Prayer as Expression of the Love for God and for Jesus Christ   

Elizabeth Eppinger’s passionate love for God is shown above all through the ardor which she had for prayer and the high gift of the prayer. From the age of four, she knew the joy of praying, at the age of seven she prayed a long time with arms out stretched; without neglecting her work, she took every chance to be alone in order to pray. “I felt strongly attracted to inner prayer and to constant and trusting union with God” (12 years old). “I practiced constant conversation with God all day long” (17 years old).And Father Reichard says: “She got up at night, knelt down in front of her bed and spent hours in prayer”. Father Reichard also reports that after the first period of her illness and the period of aridity “she felt at ease talking to Jesus Christ […]. She freely expresses her feelings of love and devotion to Him. She asks Him questions in order to learn from Him what she has to do to please Him. She complains to Him about all the seductions to which she is exposed in the world and all the dangers which she flees, about her distractions in her prayers and all her spiritual weaknesses”. Above all during her third illness, the Lord took her to a high stage of prayer and to an ecstatic state. Father Reichard attests: “The conversation with her Divine Spouse is now so intimate that for all the exterior things she is like dead and insensitive”. She particularly prays for the salvation of souls with such an intensity that she completely forgets herself and does not pay any more attention to her sufferings.”
One could multiply the texts. The Servant of God incessantly spoke about prayer to her Daughters: “May it be given to me, my children, to make the attraction of the intimate conversation with God arise in Your hearts. To adore God and to always thank him – what a sublime occupation! What an ineffable joy!” “You have come here to live the life of Jesus Christ, a mortified, a crucified life like that of our divine model. Incessantly study this life, contemplate it night and day, in order to adapt Yours to it.”