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January 4, 2019Make the Best of What Life Gives You.
On the Eleventh day of Christmas in the New Year, we celebrate the life of an extraordinary woman, Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, born in 1774, our first American Saint. At the age of three, she lost her mother, in 1794 at the age of 19, married William Magee Seton, a wealthy businessman with whom she had five children and was widowed when he died in 1803. She converted from the Episcopal church to Catholicism in 1805.
In all these challenges Elizabeth acted in ‘righteousness,’ of which the Scripture speaks today. She acted in the right way meeting every challenge with a strong faith in Christ. She could have easily been overwhelmed, paralyzed to act, instead she followed the guidance given to her and chose to act in Christ just as John the Baptist pointed his disciples to Jesus. She learned of the Catholic Church from the family who cared for her husband while they were in Italy, she accepted an invitation to move to Emmitsburg, MD, from a priest, and she took care of her own children by starting an orphanage and then gathering women to help her and founded the first American Congregation of religious women, the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph. Each of us faces our own challenges of loss, death, and responsibility. We can pray to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton to help us act rightly, accept the grace and guidance of God to do the right thing, and make the best for God of what life brings us.
