St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was born Elizabeth Bayley in New York in 1774, the daughter of Dr. Richard Bayley, the first professor of anatomy at Columbia College, and Catherine Charlton, daughter of an Anglican minister. Elizabeth’s mother died when Elizabeth was only three years old. Her father remarried and Elizabeth got along very well with her stepmother and stepbrothers and sisters. The family was all of the Anglican faith and Elizabeth was very religious. She always wore a crucifix around her neck and loved to read the Scriptures.

Elizabeth married William Seton in 1794 and struck up a wonderful friendship with her sister-in-law, Rebecca Seton. Together, they went about on missions of mercy and became known as the “Protestant Sisters of Charity.” Elizabeth was very happy, her family was prominent and wealthy and she was doing the Lord’s work. Things couldn’t be better. Then, in 1798, her father-in-law died and Elizabeth and her husband found themselves the caretakers of the large orphaned family. Soon after her husband’s health also started to fail and they went to Pisa, Italy, in hopes of finding medical help for him there. But he died there, and Elizabeth was widowed with five children.

She remained in Pisa for a while after his death, living with a Catholic family. While residing and attending Mass with them, she soon fell in love with the Catholic faith and came to realize that was where she belonged. She returned to the United States in 1805 and was received into the Church by Fr. Matthew O’Brien at St. Peter’s Church in New York. This event led to her ostracization by her Protestant family and friends. When she and a Catholic couple tried to open a school for boys in the suburbs of New York, some started the rumor that they were trying to convert the boys to Catholicism and the school was forced to close.

In 1806, Elizabeth’s youngest sister-in-law Cecilia Seton became very ill and insisted on seeing her ostracized family member. Elizabeth was summoned and became a constant visitor. Cecilia told her that she, too, desired to become a Catholic. When Cecilia’s decision was made known, threats were made to have Elizabeth expelled from the state by the Legislature. When Cecilia recovered from her illness she fled to Elizabeth for refuge and was received into the Church.

Three years later, Elizabeth was asked to open a school in Baltimore by Dr. Dubourg, rector of St. Mary’s Seminary there. Along with four others, Elizabeth founded a religious community there called the Sisters of Saint Joseph and a school for poor children. The new community was approved by Archbishop Carroll of Baltimore, and in 1812, Elizabeth was elected superior. With 18 other women, she took her vows in 1813, founding the Sisters of Charity, the first American religious society. By the time of Elizabeth’s death in 1821, there were some 20 communities.

Elizabeth endured great persecution when she converted to the Catholic Church, including loss of communication with family members and friends. Even during her time as Mother Superior of the Sisters of Charity, her suffering continued. There were great trials including the loss of her own children. Her daughter Anna died during her novitiate but was allowed to pronounce her vows on her deathbed. Another daughter, Rebecca, also died after suffering through a long illness. Elizabeth never swayed in her faith and her zeal to help others, and because of her hard work and perseverance, many people were helped and many souls brought to the Lord.

Prayer: Father, we are so glad that you called Elizabeth to the Catholic faith and for all she accomplished for others in her lifetime. We thank you for her great spirit and example and pray that you will raise up many others like Elizabeth in our country to be great saints that we may emulate. Amen.

American Cathlic's Saint of the Day

January 4, 2005

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

(1774-1821)

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

Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton is a true daughter of the American Revolution, born 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. Reared a staunch Episcopalian by her mother and stepmother, she learned the value of prayer, Scripture and a nightly examination of conscience. Her father, Dr. Richard Bayley, did not have much use for churches but was a great humanitarian, teaching his daughter to love and serve others.

The early deaths of her mother in 1777 and her baby sister in 1778 gave Elizabeth a feel for eternity and the temporariness of the pilgrim life on earth. Far from being brooding and sullen, she faced each new “holocaust,” as she put it, with hopeful cheerfulness.

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

While in Italy with her dying husband, Elizabeth witnessed Catholicity in action through family friends. Three basic points led her to become a Catholic: belief in the Real Presence, devotion to the Blessed Mother and 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, her group followed the lines of a religious community, which was officially founded in 1809.

The thousand or more letters of Mother Seton reveal the development of her spiritual life from ordinary goodness to heroic sanctity. She suffered great trials of sickness, misunderstanding, the death of loved ones (her husband and two young daughters) and the heartache of a wayward son. She died January 4, 1821, and became the first American-born citizen to be beatified (1963) and then canonized (1975). She is buried in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Comment:

Elizabeth Seton had no extraordinary gifts. She was not a mystic or stigmatic. She did not prophesy or speak in tongues. She 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 prefer to exchange the world for a “cave or a desert.” “But God has given me a great deal to do, and I have always and hope always to prefer his will to every wish of my own.” Her brand of sanctity is open to everyone if we love God and do his will.

Quote:

Elizabeth Seton told her sisters, “The first end I propose in our daily work is to do the will of God; secondly, to do it in the manner he wills it; and thirdly, to do it because it is his will.”

Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta warned that her Sisters of Charity might have troubles if they ever start watching Television. She said this when she was alive.

The Internet is a problem for some people -- pornography is the key issue. And the pornography on the internet is very addictive (I don't recall where I heard that -- maybe that is pornography in general).

So many TV shows in the 1960s and 1970s started twisting morality -- for example, the show Alias Smith and Jones who were supposedly good bank robbers because they did not kill anyone. The original Star Trek series had a lot of provocative fashions as another example -- though the plots of the Star Trek series helped people to think about things. Another is Bewitched which taught kids that witchcraft was okay...

Also, TV promotes the idea that sexual relations outside of marriage is okay -- that this is true love, when this is actually sex. This twists the notion of love as being sex and not charity.

The opposite of the Virtues seem to be taught on TV. For example, chastity and its fruits are rarely spoken on TV. Yet, if more young people would practice chastity, sexual diseases would decline. Additionally, those people who wait to have sex when they are married have a 97+% success rate for their marriage. So chastity would reduce divorces and single parent families.

Sister Elizabeth Ann Seton

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, Religious
Memorial
January 4th
[in the diocese of the US]

Foundress and first superior of the Sisters of Charity in the United States, born in New York City, August 28, 1774, of non-Catholic parents of high position; died at Emmitsburg, Maryland, January 4, 1821.

Her father was the first professor of anatomy at Columbia College and eminent for his work as health officer of the Port of New York. Her mother was the daughter of an Anglican minister of Staten Island, N.Y. Her mother died when Elizabeth was three yeas old, leaving two other young daughters. The father married again, and among the children of this second marriage was Guy Charleton Bayley, whose convert son, James Roosevelt Bayley, became Archbishop of Baltimore. Elizabeth always showed great affection for her stepmother, who was a devout Anglican, and for her stepbrothers and sisters. Her education was chiefly conducted by her father, a brilliant man of great natural virtue, who trained her to self-restraint as well as in intellectual pursuits. She read industriously, her notebooks indicating a special interest in religious and historical subjects. She was very religious, wore a small crucifix around her neck, and took great delight in reading the Scriptures, especially the Psalms, a practice she retained until her death.

She was married William Magee Seton, on January 25, 1794. In her sister-in-law, Rebecca Seton, she found the "friend of her soul", and as they went about on missions of mercy they were called the "Protestant Sisters of Charity". In 1803 Mr. Seton's health required a sea voyage; he started with his wife and eldest daughter for Leghorn, where the Filicchi brothers, business friends of the Seton firm, resided. The other children, William, Richard, Rebecca, and Catherine, were left to the care of Rebecca Seton.

From a journal which Mrs. Seton kept during her travels we learn of her heroic effort to sustain the drooping spirits of her husband during the voyage, followed by a long detention in quarantine, and until his death at Pisa ( December 27, 1803). She and her daughter remained for some time with the Filicchi families. While with these Catholic families and in the churches of Italy Mrs. Seton first began to see the beauty of the Catholic Faith. She reached home June 3, 1804, accompanied by Antonio Filicchi. Her sister-in-law, Rebecca, died in July. A time of great spiritual perplexity began for Mrs. Seton, whose prayer was, "If I am right Thy grace impart still in the right to say. If I am wrong Oh, teach my heart to find the better way." Mr. Hobart (afterwards an Anglican bishop), who had great influence over her, used every effort to dissuade her from joining the Catholic Church, while Mr. Filicchi presented the claims of the true religion and arranged a correspondence between Elizabeth and Bishop Cheverus. Through Mr. Filicchi she also wrote to Bishop Carroll. Elizabeth meanwhile added fasting to her prayers for light. The result was that on Ash Wednesday, March 14, 1805, she was received into the Church by Father Matthew O'Brien in St. Peter's Church, Barclay St., New York. On March 25 she made her first Communion with extraordinary fervor. She well understood the storm that her conversion would raise among her Protestant relatives and friends at the time she most needed their help. Little of her husband's fortune was left, but numerous relatives would have provided amply for her and her children had not this barrier been raised.

Mr. Cooper, a Virginian convert and seminarian, offered $10,000 to found an institution for teaching poor children. A farm was bought half a mile from the village of Emmitsburg and two miles from Mt. St. Mary's College. Meanwhile Cecilia Seton and her sister Harriet came to Mrs. Seton in Baltimore. As a preliminary to the formation of the new community, Mrs. Seton took vows privately before Archbishop Carroll and her daughter Anna. In June, 1808, the community was transferred to Emmitsburg to take charge of the new institution. In December, 1809, Harriet Seton, who was received into the Church at Emmitsburg, died there, and Cecilia in April, 1810. Bishop Flaget was commissioned in 1810 by the community to obtain in France the rules of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Three of these sisters were to be sent to train the young community in the spirit of St. Vincent de Paul, but Napoleon forbade them to leave France. The rule, with some modifications, was approved by Archbishop Carroll in January, 1812, and adopted. Against her will, and despite the fact that she had also to care for her children, Mrs. Seton was elected superior. Many joined the community; Mother Seton's daughter, Anna, died during her novitiate ( March 12, 1812), but had been permitted to pronounce her vows on her death-bed. Mother Seton and the eighteen sisters made their vows on July 19, 1813. The fathers superior of the community were the Sulpicians, Fathers Dubourg, David, and Dubois. Father Dubois held the post for fifteen yeas and laboured to impress on the community the spirit of St. Vincent's Sisters of Charity, forty of whom he had had under his care in France. The fervour of the community won admiration everywhere. The school for the daughters of the well-to-do prospered, as it continues to do (1912), and enabled the sisters to do much work among the poor. In 1814 the sisters were given charge of an orphan asylum in Philadelphia; in 1817 they were sent to New York. The previous year (1816) Mother Seton's daughter, Rebecca, after long suffering, died at Emmitsburg; her son Richard, who was placed with the Filicchi firm in Italy, died a few years after his mother. William, the eldest, joined the United States Navy and died in 1868. The most distinguished of his children are Most. Rev. Robert Seton, Archbishop of Heliopolis (author of a memoir of his grandmother, "Roman Essays", and many contributions to the "American Catholic Quarterly" and other reviews), and William Seton (q.v.).

In 1880 Cardinal Gibbons (then Archbishop) urged the steps be taken toward her canonization. The result of the official inquiries in the cause of Mother Seton, held in Baltimore during several years, were brought to Rome by special messenger, and placed in the hands of the postulator of the cause on June 7, 1911.

Elizabeth Ann Seton was beatified in 1963 and canonized on September 14, 1975.

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