Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity

Elizabeth was born on July 18, 1880. The little girl was extremely stubborn and hot-tempered, and on top of that endowed with boundless energy. Her father tried to raise her by gentle persuasion. He affectionately called her his “little devil.” When the girl was 7, her father died. Her mother raised her rather strictly. Her life was shaped by what happened as she prepared for her First Holy Communion. Elizabeth often affirmed that that day was decisive for her. She resolved to work on herself and master her difficult temperament; before that she had been an unbearable, capricious girl, given to outbursts of uncontrolled anger. Of the day she received the Lord, she wrote in her Diary: “My soul became the dwelling place of God; the Lord took possession of my heart. O holy, beautiful day, when Jesus came into me and let me hear his Voice in the depths of my soul...”

As a teenager she experienced her first mystical graces. She was beautiful, joyful, and natural in manner, and everyone liked her. She was seen as an exceptional personality and an extraordinary girl. She also had a gift for music: in 1893 she won a piano competition. She enjoyed all these pleasures, and yet they remained, as it were, at the margins of her life, because Christ was at its center. In the ballroom, Elizabeth would find herself longing for the tabernacle.

At 14 she made a vow of chastity in her heart and resolved to enter Carmel. For several years, however, she did not confide this resolution to her mother. When she finally did, Elizabeth’s mother forbade her daughter to visit the Carmel, limited her churchgoing and her reception of Holy Communion, and dismissed the girl’s resolve as “excessive religiosity.” Though her access to church and the sacraments was limited, Elizabeth continued to receive mystical graces. She confided them, however, only to her confessor. In the end her mother gave in and reluctantly agreed that her daughter could enter religious life once she turned 21. Her desire to enter the convent met with her mother’s firm and constant opposition. Only when Elizabeth turned 21 did her mother give her reluctant consent. Eight days after Elizabeth entered Carmel, the prioress asked her: “What is your ideal of holiness?” The answer came without hesitation: “To live by love.” “And what is the quickest way to attain it?” “To make oneself very little, to give oneself to God irrevocably.” Her postulancy passed peacefully. With the start of her novitiate, however, a time of torment and anxiety began for Elizabeth. Both she and her superiors thought she would not persevere within the walls of Carmel. Nevertheless, she continued her novitiate and professed her vows in 1903. It was then that the storm in her heart began to subside.

In five years of work, prayer, and deep suffering, she climbed to spiritual heights. Her religious name, “of the Trinity,” became the program of her life and also the path on which she discovered the Triune God. In the mystery of God’s indwelling in the soul she found her “heaven on earth,” and in this way she lived out her mission in the Church. Her last months brought her a grave illness, which she lived as an ascent to God by way of the cross. The last stage of Elizabeth’s life was Addison’s disease, which struck her in 1906. Elizabeth lived it as an ascent to God by way of the cross. This extremely painful adrenal insufficiency caused her great bodily pain and suffering in taking food. Her last words before her death were: “I am going to Light, to Love, to Life.” She died on November 9, 1906, at the age of twenty-six. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 1984. Pope Francis canonized her on October 16, 2016.