St Elizabeth of the Trinity

                         
This is a fairly new saint, having been canonized only 5 years ago. St. Elizabeth of the Trinity was born in France in 1880, the second of two daughters, and grew up in Dijon close to the city's Carmelite monastery. Upon the sudden death of her father, the girls and their mother moved into a second-story apartment that overlooked the Carmel of Dijon. Her name was Elizabeth Catez, and her family’s fond nickname for her was Sabeth. In her childhood she was regarded as a brilliant pianist and a very good student, overall. She would have been a most delightful child, in fact, were it not for an instinctive stubbornness, a naturally noisy nature, and a fiery temper. Elizabeth visited the monastery when she was 17, after reading a copy of the Story of a Soul, the manuscript of St Therese of Liseiux, which her sisters had spread among the Carmelite monasteries after her death. Elizabeth then told her mother she wanted to enter the Carmel, but her mother replied that she couldn't enter until she was 21, and so Elizabeth continued to work with troubled youth throughout that time, and do a lot of other good work in the city of Dijon, especially teaching catechism to the children and adults. As her twenty-first birthday loomed, Elizabeth’s mother knew her defeat was coming. In August of 1901, two weeks after turning twenty-one, she claimed her birthday present, walked into Carmel with her mother and her sister and then bidding them a loving adieu as she passed into the cloister.

A young Elizabeth at the piano

She died there in 1906 – at the age of 26 – from Addison's disease. Elizabeth wrote several works while there, the best-known of which is her prayer "O My God, Trinity Whom I Adore." Also particularly notable are her "Heaven in Faith," a retreat she wrote three months before her death for her sister Guite; and the "Last Retreat," her spiritual insights from the last annual retreat she was able to make. She continued playing the piano and probably also the organ in their chapel. Cardinal Albert Decourtray, who was Bishop of Dijon from 1974 to 1981, was cured of cancer through Bl. Elizabeth's intercession – a miracle that allowed her beatification in 1984. The healing for her canonization was acknowledged by Pope Francis on March 4, 2016. It was that of Marie-Paul Stevens, a Belgian woman who had Sjögren's syndrome, a glandular disease. In 2002 Stevens had asked Bl. Elizabeth to help her manage the extreme discomforts of the pathology she had, and in thanksgiving, because she felt like she had received graces … she travelled to the Carmelite monastery just outside Dijon, and when she got to the monastery, she was completely healed. Elizabeth of the Trinity was canonized on October 16, 2016 by Pope Francis at the Vatican.