Challenge to change

The one thing that never changes is the need to change. Our world today is changing and expanding with unprecedented speed. Human consciousness is moving from a static, fixed and mechanistic way of thinking and dealing with life to one that is dynamic, fluid and open. We live in an ever-changing universe with a new and ever-expanding consciousness. The challenge today is to adjust to change. A recent best-seller in the States, Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, cleverly captures this dilemma. The book is a modern parable in which ‘cheese’ becomes a metaphor for the things we want in life and the way we build our lives around set patterns of behaviour. When suddenly the cheese is moved, the four characters in the story each have to deal with the painful choice of unexpected change. The bottom line for Spencer is clear: change isn’t everything – it’s the only thing. We either change or die.

A central concept in quantum physics is the idea of the holon. A holon is a unit of life or a field of energy. It is complete in itself, stands in its own right, and yet is an integral part of a wider whole. The universe is not made up of dead particles of matter but is alive with creative energy. We inhabit a living universe, pulsating with divine energy, every part related to the whole and the whole itself related to each and every part. ‘Turn but a stone,’ Francis Thompson wrote, ‘and start a wing’.  The universe is alive and interconnected, from the tiniest atom to the greatest constellation. It was for this reason that Joseph Campbell, the great anthropologist, felt that the famous photograph of the world taken from outer space was the only symbol that could truly express the reality of life today: a world seen in all its wholeness and beauty.

The luminous web

The present-day concept of reality is best expressed in the idea of relationship and networking. We are all interconnected and interdependent.  Everything in the universe needs everything else. We are all part of the whole. This may be a challenge to our concept of self-sufficiency and personal achievement - what Americans call ‘bowling alone’, doing your own thing - yet the greater need is for communication and openness: the need to listen and to enter into dialogue without agenda. Here, the symbol is not the ‘Cartesian wheel’, made up of independent parts and separate functions, but the ‘luminous web’, as it has been called: a radiation of light and energy coming from within the whole, in which everything is connected and interrelated.

In its deepest sense, what we are seeing is the death of dualism and the birth of mutuality. It is the breakdown of many historical and long-accepted divisions: us/them, patriarchy/ matriarchy, male/female, hierarchy/laity. Many of these categories do not sit easily on the modern consciousness.  It is no longer a question of either/or, but of both/and. Today, the search is for a world of both/and: one that can hold a balance of opposites, embrace paradox and be comfortable with differences. Here, experience is the key, the point of convergence. We must learn to trust our own experience and to respect that of others. Again, this paradigm shift shows itself at grass-roots level and is behind many of today’s movements for civil rights, liberation theology and feminine spirituality. Essentially, these are expressions of culture and democracy, but they have huge spiritual and theological implications.

A lot has been written today about the ‘theory of chaos’. God, it seems, is more comfortable with it than we are! This again is a huge challenge for us, brought up on the notion of stability and order. The very thought of things being different can be terrifying, and the fear of letting go can paralyse. It is not easy to cede privilege and entitlement that are embedded in established structures. Yet we live in a world of change. Nature is always renewing itself; even our own bodies are constantly changing and adapting. Far from being a hindrance to growth, instability and uncertainty may be a requirement for it. Doubt, questioning and even scepticism are not necessarily the arch-enemies of faith, but a challenge that seeks integration in a wider and deeper spiritual search.

A new consciousness

Perhaps the question we should ask ourselves is not: where is spirituality today? but: where are we today, and where is spirituality leading us? In many ways we are being called to a new place, perhaps to a place we have never been. Here you may find an echo of John of the Cross: to go to a place we have never been, we have to walk along a path we have never known. We have to be open to the Spirit, trusting in faith. We are being called to make a new and creative leap. This leap, I believe, has more to do with imagination than with theology, more to do with poetry than with systems and with categories. It has everything to do with real, living faith and with the heart of the gospel.  

We have a new reality but we have not yet found a new language. We have a new experience but it has not yet been appropriated. So much spirituality is taking place outside the church. Often, there is an unwillingness to experiment or to encourage new ventures within acknowledged structures. We do not face the future; we back into it, trying to decipher new trends with old codes. The church has made a huge effort to enter into dialogue with the modern world, only to discover that the train has already left the station and a post-modern reality is now in place. This post-modern world has erupted into its own search for meaning and identity, placing a different kind of pressure on present-day theology and spirituality.

New wineskins

So, if we are trying to discern where spirituality is today, we have to begin with a worldview that embraces wholeness, one that is comfortable with a both/and theology, that can hold a balance between opposites and accept questions without answers. It must resonate with the need for community and the need to belong; a spirituality that will foster genuine relationships and the search for interconnectedness. Most of all, it must respect the value of experience, no matter how different this may be from our own, and learn to listen openly and creatively to the voice of the Spirit wherever it speaks.

In his book, Quantum Theology, Diarmuid O Murchu takes the idea of autopoesis, a concept drawn from quantum physics, and applies it to present-day spirituality.  Autopoesis, or autogenesis, is the ability of every living organism to renew itself and adapt to change. Nature is always renewing itself, constantly adjusting to environmental or climatic changes.  It is the human body and mind that is the slowest to accept adjustment and to integrate change. Yet the spirit never grows old. 'I would be a very sad man', Meister Eckhart said, ‘if I did not die much younger than I was born’.  The church itself was born out of new life and a creative outpouring of the Spirit. All spirituality is rooted in paradox, in parable and in contradiction. Order, security, safety are not gospel values and never were. 

Perhaps this is the bottom line: to take the gospel seriously; to follow Jesus trustingly ‘along the way’. Peter himself had to learn that he too would one day be led to a place he would rather not be. Perhaps for us that time is now; to travel light, as Jesus advised, and shake the dust of the years off our feet as we move to a new place. We must rejoice in the gift of new wine and search tirelessly for new wineskins. Old wineskins are no longer adequate, not because they are old, but because the wine itself cannot be contained within them. A lovely image comes to mind from the peat-cutting industry in the Irish Midlands. There, the turf is brought on temporary rail tracks from the outlying bogs to the central station. The tracks are light and flexible and are moved frequently as the need arises. Listening to the Spirit means a willingness to move on and to change: not to change our values or our beliefs but our ways of expressing them, and of making them more real in a world where we are all pilgrims and searchers after truth: ‘the wise householder brings out of his storeroom things both old and new’ (Mt 13:52).

I’ll finish with a story, or rather a statistic, from Joel Arthur Baker’s book, Paradigms. In the late sixties, the world of watchmaking was so dominated by Switzerland that it was generally accepted that no other nation would ever seriously challenge them. The Swiss were doing everything right, developing new techniques, encouraging research and employing the best scientists. In fact, it was their young researchers who came up with the novel idea of a ‘battery-powered watch’. The battery-powered watch was put on display at the World Watch Congress in 1967. For the Swiss, it was more a novelty than a business proposition because their manufacturers rejected the viability of the experiment. It seemed a betrayal of a great tradition and expertise; it couldn’t possibly be the timepiece of the future. The representatives of Seiko were there. They took one look and the rest is history. Today, Japan has the major share of the world market. The Swiss were doing everything right, but could not see or accept that there could be another way, one that was new and different.

Pat Collins, in his recent book, Spirituality for the 21st Century, quotes the words of Paul VI that are just as relevant today as in 1975: ‘I would say only this: today either you live your faith with devotion, depth, vigour and joy, or that faith dies out.’ Surely a timely reminder of the gospel admonition: ‘if the seed does not die, it remains alone …’

Published in 'Mount Carmel' magazine

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Courageous and vulnerable compassion:
Jesus and the women in his life

The author is a freelance writer who gives retreats at our Carmelite house, ‘Tabor’, Preston. In this article, she shows a compassionate Jesus reaching out to women, and reflects on how his empathy and inner freedom may well have been influenced by the person of his mother, as he observed her in the day-to-day ‘hidden life’ of Nazareth.

In the heart of Florence is the monastery of San Marco, where at the top of some old stone steps, through heavy medieval doors, I caught my first glimpse of Fra Angelico’s fresco, The Annunciation. An angel glowed in the darkness and there at the top of the stairs was Mary, a gentle woman, no sign of disturbance or fear, beautiful and yet somehow remote from me: untouchable, immaculate and far removed from the uncertainties and messiness of my life.

It is only in recent years that I have caught a glimpse of the real Mary, the wholesome, Jewish woman behind the beautiful images. This is the woman who said ‘yes’ to independence, to courage, to an ill-timed pregnancy; ‘yes’ to social stigma, to shame and to the possibility of being stoned out of the town; the woman who said ‘yes’ to being in the dark, ‘yes’ to motherhood and vulnerability, ‘yes’ to loving till a sword pierced her heart.

The nurturer

I wonder what influence this courageous, independent, practical woman had on her Son during those ‘hidden years’ before his public ministry began. Was it she who nurtured his sense of wonder and his poetic vision of the world around him that was to become the source of his parables? Was it she who gave him an ease, understanding and deep appreciation of women at a time when women were treated with mistrust and disdain by the temple authorities? ‘Better that the words of the law should be burned than delivered to a woman’ was their precept.

The woman who gave everything

I have been increasingly surprised and inspired by Jesus’ free-spirited and unconventional way of reaching out to people on the margins of society, and particularly by the way he reaches out to women. The gospels are full of accounts of his sensitivity to and appreciation of women. It was he who noticed that a poor widow had put everything she had to live on into a collection box in the temple. He was tired, but that did not stop him looking up and commenting that her gift far outweighed all other gifts. I wonder if she knew she had been noticed that day and affirmed in such a loving way.

The woman who wept

Then there was the widow of Nain. Jesus saw her grieving for the loss of her only son and he openly wept with her. He empathised with her pain and grief, and in the original text he is described as ‘weeping from the depths of his heart’. By reaching out and touching the bier, Jesus showed not only his compassion but also his willingness to risk the stigma of ritual impurity. She must have been deeply touched by his response and treasured it in her heart.

The outcast

In Jewish society a woman ‘with an issue of blood’ was considered to be unclean in the eyes of the law. She was not allowed to touch or to be touched, even in the lightest way, for fear that she would ‘contaminate’ others. So the woman in the gospel story, who had been suffering from a haemorrhage for twelve years, must have lived a lonely existence as a social outcast – anaemic, in pain, and deprived of human comfort and contact.

In desperation she sought out Jesus. With courage and recklessness, she reached out and touched his outer robe and was cured instantly. Maybe she was afraid that he might be ‘contaminated’ by her touch and that the crowd would turn on her. Instead of that, Jesus drew her out, listened to her story and honoured her by calling her ‘my daughter’. How must it have felt for her to be well again, to be free of her illness, free of social stigma and lack of touch, free to walk in and out of the temple again? And what an enormous relief to know that she had told her whole story, had shared her embarrassment and shame, and been loved and honoured through it.

The woman he challenged

When Jesus sat down, hot and exhausted on the edge of a well at Sychar, and chatted easily to a Samaritan woman, he surprised her by his insight into her story. He knew that she had been involved in a series of complicated relationships and that the man she was with at that moment was not her husband. But he told her this with warmth and sympathy and, in a gentle way, touched her heart. He seemed to enjoy her company and to feel relaxed with her, despite his exhaustion, despite the fact that she was a woman and even a moral outcast, and despite the fact that the Samaritans had been in bitter conflict with the Jews for centuries. When Jesus’ disciples returned with food, they were shocked to find him in easy conversation with her for they had been steeped in the rabbinic precept, ‘Let no man talk with a woman in the street, no, not even with his own wife.’ The sight of the two of them must have appeared shockingly unconventional.

In his passion to connect with the ‘poor’ and ‘downtrodden’ and to share his Father’s love with them, Jesus was unconstrained by barriers and social convention. How easy it is to be completely daunted by these things. How difficult it can be to risk looking foolish, to overturn barriers, to be ‘different’ in the name of love. Jesus’ mother had done this, had risked everything when she said ‘yes’ to the angel. I often wonder how much her independent, fearless spirit had inspired her son.

Foolishness in the name of love

Of all the accounts of Jesus’ ease with women, the one that touches me most is the account of the woman who had been a sinner, the prostitute who gate-crashed a formal dinner party in the name of love and repentance. The dinner had been organised by Simon the Pharisee and all was going well until the woman burst in, her hair unbound in a way that was considered grossly immodest, and wept all over his feet. She must have caused serious embarrassment, acute discomfort and anger to many of the men reclining around the courtyard as they realised who she was. Maybe some of them knew her too well! Jesus, on the other hand, seemed completely at ease with her, at ease with her passionate outburst, at ease with her tears and her sensuousness as she dried his feet with her hair and poured precious nard over them. Nard has a powerful, mysterious fragrance and must have pervaded the whole house, causing further discomfort and drawing attention to the shock of her intimate and tender ministering to Jesus. We do not know what melted the heart of the woman who had been a sinner. Maybe she had been watching Jesus from a distance for some time. Maybe he looked at her as he did at Peter, with a brief look of tenderness and love.

Jesus seems very much at ease with people who appear reckless and foolish in their pursuit of him. His love and acceptance of this woman transcended all taboos, all embarrassment, all social etiquette, and was undaunted by the anger, discomfort and condemnation of those around him. I wonder why Jesus felt so at ease and unthreatened by women? Was it because he was at ease with his own vulnerability, with the ‘feminine’ within himself, with the strength within vulnerability and the vulnerability within strength? Maybe it was by observing his own mother that he saw how women can be natural contemplatives, pondering on God’s movement in their lives, making sense of darkness and frailty and of the times when things seem to go wrong.

The women who watched and waited

In his worst hour in Gethsemane, Jesus showed his fear, his vulnerability and his need of his friends. They were overwhelmed by his apparent ‘weakness’ and found it difficult to respond to him. He was in agony and ‘distressed to the point of death’. He sweated blood, a medical phenomenon seen occasionally in the trenches of the First World War when young men were told it was time to ‘go over the top’. In his final hours, it was a group of women who found the courage to stand, to watch and to wait, in horror and helplessness. It was women who were able to stay with a vulnerable and broken Messiah. It was women who allowed him to be himself and refused to leave him. And it was to women that he first appeared after his resurrection. Ignatius of Loyola believes that Jesus appeared first to his mother and then made the tender and surprising appearance to Mary of Magdala in the garden.

Cardinal Hume speaks of the qualities of ‘feminine’ spirituality: ‘It is a feminine trait to listen, to receive, to watch. Perhaps that is why more women pray than men. Perhaps that is why among contemplatives there are more women than men – it is the ‘feminine’ which listens and waits.’ Maybe these are the very qualities that explain Jesus’ ease, understanding and deep appreciation of the women in his life and of the invitation he is making to us today.

Published in 'Mount Carmel' Magazine Vol 53/1 Jan- Mar 2005

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Elizabeth the Musician: a soul full of harmonies

In this article the author explores the world of Elizabeth’s music and, in so doing, reveals not only Elizabeth’s great talent and richness of expression, but also shows music to be a vital force that formed her soul and ultimately drew her to the silent harmonies of God.

Many books have been published and articles written to mark the centenary year of Elizabeth of the Trinity. Much has been revealed about the way she lived, loved and prayed, but very little has been written about her exceptional talents as a musician and the impact this had on her spirituality. ‘After silence,’ Aldous Huxley said, ‘that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.’ Elizabeth was both a woman of silence and a woman of music. She left her piano behind when she entered Carmel but she took her musician’s heart and the language of music with her to express the silent music within her soul.

A girl with rhythm in her head

Elizabeth Catez had an intense passion for music, and this was evident long before her feet could touch the pedals of the piano. She also loved to dance. ‘Elizabeth danced so well,’ her friend Marie-Louise Maurel remarked, ‘she was a girl with rhythm in her head because she was so musical, she was very musical, she was an artiste.’ ‘We were in the same dancing class,’ another friend, Alice Chervau, remembered, ‘we had a professor who came from Paris to give us lessons and Elizabeth was always very lively’.

When Elizabeth was eight, her mother enrolled her at the Dijon Conservatory of Music. Her piano-playing quickly showed signs of technical and expressive virtuosity and in the same year she played The Storm by Daniel Steibelt in a public performance. Her feet could only just touch the pedals, yet the listeners were amazed by her sureness of touch and her brilliant performance. There was also something unusual about the way she played: she was described as having a ‘soul full of harmonies’.

It is rare to glimpse such soul in a young musician, particularly at the first public concert where fingers can so easily freeze up, the music score become a blur and panic set in. I’ve seen this ‘soul’ myself recently, in a young friend of mine who loves football, computer games and messing about with friends; but the first thing he does when he gets home from school is to sit down at the piano. He plays jazz, blues and classical music; and as his fingers fly up and down the keyboard, there’s a faraway look in his eyes and his skin seems to glow. I sit on the piano stool beside him but he seems ‘apart’ from me, utterly absorbed in the melodies, harmonies and rhythms he is hearing and feeling. Mendelssohn himself said, ‘The smallest task in music is so absorbing and carries us so far away from town, country, earth and all worldly things that it is truly a blessed gift of God.’ It was certainly so for Elizabeth.

When she was thirteen, Elizabeth won First Prize for piano at the Dijon Conservatory. The reporter from the local newspaper waxed lyrical about her performance and noted that she received unanimous applause after playing Mendelssohn’s Capriccio Brillant: ‘It was a pleasure to see this young child, scarcely thirteen years old, come to the piano; she is already a distinguished pianist with an excellent touch, a beautiful tone, and a real musical feeling. A debut like this permits us to base great hopes on this child’ (PB, p.557).
 
In a photograph taken just a few days later, she sits poised and self-possessed at the piano, but there is enigma and challenge in her beautiful dark eyes. Her fingers hover over the keyboard, ready to play, but she continues to gaze at us, inviting us in to the mystery of her world. This photograph always reminds me of Vermeer’s delicate, evocative oil painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring. It also says so much about Elizabeth’s relationship with her piano, with her God and with us.

A terrible temper
 
Elizabeth was particularly drawn to the darkly passionate and poetic music of Franz Liszt, the Hungarian pianist and composer whose piano compositions are turbulent, tender, playful and always technically challenging. When she played his Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, she was only fourteen years old, an astounding feat for one so young.

She preferred the music of Chopin, Liszt, Schumann and other composers of the Romantic movement to the more formal beauty and classical balance of Bach, Haydn and Mozart. Within Romanticism she heard and played music that was powerful and poetic in its range of emotional expression, a music that captured the longings and passions within her own heart.

As a small child, Elizabeth had been renowned for her tempestuous nature. Her parish priest suggested that she would become ‘an angel or a devil’, and in early photographs she glares out at us with beautiful blazing eyes and daunting ‘Don’t mess with me!’ body language. Much has been said about the way she mastered her ‘terrible temper’, as her sister Guite called it, but little has been said about the part music may have played in this process. At the Dijon Conservatory she had lessons in all aspects of music theory and performance and was expected to practise on her own for five or six hours a day. It was a gruelling timetable for a teenager, but she loved the discipline and mathematical precision of it all and this may have helped to ‘ground’ her turbulent spirit.

The exuberance and passion of the Romantic music she so loved seemed to match her soul and gave a powerful expressive outlet for her own creative energy. Her remarkable expressiveness and sureness of touch in her first public performance, her poise and serenity in the photograph of 1893, suggest that music was already having a calming and therapeutic effect on her soul.

In the 2006 BBC Reith Lectures, In the Beginning was Sound, Daniel Barenboim, the Israeli pianist and conductor, shared his thoughts on the value of music education. He believes that the study of music can teach us many things about ourselves and about life. He explains that the essence of music is conflict and that the challenge for the musician is to bring this conflict into balance, to control it, to put it in proportion and give it harmony and wholeness. He also believes that the study and performance of music can lead to an increase in self-awareness and maturity and that it can imbue a young musician with a deep sense of inner peace.

Inner music

There is a beautiful description of Elizabeth playing Le Chant du Nautonier (The Song of the Boatman) by the virtuoso pianist and composer, Louis Diémer. In this piece the composer uses arpeggios in rapid succession to echo the movement and moods of the sea – waves rushing, tumbling, breaking at all points on the keyboard. I recently heard an original recording of this piece, played by Diémer himself in 1904. The quality of the recording is poor but the challenge and virtuosity of the piece is unmistakable. It was one of Elizabeth’s favourites and she played it with great sensitivity and skill as recalled by her friend Thérèse Renardet: ‘Elizabeth’s body, slightly bent forward, followed the movement of the arpeggios on the keyboard. You felt that her whole body was moved by her soul; but her body vibrated, too, although not in any exaggerated way. Everything was in moderation, as if guided by some inner music’ (PB, pp.568-9).

Elizabeth’s contemplative heart was already shining through her music, and the skills she had learnt at the Dijon Conservatory were facilitating her journey from sound to silence. Her aural training would have refined her listening skills to the point where she could hear and instantly identify individual notes within complex harmonic structures. This refinement may have helped her to discern, even more precisely, the sounds and silences within her own heart – her ‘inner music’. This in turn may have led her more deeply into contemplation so that she could later say, in her Prayer to the Trinity, ‘I want to spend my life in listening to You’.

As she plays Le Chant du Nautonier, she immerses herself completely in the music. The arpeggios, harmonies and narratives are not her own, they are Diémer’s, but she is able to get right inside his mind and to lose herself in him. In Carmel she loses herself, not in the beautiful music of the Romantics, but in the silent music of her Beloved. ‘I lose myself in Him,’ she says, ‘like a drop of water in the Ocean’ (L 190). On her first evening in Carmel, she is seen standing motionless by the cross in the cloister, saying, ‘I’m passing into the soul of my Christ.’

We have a rare insight into the part music played in the development of Elizabeth’s prayer life when she is asked to give advice to a young musician who is very nervous of playing in public. Elizabeth reflects on her own experience and advises her young friend to ‘forget her audience and imagine she is alone with the divine Master; then she will play for him with all her heart and bring out of her instrument full, yet strong and sweet music. I used to love speaking to him that way!’

For Elizabeth, music was prayer. Through music she learnt what it meant to lose herself completely in another, to delight and captivate an audience, to be used as an instrument. In the silence of Carmel this image deepened and the lyre, that beautiful stringed instrument of antiquity, became a symbol of her journey: ‘A praise of glory is a soul of silence that remains like a lyre under the mysterious touch of the Holy Spirit so that He may draw from it divine harmonies’ (HF 43).

‘To live with You in silence’

Elizabeth was a pianist right up to the day she entered Carmel on August 2nd, 1901. From then on she would never touch a piano again, never know the joy and emotional release of performance or enjoy the social side of music. On holiday in Tarbes, she had described the joy of playing a baby grand piano with superb tone and of being surrounded by friends who all wanted her to play for them or to accompany them as they sang and played instruments. She would never delight them again in this way – ‘never again,’ said one friend, ‘hear and taste all those wonderful works’ (PB, p.577).

I myself know what it’s like to be deprived of a much-loved musical instrument and the gap it leaves in everyday life. At this moment, my own piano is languishing in the basement of a Jesuit retreat house and I am less of a person without it. It helped me to ‘let off steam’, to work through angers and frustrations. ‘Thank God I have music to vent my emotions,’ the American singer and songwriter Paula Cole once said, ‘I’d be in prison if I didn’t!’

There were fears amongst Elizabeth’s friends that the sacrifice of her piano would be too much for her. They spoke about a teaching Order like that of the Sacred Heart, where she would be able to continue sharing her musical gift with others, but Elizabeth longed for the silent music of Carmel. She generously admitted: ‘I will willingly sacrifice my piano’; and she added: ‘I feel I am made for the interior life’ (PB, p.577).

Through her performance work, Elizabeth would have developed a deep and intuitive understanding of the power and mystery of silence. ‘Sound does not exist by itself,’ Daniel Barenboim observes, ‘but has a permanent, constant and unavoidable relation with silence.’ As she played, Elizabeth would have felt the notes emerging out of silence and dying back into it. ‘Unfathomable mystery,’ she once wrote (P 91); and, on another occasion: ‘I would so love, O my Master, to live with You in silence’ (IN 5).

Silent music

This longing never left her, but Elizabeth went through a dark and painful time of transition during her novitiate in Carmel. She suffered from anguish, solitude and emptiness, and was tormented by scruples. There were many reasons for this period of darkness, but the loss of her piano must have played a big part in it. It had been a soul-friend through whom she could express her emotions, be serious and playful, delight others, forget herself, and through whom she could pray. For Elizabeth, the piano was a place where she met God. ‘When I can no longer pray, I play,’ she once said (PB, p.578). She sacrificed so much, but over her years in the convent, she learnt to transpose the language and richness of music into the deep silence of Carmel; she put her trust in the One through whom she was to find her deepest self:

…suddenly several deep waves arose
And [my] barque, so frail, disappeared beneath their waters!
It was the Trinity opening up to me
And I found my centre in the divine Abyss! (P 115)

Elizabeth died of Addison’s disease at the age of twenty-six. Towards the end, one of the sisters asked her gently, ‘Are you suffering a lot?’ Elizabeth’s face creased up a little but then, with a serene smile, she lifted up her hands as though she was about to play the keyboard of a piano. ‘Can you hear something?’ asked the prioress. ‘Oh! my Mother,’ she replied, ‘I hear such divine harmonies’ (cf. PB, p.579).

For Elizabeth, the ultimate harmony of music and prayer was fulfilled in the secret embrace of the Trinity and the silent music which only the heart can hear.

 published in 'Mount Carmel' magazine Vol 53/2 Apr-Jun 2007

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'Within that Secret Place':
Entering into Prayer with Elizabeth

 In this article the author explores the many aspects of Elizabeth’s life of prayer, taking us ever deeper into the hidden realms within the soul, the place where we meet the heart of God.

Some years ago, I attended a conference on Elizabeth of the Trinity. During the discussions, a religious from a contemplative order remarked that she did not find Elizabeth all that helpful; she felt that her teaching was, in fact, too spiritual and sublime. A man sitting beside me responded immediately, ‘I never knew what prayer really was, until I discovered Elizabeth of the Trinity. She is the most practical and helpful guide I have ever known.’ I imagine that both reactions are typical: for some, too much mysticism and high spirituality; for others, a new and inspired guide on the road of prayer. In a pastoral letter during the centenary year of her birth, the Bishop of Dijon hinted at the same reality by observing that Elizabeth was better known outside France than inside. Many others have also remarked that her teaching is better appreciated by the laity than by many clergy and religious.

Elizabeth was born in one century and died in another. Yet in some ways she belongs to neither. Like every saint she transcends time: she belongs to every age, and her message is universal. Yet that message is not always easy to grasp – not because it is so profound but because it is so utterly simple. Simplicity must be intuited whole, it cannot be taken piecemeal. Her spirituality, like the musical compositions she played so well, revolves around one major theme: her passionate love for, and joyful surrender to, the Triune God hidden within her soul: ‘“God in me, I in Him”, oh! this is my life!’ (L 62).  Every aspect of Elizabeth’s life and spirituality, including her teaching on prayer, revolves around this major theme.

Continual prayer

Elizabeth’s life as a Carmelite was one of prayer, silence and contemplation. She identified totally with the central precept of the Carmelite Rule, ‘to ponder the Lord’s law day and night and watch in prayer’ (#10). Yet Elizabeth’s journey of prayer started long before she entered the Carmel of Dijon. From the age of ten, when she first discovered the meaning of her name, ‘dwelling place of God’, the focus of her spiritual journey was set in place.

Every description of Elizabeth as a teenager portrays her as a lively, intelligent, vivacious young woman who loved music, hiking and travel. Yet at the same time, a deep spirituality and love of prayer were developing in her heart. It is interesting to compare two separate passages from the writings of the young Elizabeth. One letter reads: ‘Our stay here has been a continual round of pleasures: dancing, musical sessions, outings in the country, one after the other… the music shops in Tarbes could not keep us supplied with enough music’ (L 14). And a diary entry from the same period, commenting on a ‘brilliant match’ suggested by her mother: ‘my heart is not free, I have given it to the King of kings, and I can no longer dispose of it’ (D 124).  At this period – she was still a teenager – the phrase ‘continual prayer’ appears in her notes and journal. She writes: ‘May my life be a continual prayer, one long act of love. May nothing distract me from you’ (IN 5).

It is important to stress that, even as a teenager, Elizabeth was a contemplative in the world. She lived her Christian life in all essentials as a laywoman, without the support and structure of a religious community. She found her monastery in the ‘cell of [her] heart’, in that ‘little Bethany’ where each heartbeat is an act of love. She wrote: ‘even in the midst of the world one can listen to him in the silence of a heart that wants to belong only to Him!’ (L 38). Mother Mary of Jesus, prioress of the Dijon Carmel, remembered her conversations with the young Elizabeth who would speak about her prayer: ‘The Master was there within her, forming her to his plan. Elizabeth complained of doing nothing, taken out of herself by him who was doing everything.’  The total simplicity and naturalness of Elizabeth’s prayer is beautifully captured in the testimony of a family friend who once asked her what she could say to God during the long hours of prayer. ‘Oh, Madame,’ she replied, ‘we love each other.’

The desert

Contemplative prayer is at the heart of Carmelite life. In Carmel, Elizabeth had found her true home, and her soul expanded: ‘If you knew how happy I am, my horizon grows larger each day’ (L 89). She had found the treasure hidden in the field: ‘the life of a Carmelite is a communion with God from morning to evening, and from evening to morning. If He did not fill our cells and our cloisters, ah! how empty they would be!’ (L 123).

Yet despite this, Elizabeth’s year as a novice was one of darkness and aridity. Anxieties, spiritual distress, fears and imaginings crowded her young heart. It was her time of testing. It is not easy to state the exact nature of her inner struggles, for she spoke of them only to her prioress and confessors; but even these trusted guides were unable to help her. Her usual grace and radiant serenity deserted her and she was plunged into a night of half-light and enveloping darkness. Her struggles seem to have been a mixture of emotional and psychological adjustments, arising partly from her extreme sensitivity aggravated by the new, stark reality of an enclosed convent, and partly from the transforming and purifying action of God in her soul. Awareness of the gulf between her ideals and everyday reality gradually dawned on her, and Elizabeth had to learn the hard way to accept her own weakness and vulnerability. Though highly gifted spiritually and attracted to prayer, she had to discover through painful experience that growth in the spirit is not a matter of willpower, merit or achievement but an overwhelming gift of God’s grace – a gift given and received in love.

This time of trial, however, served only to strengthen her resolve and set her feet more firmly on the path of spiritual freedom. The daughter of an army officer did not renege on the inner conflict but grew stronger and more determined in her surrender to love. ‘Ah, don’t you see that when a heart has been taken captive by Christ, it must then give itself wholly?… I love Him passionately and in loving Him, I am transformed in Him’ (L 130).

Elizabeth had discovered the desert of Carmel, the place of transformation and surrender, where the soul learns how to wait, to walk in faith and to hold itself in silence and peace. Here love is purified, renewed and cleansed of all self-seeking. With the generosity of her young heart, she strove to follow the counsels and encouragement of her father and guide, John of the Cross, along this road of darkness and faith. She wrote to her sister: ‘if Jesus seems to be asleep, oh, let us rest near Him; let us be very calm and silent; let us not wake Him but wait in faith’ (L 239). Elizabeth knew how to wait in silence and hope, and to let herself be carried along in faith and trust. Recalling earlier struggles, she now wrote: ‘when everything was dark, when the present was so painful and the future seemed even more gloomy to me, I used to close my eyes and abandon myself like a child in the arms of this Father who is in Heaven’ (L 129). After the cloud had lifted, she was able to encourage a friend by drawing on her own experience: ‘Believe that at those [painful] times He is hollowing out in your soul greater capacities to receive Him, capacities that are, in a way, as infinite as He Himself’ (L 249).

Presence of God

Elizabeth has rightly been called a ‘prophet of the presence of God’. For her, prayer is essentially a prayer of presence, a journey into awareness, and an invitation ‘to live through love in his presence’ (Eph 1:4). ‘To live in the presence of God,’ she writes, ‘is a heritage Saint Elijah bequeathed to the children of Carmel’ (L 299). Even before entering Carmel, she rejoiced in this discovery: ‘How wonderful, isn’t it, to think that, except for the fact that we do not see him, we already possess him here as the blessed possess him above; it is in our power never to leave him, never to let ourselves be drawn away from Him!’ (L 62). Since he was near, close within her soul, she strove never to leave this intimate companionship, staying close as a friend with the One she loved.

Gradually, the nature and richness of this presence became clearer to her. Her reflection on the writings of St Paul helped her to penetrate more deeply into the hidden mystery and appreciate the wider theological implications. She realised ever more clearly that God is present within, giving the breath of life and being, with each moment of time. This presence is a Triune presence, one of relationship, love and communication – a personal presence of ‘the Three’, as Elizabeth lovingly used to say. It is not a mystery to startle or baffle us, a mathematical problem impossible to solve, but a gift of love to be lived and experienced. It is a dynamic, creative presence. The entry point to this reality is the moment of baptism, the gift of grace that becomes the seed of everlasting life, the guarantee of eternal glory. Through baptism we are able to call God ‘Abba, Father’; we become his children, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, temples of the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth wrote to a friend: ‘think about this God who dwells within you, whose temple you are… Little by little, the soul gets used to living in His sweet company, it understands that it is carrying within it a little Heaven where the God of love has fixed His home’ (L 249).

Watching in faith

Yet, when Elizabeth speaks of the prayer of presence, she is not speaking about feelings. She is speaking of faith: attentive faith enlivened by love, the only sure road to ‘walk without deviating from this magnificent road of the presence of God’ (LR 23).  Prayer, for Elizabeth, is essentially a watching in faith, ‘wholly present’, ‘wholly vigilant’ to God ‘who is more present to her than she is to herself. All that is not just sentiment or imagination…, it is pure faith’ (L 236). It means finding God in the ordinary, everyday events of life: ‘everything lies in the intention: how we can sanctify the smallest things, transform the most ordinary actions of life into divine actions!’ (L 309). When she was in the kitchen she admits: ‘I didn’t go into ecstasy while holding the handle of the frying pan like my holy Mother Teresa, but I believed in the divine presence of the Master who was in the midst of us, and my soul, at its centre, adored Him’ (L 235). ‘Oh, you see… we find God at the wash just as at prayer’ (L 89). Here, Elizabeth challenges us in our wanderings of the mind and in our listlessness; the secret is attention, which is the heart of love: ‘He is in me, I am in Him. I have only to love Him, to let myself be loved, all the time, through all things’ (L 177).

Heart to heart

Very often, it is the sheer transparency of Elizabeth’s prayer that unnerves us. She seems to bypass secondary channels and go directly to the source. As with pure crystal, the light passes through unimpeded. Trying to paraphrase it leads only to distortion. We look in vain for the entry point; instead, we are drawn into the experience itself. Like the disciples at the Last Supper, we find ourselves eavesdropping on the prayer of Jesus to the Father. Years of practice, fidelity and perseverance, supported by grace and the breath of the Spirit, resulted in a prayer that was simple, childlike and confident. ‘Keep looking at him all the time,’ Elizabeth says, ‘keep silent, it is so simple.’  But such simplicity is not always easy and Elizabeth knew it: it is a gift of grace fostered by love.

Elizabeth does not give definitions or elaborate on ways and methods. She challenges and inspires, invites and encourages: ‘let us live with God as with a friend, let us make our faith a living faith in order to be in communion with Him through everything, for that is what makes saints’ (L 122). She speaks from experience – she hears a call, she responds, she listens in faith and love. It is God who takes the initiative, who invites us to pray and to rest confidently in his presence. Elizabeth’s last letter to her mother is a testament of her soul: ‘There is a Being who is Love and who wishes us to live in communion with Him’ (L 327).

Perhaps the phrase ‘heart to heart’ best sums up the dynamics of Elizabeth’s prayer: ‘I pour out my heart [to Him], I catch myself saying all sorts of foolish things…but He likes me to be uninhibited and to speak to Him heart to heart’ (D 135). ‘Heart’, in this sense, represents the deepest part of her being, the centre of all her affections and love: ‘if you got to know Him a little, prayer wouldn’t bore you any more,’ she tells a friend, ‘to me it seems to be rest, relaxation. We come quite simply to the One we love, stay close to Him like a little child in the arms of its mother, and we let our heart go’ (L 123).

A teacher of prayer

It would be wrong to see Elizabeth as someone to be admired rather than imitated, a spiritual athlete rather than a fellow traveller. It is all too easy to visualise her as a gilded seraph, gliding along the pathways of prayer, without a distraction or wayward thought. Yet in her diary, we find the young Elizabeth making a humble confession: ‘how hard and difficult prayer ordinarily seems. You have to work hard to gather all your powers together – how much it costs and how difficult it seems!’ (D 14). Elizabeth was not above falling asleep at prayer or letting her attention wander. In the convent she admitted to Mother Germaine that sometimes she felt so dry and empty that she wanted to get up and run out of the choir! On another occasion, she says that she got so involved in her work of sewing that, ‘When I went to my prayer, try as I might, I could not rise above my “rags”.’  Even for Elizabeth, ‘rising above her rags’ was not easy, and she had to struggle with her own restless thoughts and distractions.

Elizabeth did not see her Carmelite life as in any way irrelevant to her family and friends outside the convent. She wrote numerous letters, the majority of them to laypeople, and she shared the fruit of her own struggles. She knows how to encourage and persuade, and her suggestions for rising above the ‘rags’ of distraction, tiredness and boredom are as practical as they are sensible. Her constant plea is for simplicity: ‘Always love prayer…and when I say prayer, I don’t mean so much imposing on yourself a lot of vocal prayers to be recited every day as that elevation of the soul toward God through all things that establishes us in a kind of continual communion with the Holy Trinity by quite simply doing everything in Their presence’ (L 252). Use whatever is helpful, she tells her friends: a book, favourite passages from scripture, familiar prayers – ‘trusted prayers’, she calls them – beads, a picture; or look at a crucifix. To her mother she suggests ‘three prayers, five minutes each’ (L 273), nothing long or complicated. Her advice to her sister Guite, mother of two young children, holds a universal lesson for all travel-weary pilgrims: ‘I would advise you to simplify all your reading, to fill yourself a little less, you will see that this is much better. Take your Crucifix, look, listen… don’t be troubled when you are occupied like you are now and can’t do all your exercises: you can pray to God while working, it’s enough to think of Him’ (L 93).

For Elizabeth, prayer is essentially a relationship – a friendship that must be reciprocated. ‘He wants to be the Friend you can always find. He is standing at the door of your heart… He is waiting… Open to Him’ (L 174). Opening the door of our hearts is the beginning of prayer. Discovering his personal love for us is the atmosphere in which this prayer develops: ‘will we ever understand how much we are loved?’ (L 191), Elizabeth wonders. She recommends brief moments of remembering the presence of God: ‘During the day, sometimes think of Him who lives in you and who so thirsts to be loved’ (L 93). It does not matter how we do this, as long as we make an effort: ‘If you’d prefer to think that God is close to you rather than within you, follow your attraction, as long as you live with Him’ (L 273).

Prayer is not a matter of words or fine sentiments; it is a love affair of the heart: ‘there is no need for beautiful thoughts, only an outpouring of your heart’ (L 273). Words are not the only vehicles of prayer: silence and listening are equally important. Above all, her advice is not to live on the surface but to find God ‘in the depths, in the Heaven of [the] soul’ (L 62). Again and again she calls us to ‘live in the depths’, to seek the indwelling presence of the One who is ‘ all Love’: ‘You must build a little cell within your soul as I do. Remember that God is there and enter it from time to time’ (L 123).

Prayer of Jesus

To live a life of prayer means, ultimately, to be ‘transformed into Christ’, the passionate longing of Elizabeth’s whole life and the ideal for every Christian, not just for those who live in the cloister. ‘“I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.” That is the dream of my Carmelite soul’ (L 214). Only a few weeks before she died, she wrote: ‘It is important then that I study this divine Model so as to identify myself so closely with Him that I may unceasingly reveal Him to the eyes of the Father’ (LR 37). All prayer is essentially the prayer of Christ. Early in her novitiate, when asked to name her favourite book, she replied: ‘The soul of Christ’. She longed to identify herself totally with every movement of the heart of Jesus: ‘the divine Adorer is within us, so we have His prayer; let us offer it, let us share in it, let us pray with His Soul!’ (L 179). In her famous prayer to the Trinity, Elizabeth longs to be ‘another humanity’ in which Jesus ‘can renew His whole Mystery’; ‘Come into me,’ she pleads, ‘as Adorer, as Restorer, as Saviour’ (PT).  She longs for him to ‘overwhelm’ her, ‘possess’ her and ‘substitute’ himself for her, so that her life may be but a radiance of his. ‘Since Our Lord dwells in our souls, His prayer belongs to us, and I wish to live in communion with it unceasingly…so that later I can communicate it to souls by letting its floods of infinite charity overflow’ (L 191).

Here, we are at the centre of all spirituality, and at the very heart of Elizabeth’s own prayer. This is the reason for the silence and the listening, the attentive heart and the quiet mind. ‘I’m never alone: my Christ is always there praying in me, and I pray with Him’ (L 123). With Christ we journey back to the Father, we rejoice in the Spirit. We enter into his heart, a heart of love. We are children of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, drawn by him into the mystery of his own prayer. This is the focal point of all mystery, the core and centre of all life and being, the beating pulse of an invisible world: the Beloved Son speaking to the Father, God speaking to God. Here we find ourselves ‘Within that Secret Place, the Heart of God’ (P 100).

 Published in 'Mount Carmel' magazine

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