Saint Elizabeth of Hungary

Conferences of the Rev. Père Lacordaire, p. 424-425

Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, having abandoned the palace of her fathers, and the palace of her husband, confined herself in an hospital to serve the poor of God with her own hands. A leper presented himself; Saint Elizabeth received him, and set herself to wash his dreadful wounds. When she had finished, she took the vase into which she had expressed that which human language cannot even paint, and swallowed it at a draught. Behold… an act which is perfectly extravagant. But remark, first, a thing which you cannot despise – energy. Energy… is the virtue which makes heroes; it is the most vigorous root of the sublime, and, at the same time, the most rare. Nothing is so much wanting to man as energy, and nothing more excites and attracts his respect. You are not wicked beings, but you are feeble beings; and this is why the example of energy is the most salutary that can be given to you, as it is also the one which most excites your admiration. Saint Elizabeth, in drinking this leprous draught, performed a great act, because she performed an act of energy. But there was something better there than energy, —there was charity. In sanctity, the love of God being inseparable from the love of mankind, since it is no other thing than the excess of this double love, it follows that, in every act of the saints, wherever the sacrifice for God is found, that sacrifice inevitably flows back again upon man. And where was the benefit to man in the act of Saint Elizabeth? Where was it? Do you really ask me? Saint Elizabeth made to that abandoned creature, to that object of unanimous repulsion, even in the midst of the ages of faith, she made to him an inexpressible revelation of his greatness; she said to him “Dear humble brother of God, if, after having washed thy wounds, I take thee into my arms to show thee that thou art my royal brother in Jesus Christ, that would even be a mark of love and fraternity; but an ordinary mark, of which I should restore the benefit to thee alone, who hast been deprived of it from thy infancy, who hast never felt upon thy bosom the bosom in a soul, full of life; but, dear humble brother, I would do for thee that which has never been done for any king in the world, for any man loved and adored. I will drink that which has come from thee, that which no longer belongs to thee, that which was thine, only to be transformed into vile rottenness by its contact with thy misery. I will drink it, as I drink the blood of the Saviour in the holy chalice of our altars.” Behold the sublime… and woe to him who does not understand it! Thanks to Saint Elizabeth, during the whole of eternity, it will be known that a leper has obtained from a daughter of kings more love than beauty has ever conquered upon earth.