Um she wrote to many people and many of them are lay um lay people that she had met when she was still a lay person herself.

But even in Carmel, she wrote to lay people.

A lot of her letters were addressed to lay people.

So she anticipated really this Vatican 2’s uh the universal call to holiness that it calls us to.

She anticipated that by by writing to them and telling them that you know you are called to that God is also in you.

You are also the house of God.

And and it’s beautiful the way she writes these things to them.

Um, Elizabeth uh wrote four major works and you can find them in many resources.

The ICS publications would have them all these books.

She wrote um the uh heaven in faith because he said um um I found my heaven on earth because God is in my soul and because God is in heaven and God is in my soul.

So he wrote she wrote that uh uh heaven in faith u uh book or or letter letter at that time and it was addressed to her um sister ge also wrote um let yourself be loved uh she wrote that to her priorist after her death it was opened and it was a uh it’s really a an address to her priorist telling her that God loves us but sometimes Sometimes that love can take a nature of of darkness.

Sometimes God loves in darkness and being loved in darkness means that sometimes we go through the crucible of the cross and there’s darkness to that.

And even in those moments of of darkness and the cross and we don’t understand what’s happening to us that even in in those moments God give God the permission.

Let yourself be loved even in the darkness because that is still love acting in you a purifying form of love but nevertheless it is love and she also uh wrote um the greatness of our vocation is another book that you can read that was uh addressed to her friend a very good friend and it talks about the the universal call of of the Christian life as a lay person what we can do and um the closeness that that one must seek with God even in the context of of the lay life, you know, the universal call to holiness.

And lastly, um she wrote the last retreat and this was the last um book that she wrote um during her 10-day retreat prior to her death. and it’s like a summary of of her um um reflections and meditations on the work of St.

Paul.

Uh every day’s entry was taken from her readings of St.

Paul during the whole retreat and she elaborated on that.

So if I could summarize her spiritual teaching, I would say that she had that the universal call to holiness which she anticipated for the lay people, for everybody.

We we all are called whatever state of life we’re in, we are all called to live a life with God and um her called to uh being the praise of glory of God, letting God work in us.

Surrender that that call to surrender so that God can do what he wants to do with us.

Elizabeth also calls us to that single-mindedness of heart.

She loved to use that phrase single eye. a single eye that nothing is is an accident that everything is ordained by God and that if we have that single eye of looking at everything on that with that single eye that we will see God’s uh workings, God’s influence, God’s design in everything that happens.

She calls us into a life of silence.

And as I said, silence is not just the absence of words.

I silence is uh having that singularity of knowing that God permeates everything that God is in everything.

Um that nothing is there’s no second second causes everything is ordained everything is is uh either willed or allow or permitted by God.

And um she also uh calls us to a trinitarian life. you know that uh allowing God to renew her his humanity in us, letting Jesus’s mysteries be recreated in us and be renewed so that we can be the praying Jesus, the suffering Jesus, the contemplating Jesus, the teaching Jesus, you know, all these qualities of our Lord that they can all be renewed in us in in our own humanity.

I I like to um uh read a favorite um um prayer that bless Elizabeth um wrote to some of of her friends and she says, “Let us live with God as with a friend.

Let us make our faith a living thing so as to remain in communion with him through everything.” That is how saints are made.

We carry our heaven within us since he also completely satisfies every longing of the glorified souls in the light of the beatific vision is giving himself to us in faith and mystery.

It is the same thing.

It seems to me I have found my heaven on earth since heaven is God and God is in my soul.

The day I understood that everything became clear to me and I wish I could whisper this secret to those I love in order that they also might cling closely to God through everything.

And then a wonderful prayer, a beautiful prayer by St.

Elizabeth.

Um there is another prayer that that I like to also read.

It’s a meditation and this will be the last thing that I want to say about Elizabeth.

When she contemplated on her vocation as a Carmelite, what does a Carmelite what what does it mean to be a Carmelite?

And in Elizabeth’s words, she says, “A Carmelite is a soul who has gazed on Christ crucified, who has seen him offer himself to the father as a victim for souls and entering into herself under this great vision of Christ charity.

She has understood the passion of his soul and desired to give herself as he did.