Saint of the day for January 4: story of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

Saint of the day for January 4nd
(28 August 1774 - 4 January 1821)

Story of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

Mother Seton is one of the keystones of the American Catholic Church. She founded the first American female religious community, the Sisters of Charity. He opened the first American parish school and founded the first American Catholic orphanage. All this she did over the span of 46 years while raising her five children.

Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton is a true daughter of the American Revolution, born on August 28, 1774, just two years before the Declaration of Independence. By birth and marriage, she was linked to the first families of New York and enjoyed the fruits of high society. Raised as a convinced Episcopalian, she learned the value of prayer, Scripture and the nocturnal examination of conscience. Her father, Dr. Richard Bayley, was not very fond of churches, but he was a great philanthropist, teaching his daughter to love and serve others.

The premature death of her mother in 1777 and her little sister in 1778 gave Elizabeth a sense of the eternity and temporariness of life as a pilgrim on earth. Far from being gloomy and gloomy, she faced each new “holocaust”, as she put it, with hope and joy.

At 19, Elizabeth was the beauty of New York and married a handsome wealthy businessman, William Magee Seton. They had five children before his business went bankrupt and he died of tuberculosis. At 30, Elizabeth was a widow, penniless, with five small children to support.

While in Italy with her dying husband, Elisabetta witnessed Catholicity in action through family friends. Three fundamental points led her to become Catholic: faith in the Real Presence, devotion to the Blessed Mother and the conviction that the Catholic Church led back to the apostles and to Christ. Many of her family and friends rejected her when she became a Catholic in March 1805.

To support her children, she opened a school in Baltimore. From the beginning, his group followed the lines of a religious community, which was officially founded in 1809.

Mother Seton's thousand or more letters reveal the development of her spiritual life from ordinary goodness to heroic holiness. She suffered great trials of illness, misunderstanding, the deaths of loved ones (her husband and two young daughters) and the anguish of a rebellious son. She died on January 4, 1821 and became the first American citizen to be beatified (1963) and then canonized (1975). She is buried in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Reflection

Elizabeth Seton had no extraordinary gifts. It was not a mystic or a stigmatic. He neither prophesied nor spoke in tongues. He had two great devotions: abandonment to the will of God and an ardent love for the Blessed Sacrament. She wrote to a friend, Julia Scott, that she would rather trade the world for a "cave or a desert". "But God has given me a lot to do, and I always and always hope to prefer his will to my every desire." His mark of holiness is open to all if we love God and do his will.