On SEPTEMBER 14, the day of the canonization of Elizabeth Ann Seton, the magazine section of the New York Times featured an article entitled �Elizabeth Seton, a Saint for An Reasons� The title expresses well both the rich personality of the saint and the relevance of her holy life and example. At the time of the canonization, the religious and secular press published many articles examining the many and varied facets of the life and character of this extraordinary woman, showing that she is indeed a saint for all reasons. There is hardly a contemporary subject American Catholic piety, parochial schools, ecumenism, the status of the American family -that cannot be illumined in some way by the radiant example and message of St. Elizabeth Ann. There yet remains to be done an in-depth study of the many aspects of this woman�s profound holiness and great accomplishments. In the space of this short article, we hope to examine the place of the Eucharist in the spiritual development and holiness of Elizabeth Seton.

Great Influence of Episcopal Background

Formerly, there has perhaps been a temptation to trace Elizabeth Seton�s growth in holiness from the time of her reception into the Catholic Church, abstracting to a large extent from her childhood and early adulthood in the Episcopal Church. In an ecumenically sensitive age, it is necessary to recognize the deeply spiritual influences that shaped her early religious formation. Although the was never anything but a thoroughly wholesome child, Elizabeth was given to feelings of loneliness and introspection, This fact, combined with her warm affectionate nature, caused her to respond eagerly to things spiritual and to draw progressively closer to God as the unchanging Source and Goal of her life. What�s more, her love of nature and her meditative disposition contributed greatly to her spiritual growth.

Due acknowledgment must be made to those who instructed Elizabeth in the Christian faith in her formative years. They inculcated in her a love of the Scriptures that never waned. The Bible became an integral part of her spiritual life, and it forever remained her comfort and joy. From its papa she instructed her children and converted her husband to a more genuinely Christian outlook on life. In later years the Scriptures were the constant source of her conferences to her religious sisters.

As a young mother, Elizabeth Seton participated in the formation of an association for the help of the widowed and orphaned. The association, founded in 1797 and caned the Widows� Society in New York, encouraged its members not only to provide financial help from their own resources and from solicited public contributions, but also to visit the poor and look after their physical needs. Besides her work in the-society, in which she held the office of treasurer for seven years, Elizabeth responded selflessly to the charitable projects of the Rev. Henry Hobart, the Episcopal rector of Trinity Church and the man who was a primary shaping influence in Elizabeth�s spiritual life.

So striking was her charitable work that her friends affectionately called her a Protestant Sister of Charity.

It is important to note that Elizabeth�s faith and zeal for charity had as their support and nourishment her fidelity to Sunday worship, especially when the service was enlivened with the genuinely inspiring words and person of the Rev. Hobart. On one occasion she scolded her deter Rebecca for departing from a pact that they had made for the good of their souls to observe Sacrament Sunday, the day on which they approached the communion table, as a kind of day of retreat. She writes to her sister: �The misfortune of the afternoon will, I hope, be a lesson for life.... that you should never violate the strict rule, not to leave home on any persuasion on Sacrament Sunday, and to say openly to whoever may request it that it is your rule. It can never be a breach of civility or seem unkind . . if you say it with a firmness of one who has been at His table who refreshes and strengthens the soul in well-doing.�

Her Devotion to Episcopalian Eucharistic Service

Her intense devotion to the Episcopalian Eucharistic Service was unmistakable. In a written nets she witnessed to what the sacrament meant to her when she referred to it as �the seal of that Covenant which I trust will not be broken in life nor in death, in time nor in eternity.�

This was the fervor of Christian faith and love of the Eucharistic Memorial that Elizabeth Seton brought to her reception into the Catholic Church. And it is not surprising that it is the Eucharist that played a key role in the reflections and events that led her, finally, to embrace the Catholic faith.

The turning point in Elizabeth Seton�s spiritual journey came when, after the death of her husband in Leghorn, Italy, she remained there as the guest of Antonio and Amabilia Filicchi, close friends of the Seton family. The Filicchis exercised an important influence in leading Elizabeth to the decision that changed so completely the course of her life.

During a visit to Florence, arranged by the Filicchis to distract Elizabeth from the sorrow over the recent lost of her husband, she was deeply impressed by the grandeur of the churches and the Eucharistic piety of the faithful. The fact that Catholics could frequent and worship in their churches deny especially delighted her. She wrote to her sister Rebecca: �How often you and I used to give the sigh, and you would press your arm In mine of a Sunday evening and say, �No more until next Sunday� as we turned from the church door which closed on us (unless a prayer day was given out in the week). Well, here they go to church at four every morning, if they please. And you know how much we were laughed at for running from one church to the other, Sacrament Sundays, that we might receive as often as we could. Well, here people that love God and live a good, regular life, can go (though many do not do it), yet they can go every day.�

As events proved, it was Catholic faith in the Blessed Sacrament that gave impetus to Elizabeth�s religious thinking and decision. While attending Mass on Candlemas Day with Amabilia Filicchi, she was fold of the Catholic belief In the Real Presence of Christ on the altar. Elizabeth, touched with deep emotion, put her face in her hands and cried. Shortly before leaving Italy, she described her new religious impressions and experiences for Rebecca in these words: �How happy would we be, if we believed what these dear souls believe: that they possess God in the Sacrament and that he remains in that churches and is carried to them when they are sick! Oh, my! when they can carry the Blessed Sacrament under my window, while I feel the full loneliness and sadness of my cog I cannot stop the tears at the thought: My God! how happy would I be, even so far away from all so dear, if I could find you in the church as they do (for there is a chapel in the very house of Mr. P.), how many things I would say to You of the sorrows of my heart and the sins of my life! The other day, In a moment of excessive distress, I fell on my knees without thinking when the Blessed Sacrament passed by, and cried in an agony to God to bless ma if he was there-that my whole soul desired only him.� �At Last God is Mine ...�

A year later, back in her native New York, the desire of Elizabeth�s whole soul was fulfilled. With hesitation dispelled and doubts resolved, Be embraced the Catholic faith on March 14, 1805, in the presence of Fr. Matthew O�Brien and Antonio Filicchi. During the following reeks she went to deny Mass and has lab us telling descriptions of what transpired in ha soul. She says of Mass on the Feast of the Annunciation: �I shall be made one with him who said, �Unless you at My Flesh and drink My Blood you can have no part with Me� I count the days and hours. Yet a few more of hope and expectation, and then -How bright the sun, these morning walks of preparation!� Of March 25^th she writes: �At last Amabilia, at last, God is mine and I am his! Now, let all go it round�I have received him. The awful impressions of the evening before, fears of not having done all to prepare, and yet even the transports of confidence and hope in his goodness. My God! To the last breath of life I will not remember this night of watching for morning dawn; the fearful beating heart so pressing to be gone; the long walk to town; but every step counted, nearer that street, then nearer that tabernacle, then nearer the moment he would enter the poor, poor little dwelling so all his own.�

The Eucharist was fully her sustenance and joy during the difficult months that followed her conversion, when she had to endure the rebukes and questionings of many of her undoubtedly wed-intentioned relatives and friends. Writing to Antonio, she says: �Saturday last I had a very painful conversation (certainly for the last time, with Mr. Hobart), but was repaid fully a thousand times on Sunday morning by my dear Master at Communion, and my Faith, if possible, more strengthened and decided than if it had not been attacked.� And on another occasion: �From circumstances of particular impressions on my mind, I have been obliged to watch a so carefully and keep so near the Fountainhead, that I have been three times to Communion since you left me, not to influence my faith, but to keep peace in my soul which without this heavenly resource would be agitated and discomposed by the frequent assaults, which, in my immediate situation, are naturally made on my feelings.� In some of the most beautiful lines she ever penned, Elizabeth writes to Amabilia: �Truly, it is a greater mystery how souls for whom he has done such incomprehensible things should shut themselves out by incredulity from his best of an gifts, this Divine Sacrifice and Holy Eucharist �I see more mystery in this blindness of redeemed souls than in my of the mysteries proposed In his Church. With what grateful and unspeakable joy and reverence I adore the deny renewed virtue of that Word by which we possess him in our blessed Mass and Communion!�

Such was the Eucharistic faith that steadily nourished in the soul of Elizabeth through the remaining phases of her life, both as a laywoman and as a sister in the community which she herself founded, the American Sisters of Charity. Time and again she revealed her profound love of the Blessed Sacrament a love she sought to inculcate in her sisters. From the very beginning of her community�s existence, Mother Seton placed Mass, Communion, and the tabernacled Presence at the forefront of its spiritual life.

Marveling at God�s Divine Nearness

Mother Seton�s room was situated directly oh the chapel and she never ceased to marvel at the divine nearness in the Holy Eucharist: �I sit or stand opposite his tabernacle all day, and keep

the heart to it as the needle to the pole, and at night still more, even to folly; since I have little right to be so near to him.� On another occasion, reflecting on God�s choice of her, she exclaimed: �O my God! My heart trembles and hints before him here in his little sacristy close to his tabernacle, while I ask him,

�How am I here? -I taken, they left.� � The great central love of Mother Seton was movingly attested to by Father Gabriel Brute, her beloved spiritual director; when, after her death, he wrote of her: �May my heart, my soul know the grace and prove the grace of the Holy Sacrament of my Jesus as Mother did! Will I ever forget that face, fired with love, melted in tears at his approach in Communion? To the last, exhausted death on that face, as he came-it was still inflamed, and blushed In ardent love, desire inexpressible of eternal union with him.�

It was indeed the Holy Eucharist that was her strongest support in the last months of her life, marked as they were by painful spiritual trials and physical illness. On one occasion, Elizabeth was seized during the night with a burning thirst. The Eucharistic discipline of the time-a discipline most of us still remember-forbade the taking of water from midnight before receiving Communion the following morning. All night long, time and again, she refused the water that would have brought her relief but at the same time would have prevented the receiving of her sacramental Lord.

On Saturday, December 30, 1820, Mother Seton received Viaticum from the hands of Father Brute The following day she shared in the usual Sunday Communion with her Sisters. In the early morning hours of the first day of the year 1821, a sister who was on watch at her bedside urged Elizabeth to take her medicine, but she gently pushed it aside, saying: �Never mind the drink. One Communion more�and then eternity.� The following morning�s Communion was in fact, as she correctly perceived, her last Communion on earth. In the early hours of January 4^th the soul of Elizabeth Seton was gathered to the Lord it had so vehemently loved and desired.

St. Elizabeth Seton did not write profound treatises or expound learned discourses on the mystery of the Holy Eucharist. What she teaches us about Eucharistic life and devotion is what she herself lived on a daily basis with enlightened faith, ardent longing, and intense piety�the formula for authentic Eucharistic life that remains valid for every age.

From the EUCHARISTIC magazine.

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