FEAST DAY NOVEMBER 8
Elizabeth Catez offers hope to any parent who struggles with a strong-willed child. A holy terror as a toddler, she once embarrassed her mother by shouting out at Mass, “Bad priest! Bad priest! That’s my doll!” The priest had secretly borrowed her doll to be used as the Christ Child in his creche. But gradually Elizabeth channeled her willfulness into a determination to become a saint.
Elizabeth’s first communion and confirmation at age 10 touched her deeply without quelling her rambunctiousness. But from that time she opened up to an interior prayer life that slowly matured into the infused contemplation of a mystic. At 14 she felt drawn to choose Christ as her spouse. Without hesitating she made a private vow of virginity. And having been intrigued by visits to the local Carmelite convent at Dijon, France, since childhood, she was determined to become a Carmelite.
Marie, her mother, was horrified at the thought. She did all she could do to prevent it. She sent Elizabeth to parties in hopes that these might distract her and arranged for suitors to pursue her. But she could not in the end resist her daughter’s strong will. She gave up and allowed Elizabeth to enter the Dijon Carmel in 1901.
Appropriately, she took the name Elizabeth of the Trinity, for the focus of her life became her immersion in the Godhead, or rather the Trinity’s immersion in her.
During painful times, when you feel a terrible void, think how God is enlarging the capacity of your soul so that it can receive him—making it, as it were, infinite as he is infinite. Look upon each pain as a love token coming to you directly from God in order to unite you to him.
From: loyolapress.com
