St Elizabeth Ann Seton

We have in St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774-1821) the first native born American saint today.

In her own words:

“We must pray without ceasing, in every occurrence and employment of our lives – that prayer which is rather a habit of lifting up the heart to God as in a constant communication with Him.”

“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.”

“The accidents of life separate us from our dearest friends, but let us not despair. God is like a looking glass in which souls see each other. The more we are united to Him by love, the nearer we are to those who belong to Him.”

“And in every disappointment, great or small, let your heart fly directly to your dear Savior, throwing yourself in those arms for refuge against every pain and sorrow. Jesus will never leave you or forsake you.”

“God is everywhere, in the very air I breathe, yes everywhere, but in His Sacrament of the Altar He is as present actually and really as my soul within my body; in His Sacrifice daily offered as really as once offered on the Cross.”

St Elizabeth Ann Seton

Today, we honor the first native born saint of the United States of America, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, with a liturgical memorial. She arrived arrived in Baltimore on June 16, 1808 taking up residence on Paca Street. Saint Elizabeth Ann would also profess her first vows as a woman religious in the presence of Bishop John Carroll. Seton would go on to be one of the greatest saints of America and religious educators.

“Let your chief study be to acquaint yourself with God because there is nothing greater than God, and because it is the only knowledge which can fill the Heart with a Peace and joy, which nothing can disturb.” (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton)

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Our first native born saint is the great Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774 – 1821). A New York native, wife and mother, Seton was a convert to Catholicism who after the death of her husband, she founded a religious community in 1808-9 and a school for poor children at Emmitsburg, near Baltimore, Maryland. Seton is credited with founding the Catholic school system in the USA. Mother Seton died in 1821. The Sisters of Charity continue Seton’s charism to this day.

One saint expands upon the life and work of another:

“You pray, you deny yourself, you work in a thousand apostolic activities, but you don’t study. You are useless then unless you change. Study, professional training of whatever type it be, is a grave obligation for us.” (St. Josemaria Escriva, “The Way,” no. 334)

One of the great works of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton and her congregation of sisters is teaching, of critical study for the building up of the Kingdom and for life.

Saint Elizabeth, pray for us!

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Elizabeth Ann Seton was a woman of great and persevering generosity and service – as a wife, a mother, a widow, and as a religious. She was canonized on September 14, 1975 by Pope Paul VI. At that time he told the Church in America, “Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton is a Saint! She is the first daughter of the United States of America to be glorified with this incomparable attribute!”

Mother Seton came to Baltimore and then to Emmitsburg to educate the young and the poor, a healing of body, mind and spirit. Her discipleship with the Lord as Master was informed by her femininity, her spousal relationship with her husband, her motherhood, her conversion to the Church of Rome and most importantly, her spousal relationship with Jesus Christ. As a consequence of Seton’s intense faith in Christ and the sacrament of the Church Seton was able to follow the invitation of the Sulpician who invited her to serve the Church in a new way. The founding of the Daughters of Charity was just one concrete way of living of the spiritual and corporal works. As we know, love knows no limitations; where man’s mercy may have limitations, God’s mercy does not and that was Seton’s message.

When death was imminent and it came on January 2, 1821, Mother Seton said as her final words: “Be children of the Church!” Hers was the message she learned from experience and from Ignatian spirituality, “sentire cum ecclesiae.” Her words were an exhortation to be a close and intimate friend of Jesus, a mature offspring of the Divine Master.

For Mother Seton, and therefore for us who are close to her, our vocation is to bear witness to that mercy in ministries of the mission, education and healing formed by charity. The gospel knows no other way.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

This is the generation which seeks the face of the God of Jacob.

O God, who crowned with the gift of true faith Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton’s burning zeal to find you, grant by her intercession and example that we may always seek you with diligent love and find you in daily service with sincere faith.

Saint Elizabeth Ann was responsible for the Catholic school system in the USA, and many of the Catholic hospitals. She was the first US saint. How good it would be if a revival of vocations to the Sisters of Charity. Right now, the Sisters of Charity are on the verge of vanishing.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Behold a wise woman who has built her house. She feared the Lord and walked the right path. (the Entrance verse at Mass)

The first United States native to be canonized by the Catholic Church is Elizabeth Ann Seton (August 28, 1774 – January 4, 1821). She is the famous American convert, wife, mother and founder of a religious congregation of women (The Sisters of Charity) revolutionized the work of the Church in the US. Seton’s motto, “Hazard yet forward” is a indication of her deep conviction that Christ indeed is our Savior and everything we do ought to be done for Him. Our “hazard” is being bold in proclaiming the Good News of Salvation, in proposing to live this Good News so that our lives are truly different and all people may see the face of Christ in our own.

Let us call upon Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton for her intercession with the Lord to help us hazard yet go forward in doing all things for Christ and His sacrament, the Church for our own salvation and the salvation of others.

The Church prays

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

But we lack
courage to keep a continual watch over nature, and therefore, year after year,
with our thousand graces, multiplied resolutions, and fair promises, we run
around in a circle of misery and imperfections. After a long time in the
service of God, we come nearly to the point from whence we set out, and perhaps
with even less ardor for penance and mortification than when we began our
consecration to him.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Divine Office, Office of
Readings

There are very few American women who have had an impact on civil and religious society because today’s saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, with the work of education and hospitals and other institutions of culture that her order, the Sisters of Charity, did for all of us.

Ask Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton to intercede for us right now to help us to make Jesus known through acts of charity and mercy.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Lord Jesus, Who was born for us in a stable, lived for us a life of pain and sorrow, and died for us upon a cross; say for us in the hour of death, Father, forgive, and to Your Mother, Behold your child. Say to us, This day you shall be with Me in paradise. Dear Savior, leave us not, forsake us not. We thirst for You, Fountain of Living Water. Our days pass quickly along, soon all will be consummated for us. To Your hands we commend our spirits, now and forever. Amen. (a prayer by Saint Elizabeth Seton)

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774-1821), a native of New
York was socialite, a wife, a mother, a convert to Catholicism and a foundress
of a religious community of women. Seton is the first native-born American
citizen to be canonized. She founded the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows
With Small Children, New York City’s first private charitable organization, and
founded the U.S. Sisters of Charity. Seton was responsible for the parochial
school system in the USA.

A video was made of Seton and you can watch the trailer here.

Even more on Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton may be found here,
including the liturgical prayer for her.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Lord God, You blessed Elizabeth Seton with gifts of grace as wife and mother, educator and foundress, so that she might spend her life in service to Your people. Through her example and prayers may we learn to express our love for You in love for others.

At the Mass which Pope Paul VI declared Seton a saint he said:

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton is an American. All of us say this with spiritual joy, and with the intention of honoring the land and the nation from which she marvelously sprang forth as the first flower in the calendar of the saints. This is the title which, in his original foreword to the excellent work of Father Dirvin, the late Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York, attributed to her as primary and characteristic: “Elizabeth Ann Seton was wholly American”! Rejoice, we say to the great nation of the United States of America. Rejoice for your glorious daughter. Be proud of her. And know how to preserve her fruitful heritage. This most beautiful figure of a holy woman presents to the world and to history the affirmation of new and authentic riches that are yours: that religious spirituality which your temporal prosperity seemed to obscure and almost make impossible. Your land too, America, is indeed worthy of receiving into its fertile ground the seed of evangelical holiness. And here is a splendid proof-among many others-of this fact.

May you always be able to cultivate the genuine fruitfulness of evangelical holiness, and ever experience how-far from stunting the flourishing development of your economic, cultural and civic vitality -it will be in its own way the unfailing safeguard of that vitality. Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton was born, brought up and educated in New York in the Episcopalian Communion. To this Church goes the merit of having awakened and fostered the religious sense and Christian sentiment which in the young Elizabeth were naturally predisposed to the most spontaneous and lively manifestations. We willingly recognize this merit, and, knowing well how much it cost Elizabeth to pass over to the Catholic Church, we admire her courage for adhering to the religious truth and divine reality which were manifested to her therein. And we are likewise pleased to see that from this same adherence to the Catholic Church she experienced great peace and security, and found it natural to preserve all the good things which her membership in the fervent Episcopalian community had taught her, in so many beautiful expressions, especially of religious piety, and that she was always faithful in her esteem and affection for those from whom her Catholic profession had sadly separated her.

· Born in New York City, August 28, 1774

· Married William Magee Seton, January 25, 1794; mother of 5 children; William died in Pisa, December 27, 1803

· Received into the Catholic Church, Ash Wednesday, March 14, 1805, by Father Matthew O’Brien in St. Peter’s Church, Barclay Street, NY

· Formation of the new community in 1808, first Religious Congregation of women in the USA

· Died at Emmitsburg, Maryland, January 4, 1821

· Canonized on September 14, 1975 by Pope Paul VI

Her devotion to the Eucharist, sacred Scripture, especially the 23rd Psalm, and the Blessed Virgin Mary are hallmarks of Seton’s spiritual life. Following the example of Saints Vincent de Paul and Louis de Marillac hers was an apostolic spirituality.

The Church says officially: In Emmitsburg, Maryland, USA, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton who, after having been widowed, professed the Catholic Faith and worked competently at educating girls and feeding impoverished children as a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Joseph, which she founded. (Martyrologium Romanum, 2005)