The following about Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity is taken from an interview given by Dr. Anthony Lilles, an expert on the Carmelite Saints: 

 

Elizabeth of the Trinity was born in France in 1880, and grew up in Dijon close to the city's Carmelite monastery. One time when Elizabeth visited the monastery when she was 17, the mother superior there said, "I just received this circular letter about the death of Therese of Lisieux, and I want you to read it." That circular letter would later become "Story of a Soul." In fact, what Elizabeth was given was really the first edition of "Story of a Soul."

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Elizabeth was inclined towards contemplative prayer; she was a very pious person who worked with troubled youth and catechized them, but when she read "Story of a Soul" she knew she needed to become a Carmelite nun. It was a lightning moment in her life, where everything kind of crystallized and she understood how to respond to what God was doing in her heart.

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Elizabeth then told her mother she wanted to enter the Carmel, but her mother replied that she couldn't enter until she was 21. She entered the Carmel in Dijon in 1901, and died there in 1906 – at the age of 26 – from Addison's disease.

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During her time in the Carmel of Dijon, Elizabeth found encouragement from the writings of Therese of Lisieux, particularly her "Offering to Merciful Love." You find references to the "Offering to Merciful Love" throughout the writings of Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity. It was probably something she herself prayed often.

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The second way that Elizabeth of the Trinity was influenced by Therese of Lisieux was a poem that Therese wrote called "Living By Love." In this poem Therese celebrates how the love of Jesus is the heartbeat, the deepest reality of her life, and because He lived to lay down His life for her, she wants to live to lay down her life for human love, which as the poem goes on, means loving all whom He sends her way, without reserve and all the way, giving people the generous love that we have received from Christ then sharing it with others.

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That idea deeply, deeply influenced Elizabeth of the Trinity and in fact inspired her own way of life and her own spiritual mission to help lead souls into mystical prayer. She understood that the way she loved souls all the way was to help them find and encounter the Lord. So, the spiritual missions of Saint Therese of Lisieux and Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity coincide. And these spiritual missions have both greatly influenced the Church in the 20th and early 21st centuries in very powerful ways.