St. Elizabeth – the mighty slug slayer.

 

Dear brothers and sisters! Nowadays, healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle are frequently discussed and written about. Everyone wants to be healthy. Therefore, let’s not be surprised when it spreads from time to time, either through advertisements or through folk healers, that some medicines are excellent for some diseases. Everyone wants to have it. And you may remember how a few years ago there was a lot of talk about a dairy preparation called “kefir “, then bee porridge, or the miraculous root “žň-šeň “, about a cactus preparation, about acupuncture, or the Japanese bracelet. We would like to have a medicine that would protect us from all diseases.

But just as we are exposed to physical diseases, we also suffer from character ailments. It is the vices of character that shape and deform us, causing us considerable suffering in our daily lives. Sometimes these mental defects are more unpleasant than physical illnesses. What is the cause of this suffering? It is pride and egoism that manifests itself as disordered self-love. She is the chief cause, the root of all sins, and all wits of inexplicable misery. It also has other consequences, so numerous that no psychologist has yet compiled a complete list of them.  Lord Jesus therefore advises us in this situation. “Whoever seeks his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for me will find it “(Mt 10, 39.

For a clearer understanding of this seemingly contradictory statement by Christ, let’s use an image. Let’s imagine a large circle with a clock dial displaying the numbers 3, 6, 9, and 12. Let’s stand in our minds at the place where there is a six. We place the neighbor on three and Jesus Christ on the most significant number, twelve. Let’s reread Jesus’ statement: “whoever seeks his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for me will find it. “For God’s sake, we can lose our lives by serving our neighbor, gradually, slowly, drop by drop, or violently, all at once – by martyrdom. For we move through three to twelve according to the words of Jesus: “Whatever you did to one of my least brothers, you did to me. “Nevertheless, our Lord, as God, needs nothing from us for his happiness, wealth, and glory. That is why it preserves and transforms all those values for us into ones that neither rust nor moth spoils.  

So we get them back through nine, and that’s eternal life. Whoever does not move everything that is apart from himself to God through his neighbor will lose everything one day. We cannot move things directly to God – from the left side through the nine. Jesus said: “What you did not do to one of my youngest brothers, nor did you do to me. Leave, I don’t know you! We realize this especially in this soulful time, how many people we would like to be with, and they are no longer here. They left us so quickly. One man said on his deathbed: Everything I have, everything I own is utterly useless to me now. In fact, I only have what I’ve given away in my life. Dear brothers and sisters, let’s turn temporality into eternity.

Before our eyes stands today the image of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia, who primarily understood the truth of this life and became a mighty conqueror of solitary love. She really gave away everything she owned to people experiencing poverty. She was led to this by a great passion for God through her neighbors.

Just as a house or a tall tower needs a deep foundation, love is built on humility. Just as John the Baptist prepared the way for the Lord Jesus, so humility prepares the way for love. Without humility, there is no love. From this, we see that Saint Elizabeth built her spiritual life on the foundation of humility. Humility is like a thread that unites all other virtues. Modesty has always been a source of incredible beauty and happiness among people. The Holy Scriptures confirm this for us, because “God opposes the proud, but gives his grace to the humble. This further reveals to us that she really chose a life of grace, a life of light, and therefore true wisdom, to see and know how to navigate the challenging and intricate events of her life. Lord Jesus said: “Whoever is greater among you, let him be your servant “. The apostle Paul wrote about it: “He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, namely to death on the cross. “He did it to draw us to himself.

Henry Neuwen put it in an excellent idea. “Whenever I am willing to overcome my false need for self-sufficiency and dare to ask for help, a new community arises – a community of the weak, which is strong in trust, that together we can be people of hope for this wounded svet “. The opposite of what we said is pride – it is the desire for superiority – to show our beauty, grandeur, wealth, and power. It is an excessive admiration of oneself.

In the final stage of this deadly disease, a person creates a law for himself; he becomes his own morality, a judge to himself, and ultimately a god. After all, this is what the evil spirit promised Eve in the beginning: “you will be like gods “. Man plays God. He sets his will against God’s will. However, we naturally do not value the rights of others, as we are primarily concerned with our own advantages and do not tolerate opinions that contradict our own. Today’s times have nice cover names for pride, such as success or self-confidence. Parents also often try to provide their children with less life happiness than success and a career. Charlatans in the field of psychology encourage us to trust ourselves instead of trusting God.

Therefore, the egoist criticizes, gossips, slanders, uses sharp words, and spoils the good reputation of his neighbor to highlight himself. Nevertheless, the paradoxical truth is confirmed that a proud person basically hates himself. This is because he himself feels in his subconscious that he is not as perfect as he pretends to be. And that evokes a complex in him. To cover up worries and anxieties, he appears harsh and even cynical. In this situation, a proud person has the opportunity to choose two paths of hatred: 1. or he begins to hate vanity, conceitedness, self-celebration, which harm his soul, and that is the path of purification, liberation, and finally healing. 2. Or he hates everything about himself that hinders his pride and perfectionism, so that he can feel like God, and that is the way to self-destruction. It is a clear foretaste of hell on earth. Such a person remains alone – he cannot be a gift to others. Our mighty soliloquy slayer, Saint Elizabeth, will undoubtedly stand out better today from this black thinking.

Saint Elizabeth of Hungary-Thuringia was the daughter of the Hungarian king Andrew II. and his wife Gertrude, originally from Bavaria. Already at the age of one, she was engaged to the Thuringian land count Ľudovít IV, who was eight years old at the time, for political reasons. However, they kept the little fiancée at their parents’ royal court until the fourth year, from where she was transferred to her fiancé’s residence in 1211, to Wartburg Castle in Thuringia. Although Mother Gertrude, the Hungarian queen, had a hard time saying goodbye to her little daughter, in the end, the queen won over her mother.

She was very ambitious and longing for property. After the messengers of the Thuringian prince who came for Elizabeth, she said: “Tell your master that I wish him well-being and pleasure and that he does not despise the little. If God allows me to live, I will multiply the dowry richly, I definitely promise that”. Her father, Ondrej II, was also a power-hungry person, which was reflected in his wrongful attempt to obtain the royal crown belonging to his brother, Imrich. Although his father, Belo III, had tried to compensate him for this damage with a large amount of property. Well, that wasn’t enough for him. He attacked his own brother with the army he was supposed to use for the crusade. Despite the loss, because his brother almost died, he became the Hungarian king.

As soon as Elizabeth reached the age of 14, she married Ľudovít. The young couple understood each other well and lived happily. They had three children: Hermann, Sofia, and Gertrude, who became a religious and is venerated as blessed. Elizabeth lived in a happy marriage. The Thuringian princely court was known for its love of luxury and had a long-standing dispute with the ecclesiastical authorities, particularly with the Archbishop of Mainz. Ľudovít inherited from his father not only the throne but also the curse that the archbishop of Mainz had imposed on him, and it did not lift it from him until his death. Although he was innocent, access to the sacraments became impossible for him. His first concern was to rid himself of the curse, which he ultimately succeeded in doing. This whole atmosphere reflected Elizabeth’s way of thinking and way of life. She was a devout Christian, devoted to the Church, and lived.

She enjoyed the princely property, but not for herself, but for the poor and sick. She was generous enough to spend huge sums on alms, establishing hospitals and shelters for abandoned children, especially orphans. The count’s relatives took a dim view of Elizabeth’s actions, but her husband, Ľudovít, respected her, sincerely loved her, and did not hinder her in her way of life or her charitable endeavors. It didn’t take long. In July 1227, after a six-year marriage, her husband died of plague in southern Italy during a crusade. At that time, Elizabeth was waiting for the birth of her daughter Gertrude. After her birth, her husband’s relatives began to pressure Elizabeth. They took her children, refused to recognize her inheritance rights, and expelled her from Wartburg. Elizabeth went from a princess to a beggar. Fortunately, she was taken in by an abbess and a kinship bishop, as well as her last confessor, the well-known preacher Konrad of Marburg.

Konrad recovered specific property and money from her inheritance. However, she dedicated herself to building a hospital in Marburg, where she then personally served the sick. In 1228, she settled in Marburg, where she was spiritually guided by her confessor Konrad, whom she had known since. 1225. Elizabeth loved helping the sick, poor, and elderly by building shelters and working in a hospital near her modest home. She refused an offer to return to Hungary. She preferred to live the rest of her life in exile. She engaged in menial tasks such as spinning and carding yarn, cleaning the dwellings of low-income individuals, and fishing for leisure. Her new life regime lasted only two or three years.

Let’s see how her spiritual leader, P., expressed himself about her. Konrád: “Elizabeth immediately excelled in virtues. Because she had been the comforter of people with low incomes throughout her life, she began to be the full breadwinner of the hungry. At one of her castles, she had a shelter built and collected many sick and weak people in it. She generously distributed the blessing of love. And not only there, but in the entire territory that belonged to her husband’s authority. She had exhausted all her income from her husband’s four principalities, so she had sold all her garments and valuable clothing to benefit people experiencing poverty. As a rule, twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, she personally visited all the sick and treated those who were particularly repulsive among them. She fed one, repaired the bed with the other, took others on her shoulders, and showed them many other services of humanity. And when her husband died, longing for the highest perfection with many tears, she begged me to allow her to beg from home. Once on Good Friday, when the altars were exposed, she laid her hands on the altar and renounced her own will, all the glory of the world, and everything that the Savior recommended to leave in the Gospel in the presence of a few. When she did this and saw that the hustle and bustle of the world and the worldly glory of the region, where honors surrounded her during her husband’s lifetime, could entice her, she came to see me in Marburg against my will. There she set up a kind of shelter in the city, gathered the sick and infirm, and seated the poorest and most despised at her table. And although she was so active, I speak before God that I rarely saw a woman so inner. Some nuns and religious sisters often saw her face glow admirably, with the sun’s rays emanating from her eyes as she emerged from the seclusion of prayer.

Before I died, I confessed to her, and when I asked what should be done with her property and furniture, she replied that everything she had seemingly owned for a long time belonged to the poor. She begged me to give them everything, except the flimsy clothes she was wearing, and wanted to be buried in. Then she received the Lord’s body and spoke until the evening about the best she had heard in the sermon. Finally, in deep piety, she recommended to God all who were with her, and as if she fell asleep sweetly, she breathed her last breath.

She died 4 years after a 24-year-old man on November 17, 1231. Her life was shortened by strict renunciation and submission to strict guidance. She was buried in Marburg. Already 4 years after her death, Pope Gregory IX declared her a saint. It was confirmed in her life that modesty not only beautifies our earthly life, but according to the promise of the Lord Jesus, when everything returns to us from “twelve to sixku “, it opens the way to heavenly life for us. This is the real medicine that will cure everyone of their crooked character.