If We Were Created for Happiness, Why Aren’t We Happy?

Believe it or not, we were created for happiness. It’s supposed to be our normal state. As St. John of the Cross teaches, we’re supposed to be happy to the point of “always walking in festivity, inwardly and outwardly.” If this is the case, why are we so unhappy?

Read the rest…

Heaven Begins Now: Elizabeth of the Trinity

elisabeth_de_la_trinit_jouant_du_piano

Young Elizabeth

Next month the Catholic galaxy will become a little brighter as the Church receives a new cluster of saints. Among the holy handful will be just one woman, a French Carmelite considered by Pope Saint John Paul II to be one the most influential mystics of his life.

Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity was born as Elizabeth Catez, “Sabeth” to her friends, in 1880. She was a hot-tempered child with sometimes “furious eyes” whose father died while she was young, forcing her mother to move Sabeth and her younger sister from their home in Dijon to a smaller second-story flat. From her window, little Sabeth could look down into the garden of the Carmelite convent. Read the rest…