Reflection for the Feast of St. Elizabeth Seton, January 4
by Sr. Regina Bechtle, SC

I’ve been thinking a lot about making connections these past few weeks because of Christmas and all the ways we try to connect – cards, calls, gifts, collecting for those in need. Elizabeth Seton, the woman whose feast we celebrate on January 4, the courageous woman who began the Sisters of Charity in America, lived for connections.

We want to connect with her, across the 200+ years that separate her life from ours – to connect with her along these streets of the city that she knew so well, the streets where she lived and walked: Greenwich Avenue, Astor Place, Broadway, Bleeker and State and Wall Streets. She was at home in lower New York, for sure.

We want to connect with her in her passion for children: she had 5 of her own, and later in her life she wrote to her dear friend Julia Scott: “I think had it pleased God I could have been a grandmother I would have been more tied to this life by a second generation than a first.”

She didn’t live to see any of her grandchildren, but sadly, she did live through the death of two of her own children. Perhaps some of our readers can connect with her in that heartbreaking experience. 

We want to connect with her passion for the poor. We know that she was a founding member of the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children, the first benevolent society in the U.S. managed by women.   

We want to connect with her “New York chutzpah”, her “courage and dynamic spunk,” as Sr. Katie Aucoin, one of our Sisters, says.

Elizabeth wants to connect with us, too, for we are part of her extended family, whether as a vowed member or associate of the Sisters of Charity, a relative, a volunteer, a benefactor, a friend.

She wants to connect with us, in our everyday lives, in our struggles, our family situations, our financial worries. She knew them too: as her husband faced bankruptcy at the end of 1799, she wrote: “Hope must go on with us, for it will not do for hearts and fortunes to sink together.”

She wants to connect with us in our work and our ministry. She understands the burdens and the rewards of wholeheartedly committing ourselves to care and hope and love, against all odds. As she wrote to her friend Julia: “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.

Connections – belonging…
Elizabeth longed to belong. Her mother died when she was 3. She was raised by a stepmother who didn’t give her the love she craved. Her doctor-father whom she adored was often away traveling, or busy in his role as health officer of the port of New York.

Friendship and relationship were at the core of Elizabeth’s being, but she often felt estranged and excluded from the family circle. Even before her father died in 1801, Elizabeth often was a virtual orphan.  But this experience, instead of turning her in on herself, propelled her outward. She kept creating ways to expand the circle of belonging, to create a home where all are welcome.   

After her conversion to Catholicism, her relatives ostracized her. She who depended so much on family ties, on deep friendships and relationships, found that she was on the outside, on the margins.

She found comfort in her faith, in her children, and in the friendship of two of her sisters-in-law, Rebecca and Cecilia Seton. She mentored them, encouraging them to treat others with love, even family members who criticized and shunned them.

As Elizabeth began her new community of Sisters of Charity in Emmitsburg, she made a point of welcoming girls who were not Catholic to her school.

She created circles of welcome and belonging wherever she went.

What word would Elizabeth, this woman of connection, leave with us? She would invite us, I believe, to expand the circle of belonging. This is the event we celebrate at Christmas, the incredible mystery we call the Incarnation: God’s desire to expand the circle of divine life by becoming one of us, and so showing us that we belong, we have a home in God’s home.

In the Gospel Jesus speaks about this connection, this belonging. “Come and see,” Jesus replies, to those who want to know where he lives (John 1:39) He invites them to be at home in his neighborhood, in God’s world. And by doing this, he shows that those who are able to make their home a place of belonging for others, are those who truly belong to God.

Elizabeth would say to us today: Find your comfort, find your home, by making a home for others. Isn’t that what this Center, this community of Charity, is all about? Be passionate about connection, about belonging. And you will be at home, with our dear sister and friend Elizabeth Seton, at home in the house of belonging, where God truly lives.