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One day around 1780, an Episcopalian stepmother opened her King James Bible and introduced her stepdaughter to Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want… .” Though the two were not close and the woman was preoccupied with many cares, the moment was extraordinarily significant.
Charlotte Bayley would have been astonished to learn that she was sparking a deep love of God’s word in six-year-old Elizabeth. The child was drawn immediately to the psalm; it became her lifelong favorite.
The girl grew up to become St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first native-born North American to be canonized by the Catholic Church. And Psalm 23 turned out to be prophetic of her life. Elizabeth would indeed travel through the “valley of the shadow of death” (verse 4), and her journey would lead her to the “table” of the Lord (verse 5).
Alone in the World. Elizabeth’s birth coincided with the birth of a nation: She came into the world in New York City in 1774, two years before the Declaration of Independence. She lost her mother when she was only three, and her younger sister the following year, only four months after her father had remarried. Their deaths filled little Betty with wistful longing. As her sister lay in her coffin, the child sat on a step, looked up at the clouds, and thought, “Kitty is gone up to heaven. I wish I could go up too with Mamma.”
Elizabeth’s loneliness was not dispelled by her stepmother, who took dutiful care of her and her older sister but was quickly consumed by child-bearing—six children in eight years. Nor did her father fill the void. Though he cared about his family, Richard Bayley’s first love was medicine. A skilled and dedicated physician, he worked long hours and occasionally went off to study abroad. As New York’s first public health officer, Dr. Bayley labored on behalf of the many immigrants pouring into the city. On the home front, though, his absence eventually cost him his marriage.
As Charlotte struggled to cope, Elizabeth and her sister were shunted around to live with their father’s relatives. Frictions escalated as Elizabeth reached her teens. Her journal alludes to “family disagreement” and hostility. One cryptic entry may indicate she was so miserable that she once considered ending her life.
The “Dear Scriptures.” With her father so often unavailable, Elizabeth turned to God. One day when she was fourteen, she experienced a deep assurance of his love: “I thought at that time my father did not care for me. Well, God was my Father, my all. I prayed, sang hymns, cried, laughed in talking to myself of how far he could place me above all sorrow.”
Elizabeth continued this conversation with God by making daily time to meet him in Scripture. The Bible became her constant companion—her anchor, comfort, and guiding light. She read its books again and again, in rotation; its characters, stories, and language were soon familiar friends. She studied the “dear Scriptures” and copied excerpts of biblical commentaries into her notebooks. She made the Bible’s prayers her own.
As two surviving copies of her later Bibles attest, Elizabeth read with pen in hand. She underlined, made exclamation points and marginal notes, and left plenty of ink blots. Clearly, her Scripture reading and reflecting was a living conversation. Always, it was where she encountered “my Father and my God—who by the consoling voice of his word, builds up the soul in hope.”
Elizabeth’s daily patterns of prayer and Scripture-reading continued after her 1794 marriage to William Seton. He belonged to a prominent New York family with a successful shipping business. It was a happy season of love, new life, and prosperity. The Setons were blessed with children—three girls and two boys. They had a fine house, rubbed shoulders with Roosevelts and Vanderbilts, and danced at a ball honoring George Washington.
Elizabeth introduced her children to the Bible and even managed to communicate her enthusiasm to William, who was not especially religious. Her love of God and Scripture grew under the direction of John Henry Hobart, a gifted Episcopalian pastor whose sermons she found “a foretaste of heaven.” When William, too, responded to the preacher’s presentation of the gospel and joined the church, Elizabeth was ecstatic.
In the Dark Valley. The Setons had need of a common faith in Christ. In 1798, on his father’s death, William had to assume responsibility for seven younger siblings, as well as the struggling family business. Financial ruin followed in 1800, as the firm declared bankruptcy and the Setons lost their home. Even more troubling, William’s health was failing.
Hoping that a more healthful climate would stave off his tuberculosis, the couple placed four of their children with relatives and sailed for Italy with eight-year-old Anna Maria. Their destination was the port city of Livorno, home of William’s friends and business partners, Filippo and Antonio Filicchi.
Since yellow fever had been reported in New York, however, the Setons were put in quarantine when their ship reached harbor. Their living conditions—in a gloomy, drafty building with damp walls and a cold brick floor—only hastened William’s death. In her sorrow, Elizabeth drew strength from the Bible and commentaries she had brought along. Very naturally, without ever being superspiritual, she gave the family’s confinement the tone of a soberly merry thirty-day retreat.
19 November 1803—10 o’clock at night: “On ship mattresses spread on this cool floor, my William and Anna are sound asleep… . My eyes smart so much with wind and crying and fatigue, that I must close them and lift up my heart… . God is with us, and if sufferings abound in us, his consolations also greatly abound… . What shall we say? This is the hour of trial. The Lord supports and strengthens us in it.”
29 November: “After breakfast, read our Psalms and the 35th chapter of Isaiah to my William with so much delight that it made us all merry… . Sang hymns, read promises to William shivering under the bedclothes and felt that God is with us and that he is our all. The fever comes hot, the bed shakes even with his breathing—my God, my Father!”
1 December: “Often when he hears me repeat the psalms of triumph in God and read St. Paul’s faith in Christ with my whole soul, it so enlivens his spirit that he makes them also his own, and all our sorrows are turned into joy.”
Despite her sorrow, Elizabeth came to count this month of intense prayer and Bible reading as among “the most precious hours of my life.” It surely had a transforming effect on William, whose faith and love of Scripture flourished. A few days before his death on December 27, 1803, Elizabeth wrote: “He very often says that this is the period of his life, whether he lives or dies, he will always consider as blessed, the only time he has not lost.”
A Challenge and a Hope. Awaiting passage back to America, Elizabeth and Anna Maria spent the next months as guests of the Filicchis, who were devout Catholics. The grieving widow found comfort in visiting and praying with them at various churches. Then one day at Mass, Elizabeth learned about the Catholic belief in Christ’s real presence on the altar. The idea was so unexpected and awesome that she put her face in her hands and cried.
As a fervent Episcopalian, Elizabeth already had a deep reverence for the symbolism of bread and wine. She had hungered for her church’s every “Sacrament Sunday,” when communion was distributed as a commemoration and a pledge of eternal life. Though she was not yet ready to believe in the Real Presence, the thought of it stirred her deeply.
“How happy we would be if we believed what these dear souls believe,” she wrote her sister-in-law, “that they possess God in the sacrament and that he remains in their churches and is carried to them when they are sick!” And addressing God: “How happy would I be if I could find you in the church as they do. How many things I would say to you of the sorrows of my heart and the sins of my life!”
Gradually, Elizabeth was drawn to the Catholic Church, but Scripture proved less reassuring once she returned to New York and tried to decide whether to follow through and convert. She studied the “Exposition of Catholic Doctrine” that Antonio Filicchi had drawn up, replete with Scripture references. She studied Rev. Hobart’s seventy-five-page rebuttal.
“For the Sake of Your Word.” Her head spinning, Elizabeth found that Scripture was no longer a delight but a source of pain. “Every page I open confounds my poor soul, I fall on my knees and blinded with tears cry out to God to teach me.” The best she could manage was to pray the Penitential Psalms and Psalm 119.
In the end, she took Jesus at his word. Not without humor, she imagined herself and her children standing before him at the moment of judgment; there, she would explain her decision to become a Catholic as a response to his assurance that he would always be with the church he had founded (Matthew 28:20): “And if he says, ‘You fools, I did not mean that,’ we will say, … ‘It is your word which misled us. Therefore please to pardon your poor fools for your own word’s sake.’”
By the time Elizabeth made her First Communion, on March 25, 1805, she no longer felt caught between Scripture and the church. Indeed, it was with the exultant first verse of Psalm 68 that she welcomed Jesus into her heart: “Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered!” It was “a triumph of joy and gladness that the deliverer was come.”
Fittingly enough, Antonio marked Elizabeth’s entry into the church by presenting her with a Catholic Bible.
Two Tables, One Banquet. Elizabeth Seton went on—through more dark valleys—to become an educator and to found a religious community. All this activity flowed from her relationship with the Lord, now nourished by both Scripture and the Eucharist. On January 4, 1821, after one last ardent Communion, she died with her Bible in her hand.
Looking back, you could say that Elizabeth’s life followed the sequence of the Mass itself—a liturgy of the Word, followed by a liturgy of the Eucharist. The Catechism says that “the Eucharistic table set for us is the table both of the Word of God and of the Body of the Lord” (1346). Elizabeth Seton discovered first one, then the other. Her appreciation of both tables encourages us to savor both Scripture and the Bread of Life. n
Louise Perrotta is an editor for The Word Among Us. For more about Elizabeth Seton: Elizabeth Seton: Selected Writings (Paulist Press); The Soul of Mrs. Seton (Ignatius Press); Praying with Elizabeth Seton (The Word Among Us).
I appreciate the biographical sketch of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton because it encourages me to look into the Scriptures for guidance while reminding me of the trials and challenges of the saints.
I have been so inspired by this reading. I to have such a love for both scripture and the Eucharist. I came into the “Fullness of Truth” in 2005 and it was a process over a long period of time. One of the teachings I love is the communion with the Saints. Even as a protestant I knew in my heart this to be true.