REFLECTIONS ON

ELIZABETH ANN BAYLEY SETON,

WIFE, MOTHER, FOUNDER & SAINT

as we Celebrate

THE BICENTENNIAL OF THE FOUNDING OF THE

SISTERS OF CHARITY

Regina Bechtle, SC

Whenever I am in this sacred space, this domus ecclesiae, as Fr. Peter Meehan, the pastor, likes to call it, I always feel that St. Elizabeth Seton is welcoming us into her home. Certainly, Elizabeth is a saint, but first she is a New Yorker who lived on this very spot for 2½ years in the early 1800’s, way before skyscrapers and airplanes and iPods. One recent writer reminds us that she was “intensely human,” and says that her holiness was rooted in her wholeness. Let’s take her off the pedestal, and remember that she was a wife and mother, a widow and working woman, a teacher and leader. Let’s claim her as a mother and sister to us all.

I’d like to speak about Elizabeth Seton today as a woman who knew her ABC’s, a woman who got down to basics. What were her ABC’s?

Adapting – Belonging – Caring

1. Adapting – Elizabeth often talked about “meeting your grace” and “responding to the grace of the moment.” Her words help us to deal with the constant change that is part of our lives, as it was part of her life. Some examples:

  -   She moved at least 3 times after her marriage in Jan. 1794 at her sister’s home on John St. When her Seton father-in-law died, leaving 7 children under the age of 18, Elizabeth and her husband moved into the Seton family home just down the street at 61 Stone Street. She lived there from Nov. 1798 until she moved to this site on State Street in May, 1801. When family needs changed, Elizabeth adapted.

  -   She was one of the founding members of an early benevolent society started in New York by Episcopalian women of means, on behalf of widows with children. Many of the poor widows were Irish immigrants. Elizabeth and her colleagues in the benevolent society didn’t just provide food, clothing, and firewood. They also arranged for the widows to get jobs such as washing, sewing and cleaning. They even petitioned the state legislature to authorize a lottery to raise money to build better housing for these poor women. Their work in the benevolent society was a breakthrough for women of Elizabeth’s day. She adapted; she met the grace of the moment.

  -   Financial worries – When William Seton’s business failed in the early 1800’s, they had to declare bankruptcy. From being a socialite, Elizabeth had to worry about money. During an especially hard stretch in 1800, Elizabeth wrote that she didn’t fear for herself, but she would “tremble at the hold these crosses take on William’s Spirits—for one entire week we wrote [business correspondence] till one and two in the morning.” Those long nights of work and worry took their toll on body as well as spirit. She adapted to a difficult and unforeseen situation.

  -   It was from this house that she left with her oldest daughter Anna Maria and her sick husband William on a sea voyage to Italy, desperately hoping that he would get better. When he died in Italy, Elizabeth’s world got turned upside down and she had to do some major adapting.  It led her and her children to a new life in Maryland, with new challenges and new opportunities. She met them all in the spirit of the Seton family motto:  “Hazard yet Forward” -- take a risk, keep moving forward.

  -   When she began the Sisters of Charity in 1809, Elizabeth shared with her Sisters her gift of flexibility, of meeting the grace of the moment, no matter what the moment brought. The first 3 Sisters that she sent back to New York City in August 1817 were educators, yet they found that their main work was to take care of orphaned immigrant girls and boys at the Roman Catholic Asylum on Prince Street. Then and now, there were lots of children who needed help offered with love. That marked the beginning of the mission of the Sisters of Charity to the poor of New York, a mission that has continued without interruption since then, a mission that lives on in each of you, as you never stop adapting and meeting the grace of each moment.

2. Belonging/befriending – Elizabeth Seton had a wide and expansive vision that allowed her to believe that there was room for all at God’s table. She would be so delighted with the motto of the Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center: “All are welcome.”

As a child of the Revolution, she learned how to bridge cultures, British and American. Her life’s journey led her to love and appreciate two expressions of religion: Episcopalian and Catholic. She called herself “a citizen of the world.”   The world and its affairs – wars, governments, the economy, the ups and downs of family and friends – all found a place in her letters and prayers.  She made others feel that they were welcome, that they belonged. But note that her commitment to belonging, to creating a home for others, came out of her own life struggles.

In New York, she moved in the highest social circles; she even counted Alexander Hamilton among her neighbors when she lived on Wall Street.  On her trip to Italy, when her sick husband died, she was on the receiving end of the kindness of near-strangers, the Filicchi family. They befriended the lonely widow and her young daughter, and showed them that they too could find a home in the Catholic Church.

Back home in NY, she felt like an outsider as she struggled with and eventually made her decision to go over to the Catholics. By doing so, she chose a lower social status. St. Peter’s Church on Barclay Street with its immigrant congregation was called a “horrid place of spitting and pushing”. Such a step was unthinkable to many of her family and friends, who turned their backs on her in disgust.

She determined to spend her life making a home for others, a home where ALL WERE WELCOME. It was her decision to open the school she began in Emmitsburg to non-Catholic and Catholic girls alike, even though her advisers disagreed with her. She taught the country children, blacks and whites, as well as daughters of the well to do. There was room in her heart for all.

She was a bridge builder, a crossover kind of person, like Saints Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac in 17^th cent France. She was a citizen of the world, committed to building a world, even in her own small corner of it, where everyone belonged, and all were welcome.

3. Caring – As she began her community of Sisters, she wrote: “To speak the joy of my soul at the prospect of being able to assist the poor, visit the sick, comfort the sorrowful, clothe little innocents, and teach them to love God!”  Compassion was at the heart of her service. For her and for us, service is about caring, especially for children.

In Jesus’ time, writers tell us, children were nobodies. They had no rights. If they weren’t wanted, they could be left to die. But Jesus opened his arms wide to them: “Let the little children come to me.”

Sr. Mary Irene & Sr. Teresa Vincent did the very same thing when they began the NY Foundling in 1869. They cared about the children whom others considered “nobodies.” And their legacy lives on in your caring hearts and hands and minds.

Elizabeth came in touch with all varieties of human suffering, both from her work in the Benevolent Society and during the summers she spent with her children on Staten Island, at the Quarantine Station where her father, Dr. Richard Bayley, worked. From the cottage near her father’s medical station in June, 1801, she saw a ship of Irish immigrants with a hundred sick passengers. She wrote about the babies that were dying because their mothers were too sick to nurse them, and said that she herself would gladly have shared her own mother’s milk with the sick children if her father had allowed it.

The harsh reality of the life of the poor was thus powerfully imprinted on her sensitive spirit. She was to know the pinch of poverty herself in the not-too-distant future. It shaped her life’s work and focused the mission of the Sisters of Charity, the religious community she began in Maryland in 1809. When she sent three of her sisters back to New York in 1817, it was to care for the orphaned children of Irish and other immigrants.

She thanked God that she could care for the sick, and wrote (1799), “I adore that Power that gives me [this] sacred charge [taking care of the sick].” Elizabeth truly regarded caring for others, especially children, as a sacred charge.

She knew passion and compassion, she knew tenderness and caring. Elizabeth Seton had a remarkable capacity to love, and the even more remarkable awareness that love of God did not cancel out love of one’s spouse, friends, and family.  All her love, her bottomless capacity for caring, came from the same one source, from her center, from the peace within. It came from the place where she knew without a doubt that God loved her and would never abandon her. She allowed her love to overflow in her caring service for her family, for her sisters in community, and for everyone whom their lives of service touched.

For all the times when we feel helpless in face of so much to do, so many to care for, and so little time and energy and resources, Elizabeth gives us wise advice: “Never be hurried by anything whatsoever; nothing can be more pressing than the necessity for your peace before God.  You will help others more by the peace and tranquility of your heart than by any eagerness or care you can bestow upon them.”

The words of the late Tim Russert could well have come from Elizabeth’s lips: “There is no exercise better for the human heart than bending down to pick up another person.”   In a world of ruptured connections, you – the direct descendants of Elizabeth Seton -- witness day after day, year after year, to the power of caring relationships.

As I conclude this reflection, please join me in a brief prayer:

Dear Elizabeth, woman who knew her ABC’s,

give us a large share of your motherly, sisterly heart,

your courageous spirit of adapting,

your wide and expansive sense of belonging,

your tender outpouring of care

for those you love, and those you hope to love.

May our love, like yours, extend to all the world,

of which we, like you, are citizens.  Amen.

July 31, 2009