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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…
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