November 8th 2018

Today we celebrate the feast of St Elizabeth of the Trinity, a young French Carmelite almost contemporary with St Therese.

Elizabeth felt called to Carmel at a young age but her mother was so distressed at the idea that she forbade her even to speak of it before she was twenty-one. Elizabeth waited patiently, unable even to visit the Carmel next to her home, until she finally won her mother’s consent.

Elizabeth’s life in Carmel was a short one; she died after a difficult illness at the age of twenty-six. But her spirituality has continued to inspire and influence many. In her own words:   “I think that in heaven my mission will be to draw souls by helping them to go out of themselves in order to cling to God by a wholly simple and loving movement, and to keep them in this great silence within, which will allow God to communicate himself to them and transform them into himself.”