Local Carmelite Family celebrates canonisation of Bl Elizabeth of the Trinity

KOTA KINABALU – The local Carmelite Family–Carmelite nuns (OCD) and Secular Carmelites (OCDS) celebrated the canonisation of Bl Elizabeth of the Trinity with a thanksgiving Mass on 17 Oct 2016.

Archbishop John Wong presided at the Mass, concelebrated with Fr Rayner Bisius, at the Carmelite Monastery Chapel here.  In his homily, the prelate touched on the special readings and on a brief biography of the new saint.

The simple celebration ended with a breakfast prepared by the Carmelite Seculars for all.

Born Elisabeth Catez on 18 July 1880 in France, she was a gifted pianist with a forceful temper.   Elizabeth sacrificed her music for the “music of silence” when she entered Carmel. Her mystical teaching are encapsulated in the two Retreats she wrote,  as well as her celebrated “Prayer to the Trinity” which reflects its author’s absorption in “The Three” as she termed them, and her love of adoration, silence, peace, conformity to Christ and surrender to the Holy Spirit. So expressive is this “Prayer” that it is also included in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Dying of Addison’s disease on 9 Nov 1906, Blessed Elizabeth’s last words were “I am going to Light, to Love, to Life.”

She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1984.

Pope Francis canonised her along with four other Blesseds yesterday Oct 16 at the Vatican.  They were Manuel Gonzalez Garcia, a Spanish bishop known for his devotion to eucharistic adoration; Guillaume-Nicolas-Louis Leclerq, a Christian Brother martyred during the September Massacres in Paris after refusing to swear allegiance to the new government following the French Revolution; Lodovico Pavoni, the Italian founder of the Sons of Mary Immaculate, now commonly known as the Pavonians; and Alfonso Maria Fusco, an Italian priest who founded the Congregation of the Baptistine Sisters of the Nazarene.