"I will betroth you to me for ever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD."
"My beloved spoke and said to me,‘Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone."To Be The Bride Of Christ
July 1902: Elisabeth receives a visit from her sister Guite who speaks to her about her upcoming wedding with Georges Chevignard. She joins her sister Guite in radiating happiness because her heart is also taken. Afterwards, she wrote to her mother: “Don’t you see that when a heart has been taken captive by Christ, It must then give itself wholly?”
During the fall, she writes a meditation on what it means for her to commit herself definitively to Carmel in her upcoming religious profession. This meditation is a reflection of the whole soul of Elisabeth, her love for Christ, her generosity, her apostolic zeal and above all: her burning desire to share everything with the One to whom she gives herself.
This text resonates particularly with religious, but any Christian who desires to fully live the consecration of their Baptism according to their state in life, can also relate to it.
« Epouse, tout ce que ce nom fait pressentir
d’amour donné et reçu ! d’intimité, de fidélité,
de dévouement absolu !
Etre épouse, c’est être livrée comme Lui s’est livré,
c'est être immolée comme Lui, par Lui, pour Lui...
C'est le Christ se faisant tout nôtre,
et nous devenant "toute sienne" !... »
« “Bride”, I must live all that this name
implies of love given and received,
of intimacy, of fidelity, of absolute devotion!
To be a bride means to be given as He gave Himself;
It means to be sacrificed as He was, by Him, for Him...
It is Christ making Himself all ours and we becoming “all His!”... »
« It means to know nothing else than to love,
to love while adoring, to love while making reparation,
to love while praying, while asking, while forgetting oneself;
to love always in every way!
To be a bride means to have all rights over His Heart...
It is a heart-to-heart exchange for a whole lifetime...
It is to live with...always with...
It means to rest from everything in Him,
and to allow Him to rest from everything in our soul! »
« It means, by keeping our gaze always fixed on His,
to discover His least sign, His least desire;
it means to enter into all His joys,
to share all His sadness.
It means to be fruitful, a co-redeemer,
to bring souls to birth in grace,
to multiply the adopted children of the Father,
the redeemed of Christ, the co-heirs of His glory. »
On the 11th of January 1903, the Feast of the Epiphany, Sister Elisabeth of the Trinity commits herself forever to Carmel and makes her vows of obedience, poverty and chastity: a great peace possesses her. She can keep on singing her thanksgiving for “this ocean of love which she immerses and loses herself in”.
« “To be a bride”, a bride of Carmel,
means to have the flaming heart of Elijah,
the transpierced heart of Teresa, His “true bride”,
because she was zealous for His honor.
Finally, to be taken as bride, a mystical bride,
means to have ravished His heart to the extent that,
forgetting all distance,
the Word pours Himself out in the soul
as in the bosom of the Father
with the same ecstasy of infinite love!
It is the Father, the Word and the Spirit possessing the soul,
deifying it, consuming it in the One by love. »