The staff of the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton is united with you in prayer through the daily novena.  We would like to share with you some of the expressions of devotion and gratitude to our beloved saint.

    ...My wife Mary and I have been devoted to Mother Seton for 15 years.  We have visited the Shrine three to five times each year.  We have always found it to be a great source of spiritual renewal and comfort.
    On February 14 of this year Mary had a brain aneurysm complicated by a mild heart attack and pneumonia.  In the first week of hospitalization, two doctors told me Mary was on the edge.
    That first week as I stood by Mary's bedside, I visualized I was in the Basilica at Mother Seton's side altar and repeated over and over this simple prayer:

"Mother Seton please put your arms around Mary. Hold her, comfort her, caress her, love her and present her to Jesus— please ask Jesus if it be his will to give Mary back to me."

    ...in the first week it was the prayers to Mother Seton that sustained me.
    On May 29 Mary was released from the Kessler Rehabilitation Institute in our area. She will probably be close to 100%...   

 I do not care who believes me... I believe that Mother Seton picked Mary up and interceded with Jesus for Mary's life.
    I can only end by saying our dream is to once again walk into the Basilica and thank Mother Seton more directly.

EWM

    Earlier today, I had the absolute pleasure of visiting the shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton for the first time.  I wish I could put into words the feelings and awe that I experienced when I entered the Basilica.
    The unmistakable presence of God was both humbling and exhilarating at the same time.  The memory and emotions of praying at the altar of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton will remain with me forever.
    I plan on visiting the shrine many more times.

AW

    I am writing in regard to two healings through the intercession of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.
    In April of this year, I was admitted to our hospital for seven days with the diagnosis of pneumonia... Chest x-rays were done and read by a radiologist.  My report came back with a suspicious looking lesion on 

my left lung and therefore a cat scan was ordered...
    While in the hospital, our priest gave me a relic of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton... I wore the relic continuously along with saying the Novena to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton frequently through the day.  I was to leave for Bismarck to go to a lung specialist.  Our P.A. said, "let's take an x-ray before you go because everybody has been praying for you."  An x-ray was done and it was clean.  The trip to the specialist was canceled.  Praise the Lord!
    The other healing through St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was my husband.  Throughout the winter he had been lying on the couch not feeling well, much coughing, color gray, short of breath, and losing weight...
    Chest x-rays were done and the lower one-fourth of his lungs did not show, which usually indicates fluid, but there was also a spot the size of a golf ball.  I immediately pinned the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton relic on him.  We were sent to the lung specialist where two quarts of fluid were removed, and the golf ball sized spot was not there anymore.  "Praise and thank you" for the intercession of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.  The tests on the fluid taken from the lungs were free from cancer cells...

MB

Continued from Page 2
 
Richard arrived in Leghorn in December 1817, "all good resolves to succeed and be good," and did stay in Leghorn until July 1820.  Unfortunately he did not give satisfaction.  When Richard sailed for home Antonio had to tell Elizabeth that he was neither willing nor able to work steadily at the counting house and his moral conduct was not above reproach.  He arrived in Norfolk and immediately wrote to ask his mother for money.  She raised what he needed and had the joy of seeing him in Emmitsburg in December shortly before she died.
    After his return from Italy, William accepted a commission as a naval midshipman.  He served from 1817 to 1834.  Richard decided to try to follow in his footsteps.  In June 1822 he became a Captain's Clerk on the USS Cyane.  He served aboard that vessel until April 1823 when the Cyane put in at Cape Mesurado, Liberia.  Letters between Captain Robert Spence and Rev. Jehudi Ashman, an Episcopal clergyman, Director of the Liberia 

Colony indicate that Rev. Ashman was in ill health and needed an assistant.  Captain Spence was persuaded to detach Richard and "recommended that he be appointed Agent at Cape Mesurado either by the U.S. Government or by the American Colonization Society."  By the time the society took up the matter Richard was dead of a fever which had killed a number of his shipmates.  Rev. Jehudi Ashman wrote to Catherine Seton after Richard's death to tell her that Richard contracted the fever which killed him while nursing Rev. Ashman back to health.  He died aboard the USS Oswego on June 26, 1823 and was buried at sea.  His obituary in a Boston paper reported the death of  "Richard B. Seton, Esq. of Baltimore, late U.S. assistant agent at Monrovia."
    William and Catherine were left to mourn not only their parents, but Anna, Rebecca, and Richard as well.  The litany in heaven was complete after William died in 1868 and Catherine in 1891.

Sister Eleanor Casey, D.C.
Emmitsburg Province

[Page 1] [Page 2] [Page 3] [Page 4]