A Saint for Everything & Everyone
(To see the earlier Blogs, Page Down)
It’s a good thing, healthy for the soul, to discover that in the earliest recorded history there is someone who can relate to what you are dealing with. How did they do it, with less knowledge and fewer resources, most facing trials beyond anything we know? How did they maintain faith, courage, many to lay down their life for what they believed? Saints can give us encouragement, a role model, so to speak. They can help us live more virtuous lives while surrounded by evil.
January has some interesting Saint Days. St. Anthony, St. Agnes, St. Francis de Sales, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. John Bosco, are all commemorated in January.
Saturday, January 4, is the saint day for Elizabeth Ann Seton. She’s interesting because she is important to the American Catholic Church. Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born in 1774, two years before the birth of the nation. She was born into high society in New York, and raised an Episcopalian, learning prayer, scripture, examination of conscience, and service to others. Her mother died in 1777, followed by her sister in 1778. She married a wealthy businessman at age 19. She and her husband, William Seton, had five children. When they’d been married ten years, Williams father died and his six younger siblings joined the family of Elizabeth and William. William became ill and the family moved to Italy in hopes of a cure for his TB. He died at age 30, leaving her a penniless widow with eleven children in a foreign land. Two of her young daughters soon died.
Elizabeth witnessed Catholicity in action among her friends in Italy who steered her to their Church for support. Three points lead to her resulting conversion: she believed in the Real Presence, she had a devotion to the Blessed Mother who was great comfort to her, and the history of the Catholic Church leading back to the apostles and to Jesus.
Returning to the U.S., her faith gave her the strength and courage to open a school as a means to support her children. After struggling with rejection from friends and family when she became a Catholic in 1805, Elizabeth opened the first free Catholic School in America, and founded the Sisters of Charity in 1809, to run the school. This was the first native American religious community for women. She moved forward with success to open more schools and more communities.
Her life developed from ordinary goodness to supernatural sanctity in her short lifetime. She died January 4, 1821, and is buried in the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, MD, the first American saint buried in the U.S. She was beatified in 1963, by Pope John XXIII, and canonized in 1975, by Pope Paul VI. Thousands of letters express the magnitude and magnificence of miracles attributed to her life. We know her as the patron of in-law troubles, death of children, death of parents, and Catholic education. See? I told you, a saint for everything and everyone! Check them out; there’s a patron for you.