21

May 3

ELISABETH LESEUR

In all my reading on the saints, I haven’t found many examples of relatable married women. Most of the female saints in Give Us This Day are either martyrs, or virgin-martyrs, or intrepid foundresses of monastic communities. Saint Jane de Chantal was once married, sure, but her life only became saint material after her husband was shot in a hunting accident. Not exactly helpful advice for those of us with husbands who are very much alive.

But then I met a new mystical sister: Elisabeth Leseur. Not only was she married to an atheist, but, like me, she teetered on the edge of Christian belief herself at one time in her life.

Born in 1866, Elisabeth was from a Catholic family and lived during a time of anticlericalism and rapid secularization in her native France. As biographer Wendy Wright put it, Elisabeth “found herself married to an unbeliever in an age of unbelief.”

Married to an unbeliever in an age of unbelief. Well, that sure sounds familiar.

Like me, Elisabeth knew the social tension of living out her faith when religious practice was on the decline. She was privileged and well connected, her circles decidedly sophisticated and secular. Elisabeth’s environment had a big effect on her, and she wasn’t all that serious about her faith in the early years of her marriage. Her husband, Felix, was strident in his antireligious convictions and tried to discourage Elisabeth from Catholic practice. He even gave her books on liberal Protestantism, which he hoped would act as “a stage on the way to radical agnosticism.”

Elisabeth read the antireligious books Felix gave her and was unimpressed. She disagreed with the arguments on an intellectual basis, which she found flimsy, and turned to the Gospels to read for herself what Jesus had to say. Elisabeth “felt herself approach the abyss” of deconversion but ultimately “sprang backward.”

Here is where her story gets especially interesting: Elisabeth experienced a mystical return to faith, but she also made a personal, ascetic commitment to “an almost absolute silence” about her interior life. She began to practice her faith privately and did not speak to Felix about her devotion. It was only after her death that Felix learned of how deep and fervent her faith life had been.

What kind of marriage is this? I thought while reading Elisabeth’s spiritual writings. Who keeps something as big as her faith secret from her husband?

But as strange (and impractical) as living a secret faith while being married might seem, I think Elisabeth might have something to teach me.

When I blather on to Josh about the sermon he missed, neither of us ends up feeling very happy. To me the conversations—or personal monologues—only reinforce our spiritual division; for his part, Josh wonders if I am subtly trying to convert him. (I’m not!) Elisabeth believed that “arguments or discussion was futile and would never be persuasive with the kinds of unbelievers she knew” and instead hoped God’s divine presence would shine through her to those around her. In turn, keeping my faith private might help me to focus less on Josh’s spirituality and more on my own.

It makes sense that Elisabeth was a devotee of Saint Francis de Sales, who emphasized holiness in all walks of life. “Be who you are and be that well” is a famous maxim attributed to De Sales, and Elisabeth practiced radical acceptance of her marriage to an atheist.

If my marriage therapist had been the one to tell Elisabeth about “self-differentiation,” she would have stared, crossed her waifish arms across her chest, and uttered a “duh” in a French accent. Elisabeth believed that “in order to surrender herself entirely to God and God’s will for her, she had a responsibility to cultivate and develop her fullest potential.” In her years of secret practice, Elisabeth developed a personal rule of life—without waiting around for her husband—that involved study and prayer. In particular, she adopted the principles of flexibility and charity, making sure that her devotion wasn’t disruptive to those around her.

Even though Elisabeth wasn’t exactly waiting around for Felix to join her for Mass, she did pray fervently for his conversion all the time. It’s a good thing my first encounter with Elisabeth was in a book on lay sanctity and not her posthumously published diary, otherwise I probably would have written her off just for its subtitle: The Woman Whose Goodness Changed Her Husband from Atheist to Priest. This part of Elisabeth’s story chafes the most at my modern sensibilities. Why is her goodness responsible for his conversion? She literally made a pact with God that, in exchange for her sufferings, God would convert her husband after her death and turn him into a priest. Which, of course, happened. She wouldn’t be a candidate for sainthood if it hadn’t.

I suppose this is why her cause for beatification was opened in 1990—because her story is miraculous. An atheist becomes a priest, and all because of his now-dead wife’s prayers! It’s not an ordinary story of a women like me who struggles with faith, who struggles to pray for her husband. Because, what’s saintly about that?

If Elisabeth were here in the room with me, I imagine that she would reach across and grip my shoulders, straightening my rounded back, and force me to make eye contact.

“I, too, stared into the abyss of unbelief,” I imagine she would say to me. “But God turned me back into his arms. Don’t despair. Devote yourself to Christ, and trust that God will act.”