Elizabeth Seton knew and savored the central doctrines of Christianity – Trinity, grace, incarnation, redemption – as she heard them preached by Episcopal ministers in Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Chapel, New York. She read the Scriptures diligently and lovingly, and prayed the Psalms so consistently that her own speech and writing are replete with Psalm verses. True to the Romantic spirit of her times (she read Rousseau), she loved nature, reverencing it as the precious gift of a generous Creator.

Ever a passionate soul, Elizabeth was very much in touch with her emotions but, as a true child of the Enlightenment, she sought to “subdue [her] feelings” to reason. Yet once she heard the thoughtful, heartfelt preaching of Rev. John Henry Hobart in Trinity Church, she was captivated. He engaged her mind and stirred her soul.

She was well-educated in the fashion of women of her day. Her father, a prominent physician, saw to it that she read widely in literature, history, even science, and learned music and French. Vol. IIIb of the Seton Collected Writings contains a chart of all the books to which Elizabeth refers in her letters, or which were found in her library. The chart runs to 26 pages! Another 10 pages lists religious books current in her lifetime, to which she probably had access.

She was intellectually curious and highly intelligent. As a devout Episcopalian, she read numerous commentaries on Scriptural texts. During her struggle over becoming a Catholic, she plowed through weighty apologetic treatises from both her Protestant and Catholic friends. During her life she read Thomas a Kempis’ Following of Christ, Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life, sermons of French spiritual writers Bossuet and Bordaloue, commentaries on the Scriptures, and writings of the early Church Fathers.

The French that she learned in her youth stood her in good stead as she began her religious community, the Sisters of Charity. She translated and adapted numerous spiritual, liturgical and apologetic works for the benefit of her sisters, including the life of St. Vincent de Paul, writings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Teresa of Avila, the early Church Fathers, and devotional classics. She produced the first known English translation of Gobillon’s life of St. Louise de Marillac. Her spiritual journey called forth and integrated her best resources of mind and heart.

Even as a Protestant, she was devoted to the Eucharist. Later she was drawn to Catholicism by its fullness of Eucharistic meaning. In this sacrament she encountered the true Body of Christ, Jesus’ intimate and impelling presence that she longed to receive and to embody.

In one of her articles my colleague Judith Metz describes Elizabeth Seton as an “animator of the American Church,” one whose gifts “resonated with American culture and the developing Catholic Church.” Many prominent figures in the young church and nation recognized her personal charisma, her exceptional talents and abilities, her deep and contagious desire to share with others the God she knew so intimately. By any standards of history and spirituality, this is no lightweight that we are talking about here!

Elizabeth Seton’s life offers a powerful story of grace unfolding and transformation happening. From the seeds of her life and writings, I would like to harvest three theological themes: memory, hope and presence. In these life experiences she found the seeds of transformation.

  • Memory moved her to forgiveness.
  • Hope moved her to imagination.
  • Relational presence moved her to ministerial fruitfulness.

And in memory, hope and presence, she met unique facets of the Holy Mystery we name God.