Sr. Elisabeth of the Trinity could be described as the mystic of the contemplative soul of Mary. As a Carmelite, she specifically contemplated the prayer life of the Blessed Virgin and was able to understand it in a very deep way.
“It seems to me that the attitude of the Virgin during the months which elapsed between the Annunciation and the Nativity, is the model for interior souls.…In what peace, in what recollection did Mary surrender herself and gave herself to all things. How the most banal things were divinized in her, because, through everything, the Virgin remained adoring the gift of God.”
“That did not stop her from spending time outdoors when it came to exercising charity. The Gospel tells us that Mary “traveled with all speed over the mountains of Judea to go to her cousin Elisabeth” (Lk 1:39). Never, with the ineffable vision she contemplated, did her outward charity diminish.”
“Mary, her soul is so simple, the movements in it are so deep that they cannot come as a surprise; she seems to reproduce on earth this life which is that of the divine Being, of the simple Being. Also, it is so transparent, so luminous, that one would take it for light.
“ ‘The Virgin kept these things in her heart.’ Her whole story can be summed up in these few words: it was in her heart that she lived and to such depths that the gaze cannot follow her.”
When I read in the Gospel that “Mary traveled in all haste to the mountains of Judea” to go and fulfill her office of charity near her cousin Elisabeth, I see her pass beautiful, calm, majestic, collected within with the Word of God. Like him, her prayer was always this: “Ecce. Here I am.” Who? The servant of the Lord, the least of the creatures. She, His Mother.”
The main purpose of prayer is to contemplate, to glorify, to console, to love God Himself, God alone, to ask for His forgiveness and to become small before Him, to let oneself be led, taught, and loved by Him.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort compares Mary to a magnificent mountain on which God made His home, “on which Jesus teaches and dwells forever, where one is transfigured with Him, where one dies with Him, where one goes up with Him into heaven.” Therefore, to climb this mountain signifies concretely uniting with Mary in prayer and consummating our ascent to God.
Finally, the same saint calls Mary, the oratory, the house in which God dwells, the place where we find Him. The good atmosphere in which the Trinity delights itself is only to be found in this house: the most profound recollection, respectful silence, ineffable beauty and simplicity, the incense of adoration, the presence of God, Paradise on Earth!
