A Pillar in the Heart of Our School: Saint Elizabeth, New Martyr . . What if you lose?

Last updated on: August 24, 2016 at 7:52 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

A Pillar in the Heart of Our School: Saint Elizabeth, New Martyr . . What if you lose? 2016-08-24T07:52:12-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Elisabethhesse_opt She was intelligent, capable, beautiful and born into a position to use all her great gifts. She was murdered by being thrown into a mine shaft, her body damaged by grenades, and left to die of exposure.

It was a long way down to the bottom of that shaft for a princess.

She got there by doing the right thing and she is proof, if Jesus Himself were not proof enough, that winning in Christ’s kingdom is not always winning in this age. To win, you might have to lose. Saint Helen shows that we can win, even in this life, but Saint Elizabeth proves that the “win” was not the goal.

Her marriage was happy, but difficult, and she had to see her husband blown up by terrorists. When she came to Russia as Grand Duchess, Elizabeth did not have to join the Orthodox Church, but she took God seriously enough to study. When it was claimed she converted to the church because of the beauty, Elizabeth is said to have responded that she joined for inner beauty.

This beautiful woman was always motivated more by inner than outer beauty. She preferred service to court balls. She was a happy person, loving to act in amateur theatricals, but she was a serious person for serious times. Elizabeth created Martha and Mary Convent when her husband died and lived safely amongst the poor.

The top of human life is not money, power, or sex: we live for wisdom, virtue, and joy, but we cannot achieve any of those goals without integrity. There is no integrity when politics is more important than people: Elizabeth was a Grand Duchess (greater than a princess!) who told the truth to her sister, the Tsarina. The Tsarina would learn at her own cost that her sister was correct, find holiness in her own martyrdom, while Elizabeth faithfully continued to speak truth to power.

She told her sister the truth and did the same to Lenin. Her sister may not have listened, but Lenin did and so killed her. He knew Communism and atheism could not tolerate a woman who gave up all the world to serve the poor in the name of Jesus.

He ordered her death and she died as she lived. Peasants near the mine shaft where she hit bottom at last heard the martyrs singing the hymns of the church. When her body was found, she had torn her own clothing to bind the wounds of her friends. Those who loved her, loved her to the end, and at great risk, took her body and that of her friend to Palestine.

They could not stand to see it defaced by the godless communists.

Education cannot exist without the examples of people like Saint Elizabeth, new martyr. Education must prepare for any eventuality. Mostly, good deeds are rewarded, but sometimes (God help us if we live in such times!) good deeds attract hatred. The evil hates goodness. The libertine hates the chaste nun. The fool hates the wise woman, and the man without integrity cannot stand the person who give up power for truth.

A true education prepares students to be good citizens, if they can be, in this age, but good subjects to King Jesus in the age to come. If we must choose, we are subjects and not citizens: every Christian is a monarchist.

Elizabeth made that choice and that choice killed her, but recollect this truth: her next waking thought was Jesus. She died and then she lived. She lost a Duchess cornet to gain a martyr’s crown.

The man who ordered her murder would die choking his life away, be stuffed and covered with wax, put on display in a glass case. This is the only immortality that atheism can give you.

Elizabeth won, goes on winning, and will win, world without end. From the bottom to the highest heaven in one life: it is higher education.

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