“It seems to me that I have found my Heaven on earth, since Heaven is God and God is in my soul.” (Saint Elizabeth Catez).
When I was a little primary school girl in year five at school, my year five teacher, who has since passed away (may God rest her soul) used to have to settle a lot of arguments. For some reason, when I was very young, those arguments tended to be able one person copying another person. For example, if one little girl had a bright idea to wear a big navy-blue bow in her hair, all the other little girls would copy her style. And this used to cause a lot of tension and arguments in the room. The original little girl often felt annoyed that her clever stylistic idea was being copied and that she was unable to stand out from the crowd any longer. And my poor year five teacher spent a lot of the year teaching us all how imitation was not a bad thing…
In fact the phrase she used the most often was, “imitation is the greatest form of flattery”, and I have remembered that phrase ever since…
I have been reflecting on that phrase as I have been reflecting on the lives of the Saints… You see, the Saints are a great gift to sinners like me, because all Saints were sinners who continuously came back to God. All Saints (with the exception of the Blessed Virgin Mary who was conceived without sin and Saint John the Baptist who was born without sin, having been baptised of Original Sin in his mother’s womb during the Visitation, of the Blessed Virgin to Saint Elizabeth) sinned… But all of them became Saints because they understood how important it is to constantly try again…
Elizabeth Catez was born in Bourges, France, and experienced a profound closeness to God and strong spirituality from a very young age. She lived next door to the Dijon Carmel (and her mother’s home overlooked the convent) and from a very young age she was able to develop an interest in becoming a Carmelite.
During one of her early visits to the convent, the mother superior gave her a copy of the text that would later become the famous autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux’s “Story of a Soul”. In 1901, Elizabeth Catez joined the convent and in 1903 she took ger final vows as a Carmelite nun.
Saint Elizabeth’s life was brief, but it was a life that demonstrated many similarities to the life of Saint Thérèse. Saint Elizabeth wrote, “It seems to me that I have found my Heaven on earth, since Heaven is God and God is in my soul. The day I understood that, everything became clear to me. I wish to tell this secret to those whom I love so that they also, through everything, may also cling to God...”
Despite her illness – with tuberculosis – Saint Elizabeth wrote, “Believe that He loves you. He wants to help you Himself in the struggles which you must undergo. Believe in His Love, His exceeding Love.”
And I have been thinking about that today, because it is a great example of imitation. And Saint Elizabeth imitated Saint Thérèse until she became a Saint herself… And that is such a wonder to me today… Such a wonderful wonder…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.