American Saint Quotes

“Amid all the fuss over miracles, the fund-raising, and the Church's politics, one thing stands out: Elizabeth's spirituality. Her deep awareness of, and profound connection with, her God. 'Sorrow is the seed of holiness,' said the Italian cardinal who acted as devil's advocate. Somehow the sorrows and trials of Elizabeth's life, and the grace with which she met them, nourished a spirituality within her that eventually stretched beyond ordinary limits. She went from having it all to losing it all to stretching to a core understanding of what 'all' could mean-a bedrock human question, whether one thinks to ask it or not, within a religious context or not, at the safe distance of history or not.”
― Joan Barthel, American Saint: The Life of Elizabeth Seton

“But it's possible to be wry and somewhat skeptical about the tedious, expensive process of saint-making without losing sight of the person at the center. Without saints, sanctity might be considered only as an abstraction. Saints help us see how a spiritual life can be lived in many different ways and under many different social and historical circumstances.”
― Joan Barthel, American Saint: The Life of Elizabeth Seton

“Notes pinned to babies left on church doorsteps by mothers who couldn't take care of them are preserved in the archives of the Society of Charity of New York, at the Foundling Hospital.”
― Joan Barthel, American Saint: The Life of Elizabeth Seton

“I was laughing with God,' Elizabeth said in her Italian journal. In the years since, she had come to know the peace that comes from finding God everywhere, in everything, in everyone. As Gandhi would one day put it, 'If you don't find God in next person you meet, it's a waste of time to look further.”
― Joan Barthel, American Saint: The Life of Elizabeth Seton

“Her grandson Robert Seton bears out her stark intention, 'She occasionally had her fits of melancholy and one in particular, when about eighteen she so far forgot herself at a time of unusual despondency as to entertain the wicked purpose of self-destruction.”
― Joan Barthel, American Saint: The Life of Elizabeth Seton

“By the end of the afternoon, this small group of women in a parlor had set up the first benevolent organization in the United States to be managed by women, the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children....While many applauded the women's work, others were outraged. Shockingly, scandalously, these women were calling meetings, negotiating with government officials, incorporating their group so they could legally own property and engage in fund-raising, and going around the city without a male escort. One Episcopal clergyman publicly denounced them for laying aside 'delicacy and decorum, which can never be violated without the more corrupting effects on themselves and public morals.”
― Joan Barthel, American Saint: The Life of Elizabeth Seton

“Thy will. The will of God. The phrase resounds, again and again, in Elizabeth's letters and prayers. Such a simple phrase, such historical ramifications: the belief that the divine right of kings, their right to rule, came directly from the will of God. In Christian theology, God's will is not what God wants-a good God does not want war-and not guidance for personal decisions-such as deciding whom to marry, but a relationship with God, acceptance of a God who does not preordain events, not a God of explanations, but a God beyond human knowledge or even imagination. For Elizabeth, the will of God meant being aware of God's presence in her life, not only when she was praying or reading her Bible but every day, in every happening, in every circumstance.”
― Joan Barthel, American Saint: The Life of Elizabeth Seton