Cardinal Albert Florent Augustin Decourtray
The Sense of True Christian Prayer
The third main thought of Elizabeth's message, which is evident in today’s time of “return to divinity,” religious fervor, and so-called charismatic renewal, is: the sense of true Christian prayer.
People today seek teachers of inner life and often believe they will find them in non-Christian religions. But here is one of our teachers, teaching us to live close to God, in His presence – a Father who never abandons us. “The Trinity, that is our dwelling, our ‘home,’ our birthplace, from which we must never depart” (NV 2). Unlike so many bland gurus, Elizabeth of the Holy Trinity reminds us that inner silence is not emptiness, but an encounter with the living God, who is within us, revealing His life of love and introducing us to the intimate life of the Three.
Our world, which needs a ‘nourishment of the soul,’ finds a rich source of life in this woman of mystical faith. Elizabeth tells us about what she experiences in God and what God experiences in her. Therefore, we wish for many Christians to enter her school. Her writings, always simple, concrete, sincere, and close to her experience, are so infused with a sense of God’s presence that we cannot read them without being deeply touched and without briefly praying at least. They deepen the desire to meet with the one who filled her life. They open the way to true personal prayer.
Let us listen again to her testimony and advice. About God she writes: “I feel Him so vividly in my soul; it suffices for me to collect myself, and I find Him within – and therein lies my entire happiness. He has placed in my heart a thirst for infinity and a great necessity to love, which only He can quench: and thus I go to Him, like a child to its mother, that He may fulfill, flood everything, and take me and carry me in His arms; it seems to me that one must be this simple with God!” (D 169.)
Her prayer is completely infused with the experience that Jesus’ Spirit dwells in us, who constantly intercedes for us (Romans 8): “It seems to me that my prayer is omnipotent, for it is not I who pray, but my Christ in me” (D 105). “It is so simple; the divine Adorer is in us, so we have His prayer; let us offer it, let us join it, let us pray with His soul!” (D 179.) “The Holy Spirit in you creates heaven” (D 239).
But this conviction of a spiritual daughter of John of the Cross is founded on faith: “In Carmel, we live by faith. As imagination and feelings are excluded...” (D 323).
“Let us live with God as with a friend,” she writes to a married woman, “revitalize your faith so that we connect with Him in everything. (...) We carry our heaven within us because the one who nourishes the blessed in eternal light gives Himself to us in faith and mystery; He is the same. It seems to me that I have found my heaven on earth, because heaven is God, and God is in my soul. On the day I understood this, everything clarified within me, and I would like to whisper this mystery to all those I love, that they too cling to God in everything, so that Jesus' prayer may be fulfilled: ‘Father, let them be one’” (D 122).
The core of her prayer, Elizabeth describes as a loving communion with the Holy Trinity, which is in us. To one girl she writes: “Prayer is the elevation of the soul to God through everything; it establishes in us a kind of continual communion with the Holy Trinity by simply doing everything under His gaze, (...) entering into our innermost being, where the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit dwell...” (D 252).
She is aware of the presence of saving Love, the first freely given, attentive, and faithfully allowing oneself to be loved: “I feel so much love in my soul. (...) He is in me, I am in Him; I need to do nothing but love Him and let myself be loved, and that continually, through everything: awakening in love, moving in love, falling asleep in love, having my soul in His soul, my heart in His heart, my eyes in His eyes, so that He may cleanse me with His touch, freeing me from my misery” (D 177).
She advises another girl in the world to make (like Saint Catherine of Siena) a (monastic) cell in her heart and to always retreat there for a moment of prayer: “Build, like I did, a small cell within your soul; think that God is there, and occasionally enter it. When you are annoyed or unhappy, quickly run there and entrust it all to the Lord. If you knew a bit about prayer, it would no longer bore you; it seems to me that it is rest, refreshing: one simply comes to the one they love, clings to them like a small child in its mother's arms, and lets its heart act. (...) If you knew how well He understands this” (D 123).
To her own mother, Elizabeth advises to set aside a little time for God each day and “to pray three times for five minutes”: “Think that you are with Him, and act with Him as with a being you love; it is so simple, you do not need any beautiful thoughts, but to pour out your heart; (...) if it is better for you to think that God is with you rather than in you, do as you feel, so that you may live with Him” (D 273).
In response to the desire Jesus expressed to every Christian on the eve of His death: “Abide in me” (John 15:4), Elizabeth answered with her whole heart. She writes: “Abide in me. This command is given to us by the Word of God, expressing this will. Abide in me, not just for a few moments, a few hours that pass, but abide... continually, without ceasing. Abide in me, pray in me, worship in me, love in me, suffer in me, work, act in me. Abide in me and thus come before everyone, penetrating even deeper into this depth” (NV 2).
Elizabeth speaks as an echo of the Lord Jesus’ and Saint Paul's advice on constant prayer. She encourages us and teaches. She herself did not want to be anything other than “the praise of His glory” – according to the words with which the Apostle describes our calling (Ephesians 1:12). But let us not forget to renounce ourselves, to forget ourselves, as such love requires. There is no Christian prayer without a person dying to themselves, in following Christ in His great mystery. At the end of her life, Elizabeth often referred to herself as “the host of the praise of glory.”
Translated from French by Elizabeth Graubner.
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