Joy in Sacrifice
Nocturnal Lauds — The school of the saints — Confidential letters — Strong advice — Thirst for self-abasement — Humiliations — A characteristic letter — Life echoed in a letter.
The spirit of praise which penetrated Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity made the Office of Lauds her especial favourite. When deprived of her muchneeded sleep, she passed the first hours of the night near her little window, where, with eyes gazing into the starry sky, her soul mounted with the sacred canticles into the presence of the " Three." When autumn began with its chilly evenings she was obliged to give up her long vigils, yet she used to rise for this part of the Divine Office until the last week of her life. She declared that it soothed her, and brought speedy sleep. She evidently intended to give God all she could "extract" from her exhausted frame. " My Master makes me feel that He is pleased with my nightly Lauds, which encourages me to continue them as long as possible," she said. Everything in her beautiful soul was regulated by faith and charity, whose light made her value the most insignificant daily duties. She owned one day that the only thing that reconciled her to the thought of being cured was her resolution of making her self-oblation more entire by keeping the most minute details of our holy Rule. The sincerity of her determination was shown during her last two months of exile by her growing eagerness to keep every observance that she possibly could.
In spite of her declining strength, Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity punctually followed the services in choir from the infirmary tribune. One night, when suffering more than usual and thoroughly exhausted, she " felt tempted " to go back to bed. When told that she should have done so, and there joined the prayers of the community, she replied in impressive tones : " I thought it would be cowardly, Mother, so I left my armchair and knelt to pray with stronger faith on account of my lack of courage. My Master strengthened me so divinely that I never found it easier to put off resting until after Compline." She belonged, indeed, to the school of the saints, who seek strength and rest in prolonged sacrifice and suffering.
When anyone tried to ease her pain, she used to say : " It is not worth while ; my days are almost over. God has taught me that, as I shall soon see Him face to face, Laudem Gloria, far from resting, ought to extract from herself all possible prayer and suffering."
In such a frame of mind she found fresh joy in every new occasion of self-immolation. The doctors tried the stomach-pump, which, as her state of utter exhaustion reacted on her nerves, was veritable torture to her. " I have often prayed for martyrdom," she said ; " I can no longer hope for it, but at least I prepare myself in that spirit for these painful operations." She fortified herself against her natural dread by kissing her crucifix, and then submitted calmly and peacefully.
When asked how she had passed the night, she used to answer simply, " As a sick person does," and at once began to inquire about the other invalid nuns, or to speak of God. Yet her infirmarian used to take her Prioress such notes as the following :
" Eleven o1 clock. " From the Palace of Pain and Bliss.
" Mother, — Your little c Praise of glory ' suffers. I cannot sleep, yet how calm my soul feels, in spite of my anguish ! Your visit brought me this heavenly peace. I long to tell you so, and pray for you incessantly in gratitude. Oh, help me to climb my Calvary ! I feel the power of your priesthood over my soul so strongly, and have such need of you ! Mother, I feel my Three so close to me that I am more overcome by happiness than by pain. My Master has reminded me that pain is my dwellingplace, that it is not for me to choose my sufferings. I plunge with Him into immense suffering. . . ."
" September 30.
" My darling Mother, — Your little ' Praise of glory ' is suffering very, very much ; it is the c exceeding charity,' the divine dispensation of pain. I think that from now to the ninth I have just time to make a novena of suffering for you with my Master. Will you be willing to accept it to gratify my love ? I have fled for refuge to my Jesus' prayer, and confide in His omnipotence."
" I feel that my will is developed and strengthened by suffering," she said, in giving an account of her inner life. " Sometimes 1 used to hesitate before doing what was more perfect lest it might annoy any of my sisters. Now such fears are powerless to stop me ; I am ready to pass through fire to perform the will of God more perfectly."
All her words and writings reveal this virile courage. Formerly she drew souls to recollection ; now her influence led them to practise the most heroic virtues. " When you are blamed," she said to a novice who questioned her, " you should not only submit, but be glad, and say ' Thank you.' " To another : " We must accept our difficulties rather than wish to be freed from them ; accepting them frees us. In the same way we must be willing to undergo the consequences of our faults or faithlessness as being due to God, Who will know how to derive from them glory to Himself and profit to us. ..." To another sister she said : " How we deceive ourselves regarding genuine union with God ! Souls that think they have reached it because they enjoy sensible consolations are like children playing with ashes that the wind carries away. No, no ! True union does not consist in delights, but in privation and pain."
" You know how I love my vocation, my Carmel," she said one day to the Mother Sub-Prioress ; "well, I so long for abjection that, if our Mother told me I was unworthy to wear the holy habit, unworthy of being a Carmelite, and drove me away, I believe I should be overwhelmed with joy at being treated as I deserve."
" Oh ! if you only knew what heavenly days I spend !" she wrote to a friend. " I am growing weaker, and I feel that it will not be long before the Divine Master comes to fetch me. I know and experience joys hitherto unknown to me. How sweet and soothing are the joys of suffering ! I hope that before I die, I shall be transformed into Jesus crucified, and the thought brings me strength in my pain. Our sole ideal should be to conform ourselves to this Divine Model. What fervour we should bring to our self-sacrifice and self-contempt, were our eyes always turned on Him ! Jesus Christ dwelt in sorrow during the thirty-three years He passed on earth, and He shares His lot only with privileged souls. What inexpressible joy it is to think that the Father has predestinated me ' to be made conformable to the image of His Son M1 St. Paul has l.iade known to us this Divine election, which seems to be my lot.
" The good God has made me see many things by the light of eternity, and I wish to tell you, as coming from Him, not to fear sacrifice and struggle, but rather to rejoice at it. Do not feel sad or discouraged if your nature wars upon you or is the field of battle ; I would even say, love your own misery, for it is the subject of God's mercy. When the sight of it saddens you or throws you back on self, the cause is self-love. In times of discouragement take refuge in the prayer of the Divine Master ; He saw you and prayed for you on the cross. This prayer of His lives and is present eternally before His Father; it is that which will save you from your miseries. The more you realize your weakness, the more confident you should feel, for then you depend on Him alone."
Her little friend N , who had not heard from
Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity for several months, was deeply grieved at the thought of no longer receiving the advice and encouragement which had i9o THE "PRAISE OF GLORY"
so greatly helped her. The warm-hearted invalid drew strength from her affection to answer the young girl's many questions in the following beautiful letter, the echo of her own life :
" At last Elizabeth has come with her pencil to be close to her little N ; 1 say c with her pencil/ for we have been together, heart to heart, long ago, have we not ? How fond I am of these evening meetings ! They are the prelude to the intercourse there will be between our souls when I am in heaven and you on earth. I feel as if I bent over you like a mother over her favourite child. I raise my eyes and look at God ; then I lower them on you, shedding on you the rays of His love. I say nothing to Him, but He understands me and prefers my silence. My darling child ! I should like to be a saint to help you while on earth until I can do so from Paradise. What would I not suffer to obtain for you the needed grace of fortitude !
" Now I will answer your questions. Let us speak first of humility. I have read splendid passages on this subject. A devout writer says that 4 the humble soul finds its keenest joy in the feeling of its powerlessness before God.' Dear little friend, pride is not a thing that can be destroyed with the blow of a sword. No doubt some heroic acts of humility, such as we see in the lives of the saints, weaken it considerably, if they do not cause its death, but we have to slay it every instant. ' I die daily !' cried St. Paul.* This doctrine of dying to self — the law for every Christian soul ever since Christ said : c If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily 'f — this * 1 Cor. xv. 31. t St. Luke ix. 23.
doctrine, which seems so austere, is sweet and delightful when we consider that this death puts the life of God in the place of our life of sins and miseries. That is what St. Paul meant when he wrote : c Stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds and putting on the new . . . according to the image of Him that created him.,# This image is God Himself. Do you not remember how plainly He expressed it on the day of creation * ' Let us make man to Our image and likeness' ? f u If we reflect seriously upon our origin, the things of this world will seem so petty that we shall despise them. St. Peter wrote in one of his epistles that we are * made partakers of the Divine nature.'^
" The soul that realizes its own grandeur enters c the liberty of the glory of the children of God '2 — that is, it passes beyond all things, self included.
" St. Augustine says that we have two cities within us — the city of God and the city of self ; as the one is enlarged, the other will be destroyed. A soul that lived in faith in the presence of God, which had the single eye of which Christ speaks in the Gospel — that is, a pure intention, aiming solely at God, directed solely to God — would also be a humble soul. It would recognize what were the gifts He had bestowed on it, for humility is truth, but would appropriate nothing to self, referring all to God as did our Lady. The movements of pride you feel within you only become faults when your will consents to them ; they may cause you great suffering, but they do not offend the good God. The faults into which you tell me you slip inadvertently no
X 2 St. Pet. i. 4. § Rom. viii. 21.
doubt denote self-love, but that, dear little friend, is part of everyone's nature. What God wants of you is, never wilfully to dwell upon any thought of pride or to perform any action inspired by pride, which would be wrong. But if you find you have done such a thing, you must not be disheartened, for that only comes from irritated pride, but, like St. Mary Magdalen, confess your miseries at the Master's feet and ask Him to free you from them. He delights in seeing a soul recognize its own helplessness ; then, as a great saint said : c The abyss of God's immensity is confronted with the abyss of the creature's nothingness, and God embraces this nothingness. '#
" I deeply pity those who live for nothing higher than this world and its frivolities ; they seem to me slaves. I should like to say to them : c Shake off the yoke that weighs you down. Why wear fetters that chain you to self and to things less than self?' The happy people in this world are those with enough self-contempt and self-forgetfulness to choose the cross for their lot. What blissful peace we enjoy when we place our joy in suffering !
" Have you ever seen the pictures of death mowing the harvest with his sickle ? Well, that is my condition ! I seem to feel him destroying me. It is painful to nature, and I assure you that, did I not rise above it, I should be nothing but a coward in my trials. But this is the human way of looking at it, and I quickly ' open the eye of my soul to the light of faith,' which tells me that it is Love Who is destroying me and slowly wearing me away ; then I feel an immense joy, and yield myself as His prey.3
" When we meditate on our eternal predestination visible things seem so contemptible ! Listen to what St. Paul says : ' Whom He foreknew He also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of His Son.'4 That is not all. You will see, my darling, that you are among the number of the predestinated. 'And whom He predestinated, them He also called.' f It is Baptism that made you a child of adoption, that stamped you with the seal of the Blessed Trinity. c And whom He called, them He also justified.'! How often have you been justified by the sacrament of penance and by the many touches of God upon your soul, without your knowing it! 'And whom He justified, them He also glorified. '§ That awaits you in eternity ; but remember, our degree of glory will be the degree of grace in which God finds us at the moment of death. Allow Him to complete the work of His predestination in you, and listen to St. Paul again — he will give you a rule of life : ' Walk in Jesus Christ, rooted and built up in Him.'||
" Yes, little child of my soul, i walk in Jesus Christ.' You need that spacious way ; you are not made for the narrow, cramped by-ways of this world. { Be rooted in Him.' For this you must be uprooted from self, or act as if you were, by denying self wherever you meet it. Be * built up in Him,' far above all that is passing, where all is pure and full of light. Be ' confirmed in the faith,' that is, act by the light of God alone, never by your own impressions and imagination ; believe that He loves you, and will help you in your struggles ; believe in His
X Ibid. § UU II Col. ii. 6, 7.
i94 THE "PRAISE OF GLORY"
love, in His t exceeding charity.' Support yourself by the great truths of faith which show us how rich we are, and what is the end for which God has created us. If you dwell in these truths, yours will be real devotion. The truth, the truth of love, is so beautiful ! 'He loved me and delivered Himself for me.'5 That, dear little friend, is the truth 1 Finally, grow in gratitude. That is the last rule I give you ; it is only the result of the rest. If you are * rooted in Jesus Christ . . . confirmed in faith,' your life will be full of thanksgiving, in the ■ charity of the children of God.' I wonder to myself how a soul which has fathomed the love of God's heart for it can help being joyful, whatever its suffering or grief.
" I also wonder what our Reverend Mother will think of this long epistle. She will not let me write at all now, as I am extremely weak and constantly feel faint. Perhaps this letter may be the last your Elizabeth will send you. It has taken her a great many days to write, and that will explain its incoherence, yet I cannot bring myself to leave you this evening. I am alone ; it is half-past seven ; the community is at recreation, and I feel as if I were almost in heaven already, alone with the One, bearing my cross with my beloved Master. My happiness increases with my sufferings. If you only knew what sweetness there is at the bottom of the chalice prepared by our Father in heaven !
" Adieu, my little darling ! May He ■ protect you beneath the shadow of His wings ' f from all evil."
Footnotes
Chapter 16 of 19