This is the first of a two part series on the life and spirituality of Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, who feast day is celebrated in Carmel each year on November 8. This first part will focus on the life and vocation of Saint Elizabeth, while Part II, which will be published on November 14, the Feast of All Carmelite Saints, will consist of an introduction to her spirituality and legacy in the Church.
The twentieth century boasts a number of jewels that adorn the crown of Carmel, and from the city of Dijon, in the east of France, comes one of the most luminous, Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity. A Carmelite for only five years, she died at the age of twenty-six after an extended and excruciating illness in which, per her deepest desires, she was conformed to Christ Crucified, to the praise of God’s glory. It was from her childhood, though, that she began to live by degrees her Carmelite vocation, and the body of teaching she left behind is remarkable for its relevance to the faithful of all walks of life, its marvelous foundation in Sacred Scripture, and its sheer lyricism.
Childhood and Vocation
Elizabeth Catez was born on July 18, 1880, in the French army camp at Avord. Her father, Joseph Catez, a career officer who had worked his way up through the ranks to attain the rank of captain and command of a regiment, and his wife Marie, were both devout Catholics and loving parents to Elizabeth and her younger sister Marguerite, her junior by nineteen months who was affectionately known as Guite, just as Elizabeth was called Sabeth. Towards the end of 1882, the family settled in Dijon, which was to be the principal scene of Elizabeth’s life and vocation. Tragically, 1887, just two years after his retirement from the French army, Joseph Catez died of a heart attack, leaving his wife Madame Catez to raise the two young girls on her own. In the wake of Monsieur Catez’s passing, the mother and two daughters were drawn closely together, forming such indissoluble bonds with each other that Elizabeth eventually came to refer to their family as “The Trio”.
As a young girl, Elizabeth’s personality was notable both for the incredible strength of will she possessed and the fierce bouts of rage to which she was prone. Galvanized by her desire to make her First Holy Communion (which Mme. Catez threated to delay if her violent tantrums did not improve), Elizabeth turned the former against the latter. What could have been a serious stumbling block for her was turned into a strength: over a period of three years, she mastered her rages by sheer force of will, paving the way for the heroic exercises of self-possession and self-denial that were to shape profoundly her later life.
It was not just her fiery temper that made Elizabeth a noteworthy child. From the age of eight, the young Mlle. Catez excelled at the piano, earning accolades throughout her time at the Dijon Conservatory and opening for herself the possibility of pursuing a musical career. Even though she was required to give up the piano once she entered Carmel, the inherent musicality of her soul never left her and shines through in some of the most famous passages of her writings.
Unlike her much better known contemporary in Carmel, St. Therese of Lisieux, Elizabeth and her family were immersed in the social scene of their town. The future nun was well-prepared for community life by being part of a close-knit group of friends, with whom in years to come she would continue her correspondence from inside the cloister. The Catez sisters were no strangers to the parties and dances attended by their peers, and among the young men who were able to boast in later years of having danced with Elizabeth was a future Bishop of Dijon! Elizabeth and Guite payed close, but not undue, attention to the fashions of the time, and were always impeccably turned out, as the surviving photographs of this time attest. This at times went to humorous extents, one notable example being a surviving note we have from Elizabeth, written less than a week before her entrance into Carmel, asking her mother for a new pair of dress lady’s gloves! Elizabeth was also immersed in the parish life of St. Michael’s, often lending her musical talents to the liturgical celebrations. Her fervent love for Christ drew her to the apostolate, where as a young adult she devoted many hours to going out to the poor neighborhoods of Dijon and lovingly catechizing the children there in the principles of the Faith.
Mme. Catez often took her two daughters on extended holidays to visit family and friends, usually to Switzerland or the South of France. It was on one of these trips that an eight-year old Elizabeth confided the first indications of her vocation to Canon Angles, the parish priest of her mother’s cousins, the Rolland “aunts”. The paternal relationship between Canon Angles and the future Carmelite continued, in person and in writing, right up to the time of Elizabeth’s death, and her letters to him rank as some of the most beautiful and soaring specimens of her extensive correspondence.
For Elizabeth, the call to Carmel and the years she spent waiting to enter were not merely the start of her vocation, but an integral and formative part of it. It was in 1894, at the age of fourteen, that her childhood desire to be a nun manifested itself as a specific call to enter the Carmel of Dijon, the cloister walk of which was overlooked by the balcony of her own bedroom. Knowing how poorly this idea would go over with her widowed mother, Elizabeth waited two years before disclosing her vocation to Mme. Catez. Her concerns were not unfounded. Though her mother was a deeply religious woman, the prospect of losing of her elder daughter in addition to her husband was too much to bear. For three years, Mme. Catez forbade Elizabeth from even speaking with the nuns, and refused to hear any talk of a religious vocation. Dutifully, Elizabeth obeyed her mother’s demand. It was in this excruciating interior trial that Elizabeth first began to realize the depths of what would become a distinguishing mark of her spirituality: the Divine Indwelling. Denied the prospect of living with Jesus in a monastic cell, Elizabeth more and more found consolation in dwelling with Him in the interior cell of her heart. Her strong will was further purified by this submission to her mother in accordance with the Fourth Commandment, and as with her conquest of her raging temper, this heroic exercise of self-denial reaped her copious rewards of grace and spiritual growth. Finally, in 1899, Mme. Catez gave her nineteen-year old daughter permission to enter Carmel when she turned twenty-one, and so despite that fact that her mother was never fully able to reconcile herself to her daughter’s vocation, Elizabeth’s dream of becoming a Carmelite was realized in 1901. On August 2, Mlle. Catez entered the Dijon Carmel and became forever Elizabeth of the Trinity.
Life In Carmel
Her first months in Carmel as a postulant were suffused with joy and spiritual consolations, but after receiving the habit and beginning the novitiate, Elizabeth’s internal sky darkened and she was plunged into a dark night of faith. In this, as through her entire short life in Carmel, she was guided and aided by her prioress and novice mistress, Mother Germaine of Jesus. Mother Germaine was new to the position of prioress, and Elizabeth was to fulfill three notable “firsts” for her as a superior: her first novice, her first nun to profess vows into her hands, and her first death. Then in her forties, Mother Germaine was an intelligent, deeply prayerful woman from an old aristocratic family, a striking beauty who governed her Carmel with prudence, good judgement, and abiding charity. Fr. Conrad de Meester, the Belgian Discalced Carmelite who assembled the Complete Works of Saint Elizabeth, describes her in glowing terms: “A noble and truthful person, respectful of others, somewhat timid and reserved, but with a very generous spirit of self-sacrifice. Concerned with monastic fervor and fidelity to the spirit of Carmel, she had sufficient discernment to grant a few minor exceptions at the necessary time, and enough talent to create in her community a family spirit characterized by joy and simplicity. Rather than an organizer or a born leader, she was a true Mother to her sisters.” It has been pointed out that in Mother Germaine we find a perfect example of St. Teresa of Jesus’ admonition regarding the prioresses of the Reformed Carmel: “She should strive to be loved so that she may be obeyed.” This, then, was the character of the woman who was to oversee the spiritual development of Blessed Elizabeth, and we find it reflected in the great affection which the latter had for her “little Mother”.
Nevertheless, even Mother Germaine, astute, insightful, and versed in the ways of the Spirit as she was, was taken aback by the sheer depths of darkness into which her young charge was plunged during the course of the novitiate. She guided, challenged, and reassured Elizabeth remarkably well throughout this painful year, but as Elizabeth’s profession date approached, even the Mother Prioress began to have her worries. Though Elizabeth kept her inner turmoil carefully concealed from family, friends, and the other sisters, her doubts about her vocation had become so excruciating that Mother Germaine contemplated delaying the profession. Indeed, it was only due to a misunderstanding with the Jesuit priest whom Mother Germaine had examine Elizabeth on the eve of the profession that allowed the ceremony to go forward, providentially as it turned out, on January 11, 1903. Here, Elizabeth faced the greatest challenge of her young life to date. Immersed in spiritual darkness, every step up the stairs into the monastery choir felt like an ascent of Calvary. The novice willed herself, in spite of everything, to lay down her life then and there, in order to be conformed to Christ Crucified, and her countenance never betrayed the agony in her soul. It was in this extraordinary act of self-immolation that Elizabeth’s trial of faith reached its culmination. Her sacrifice being offered and accepted, the night ended and the newly-professed nun was left filled with the consolation of her Bridegroom.
For the next three years in Carmel, Elizabeth’s life of faith continued to mature and expand. Her charity to her sisters stands at the forefront of her virtues. Noteworthy is the fact that, during the canonical investigation of her cause, each nun in the Dijon Carmel testified that she had always felt that Elizabeth loved her the best out of all the sisters in the community. Though she struggled with her duties as habit sister and portress (principally because of how deep and uninterrupted her prayer had become), Elizabeth applied herself generously to both tasks and accepted criticism with docility. It was in this time after her profession that the young Carmelite began to fully immerse herself in the study and meditation of Sacred Scripture, particularly the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul. These became so harmoniously integrated into her soul and her prayer that in her longer works, written during the final year of her life, she rarely opts to express her thought in her own words when she can employ a passage of Scripture to communicate the same ideas. Her deepening prayer and entry into the Word did nothing to dampen her apostolic spirit, however. Elizabeth maintained a lively back-and-forth via letters with friends near and far. Worthy of mention is her correspondence with her new brother-in-law, Andre Chevignard, a seminarian and eventual priest of the Diocese of Dijon. Her letters to him are of particular beauty and depth, and it is to him that she first uses the phrase “praise of glory” to define her conception of her eternal vocation. Like all the nuns in the Dijon Carmel, Elizabeth paid close attention to the thunderous conflict between the Catholic Church and the anticlerical French government of Emile Combes, which threatened to send the community (as were many others throughout France) into exile. Her letters throughout the crisis reveal her deep identification with the sufferings of the Mystical Body of Christ.
Her Final Years
Starting in 1905, Elizabeth began to be identified with these sufferings in body as well as in spirit. Her health began declining, and she experienced great fatigue, and began to suffer from painful insomnia. During this year her interior life deepened ever more, until by the end of 1905, even the other nuns in the Carmel were able to perceive just how advanced Elizabeth had become. Her health, however, was declining just as her soul was ascending. Though she was never diagnosed in her lifetime, the prognosis is generally accepted today to have been Addison’s Disease, at the time an untreatable and invariably fatal condition, probably triggered in this case by an infection and destruction of her adrenal glands by tuberculosis germs. Elizabeth was well-enough to enjoy the Solemnity of St. Joseph on March 19, 1906 with the rest of her community, but shortly thereafter she was moved to the monastery infirmary, where she remained until her death.
The slow sufferings Elizabeth faced over the next eight months were almost indescribable. Her metabolism broke down, which caused the inside of her body, from her mouth all the way down through her digestive tract, to become hideously inflamed and torturously sensitive. Her near-constant insomnia meant that she was continually exhausted and every night had to face hours of solitude with nothing to distract her from her sufferings. Like St. Therese, she was tempted on at least one occasion in the last month of her life with the idea of suicide. Through all this, however, the officer’s daughter who for so many years had practiced self-denial and control maintained her composure and good cheer, only rarely admitting to others besides Mother Germaine just how intense her suffering actually was. During these final months, she composed all of her longer and greatest works, three of which were meant as last bequests, as it were, to her sister, Mother Germaine, and a young friend, Francoise de Sourdon, for whom Elizabeth had long displayed a maternal affection and care.
The final photo of Saint Elizabeth while alive, taken one month before her death
With these sufferings came the final flowering of Elizabeth’s spiritual life on earth. The greatest grace she received was undoubtedly the strength to persevere through everything and to desire above all else to be conformed to Christ Crucified. Other, more explicitly mystical graces accompanied these, including, most probably, the grace of spiritual marriage. As November arrived, Elizabeth was plunged, one final time, into several days of intense spiritual darkness and suffering, just as the final agony of her illness was intensifying. This last interior purification, however, broke, and from the accounts of those who witnessed her final week, from that point until her death Elizabeth enjoined spiritual consolations of a most sublime nature. Finally, early in the morning of November 9, 1906, the veil at last parted for Elizabeth of the Trinity, sending her, in her own words, “to Light, to Love, to Life!”