"Bride of Christ" fragments from 'Elizabeth of the Trinity' by Conrad de Meester published in Elizabeth of the Trinity Centenary Issue of Mount Carmel July-September 2006.

It was during this hard novitiate, and in the context of the future marriage of her sister Guite, that Elizabeth put down on paper a meditation on what it meant to her to become, through her imminent profession, a bride - 'bride of Christ' (IN 13). Only Elizabeth Catez could have written such a piece! However, it remained unknown for a long time....It is not possible to quote it here in full. But here are some extracts: 'To be a bride of Christ!...[that is] the expression of a whole mystery of likeness in union...A 'bride, all that this name suggests of love given and received! of intimacy, of fidelity
of absolute devotion!...To be a bride is to be surrendered as he surrendered Himself...It is a heart to heart for a whole life...It is to live with...always with...it is to have eyes only for Him, your thoughts obsessed by Him, your heart completely taken, completely invaded, as if [you have gone] out of yourself and passed into Him, your soul full of His soul, full of His prayer, you whole being captivated and given...It is, by gazing on Him always, to catch the slightest sign and the least desire; it is to enter into all His joys, to share all His sorrows. It is to be fruitful, a co-redemptress, to bring forth souls to grace....to be taken as a bride, a mystical bride, is to have ravished His heart, to the point that, forgetting all distance, the Word pours Himself into 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 invading the soul, deifying it, consuming it in the One through love.'