Disease

Illness was Élise Bisschop's inseparable companion. Élise suffered quite especially from a chronic asthma which will oblige her to several surgical operations. But from this damaged health Élise did her treasure and her springboard to the Lord.

At school Élise spent the free-time with another sick girl. They kept a strong friendship for it.

At thirty-two, in a letter to her spiritual father, Élise reveals:

The children in the last years of his catechism teaching remember that Elises face regularly turned blue; she was forced to stop. It seemed in the first time that she was dying before them. Fortunately for them, after a few moments, she regained her breath and, above all, her shining smile.

Élise had, much to her regret, to cease all activity in the parish three years before her death. The doctors, having exhausted the science of the time, could not find a way to relieve his increasingly tired heart.

Élise had written to a friend in 1958:

The cause of beatification seems to prove her right, she who did nothing to be known.