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Learning to Hope in (2023) 2025 with St. Elizabeth Anne Seton

andreabearauthor

Recently I came across an article I wrote in 2023 about St. Elizabeth Anne Seton. It was about grief and hope for the future. I had forgotten about this article, but after rereading it, the words and message seemed almost identical two years later. This was right around the time when children were slowly returning to school after Covid and many people had a grim feel for the future. While Covid seems to have slowed, the effects of Covid remain. Yet because of this, I have decided to repost this and modify to fit 2025. And since this happens to be the Jubilee year as indicated by Pope Francis, it seems even more fitting that we are encouraged to look ahead.


Here is the original article from Queen of Peace Media, but I have modified below to fit our 2025 current events.


Below is the new and revised version.


Learning to  Hope in  2025  with St. Elizabeth Anne Seton. By Andrea Bear

As the new year begins, many people lean into 2025 with caution. There’s no doubt the past few years have been a challenge from lock downs, sicknesses, death, to wars and a poor economy. It’s becoming harder and harder for people to feel optimistic.


So how can we trust 2025 will be any better?


In all honesty, there’s no certainty the future will be. That might seem pessimistic, but if we look from the lens of our faith, God doesn’t promise us an easy life, rather He offers hope to lean on Him. Losing my dad last year, reminded me of that very lesson. Life will not be easy. My dad's life, these past few years were a struggle, both for him(his health) and for me as I watched his struggle from the sidelines. But it taught me a great deal. And the people who helped me understand this was through the Catholic Saints.


If we look at the lives of Saints, we acknowledge God uses suffering and hard times as a way to bring about goodness and peace.


We must often draw the comparison between time and eternity. This is the remedy of all our troubles. How small will the present moment appear when we enter that great ocean.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

 

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American born Saint, understood this well as her life was full of hardship and suffering, yet she learned joy through her walk with God. As the patron saint of widows, she experienced much grief, having lost her husband early in their marriage, her mother when she was a child, then later suffered through the fate of seeing her oldest and youngest of five children die.  And if death wasn’t the only hardship, she endured financial and social grievances.  Born into a prominent well-to-do Episcopalian family, she was surrounded by affluence until her husband’s mercantilist business took some hits. In 1803, she and her husband William  Seton went to Italy to help him with his diagnosis of tuberculosis,  but while there he died shortly after arriving. Having to quarantine for a period, her husband’s Italian business partners introduced her to the sacraments of Catholicism and she found a profound solace in the Eucharist. A year after returning to New York, she converted to the Catholic faith. But when discovering this news, her Episcopalian community and friends abandoned her.  Despite all of her losses and setbacks, her faith remained strong, even though widowed and penniless her future seemed dim. Yet she accepted the truth that all who follow and grow in  Christ are called to suffer. “


We know certainly that our God calls us to a holy life. We know that he gives us every grace, every abundant grace; and though we are so weak of ourselves, this grace is able to carry us through every obstacle and difficulty. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton


Pope Francis has made this year a Jubilee year of hope.  Hope is the opposite of despair. We recognize just as St. Elizabeth there will always be suffering, there will always be sorrow. But our hope is placed in God’s goodness. The blessings we find in the midst of the hardship and the promise of an eternity remind us that suffering is temporary. It is not forever.

Suffering allows us to gain access to a life of beauty. As I watched my dad suffer the past few years, I realized his suffering is no longer, and yet he taught me so many beautiful lessons of love, forgiveness, hope and strength. I might not have learned these lessons had I/he not endured those hardships. His humility grew as a result of his disease. All of these virtues are what help us grow closer to God and prepare us for heaven.  Remember God  gives us the rainbow but we must first experience the storm.

 

As we look to 2025, we need to acknowledge that there is no certainty of an easy future. Does that mean I suspect 2025 will be hard and we shouldn’t have hope? Absolutely not. There are joyous moments to be had and we pray it will get better, but like Elizabeth, we must recognize that our life here is temporary. The only way to draw closer to God is to accept the struggle and see the beauty that is buried within. Fortunately for Elizabeth, she did not look at her suffering as a punishment nor did she look at her struggles as solitary. She fully trusted that these struggles were part of God’s divine plan and He would see her through them, which made her ability to cope and accept them with more comfort and ease.


Just like my dad,  had St. Elizabeth not undergone hard times she would not have produced many fruits out of her suffering.  After her conversion and exile from her Anglican neighbors, she was encouraged to move to Baltimore at the suggestion of several priests. There she started the first women’s religious order in the United States called the Daughters of Charity. She would also go on to form the first Catholic school in the United States. God used her suffering to bring more blessings and allowed others to draw closer to Him through her work. Had she resorted to her own plan and not trusted in God, who knows how many souls would have missed the blessings received through Elizabeth’s ministry.


Looking into the future, we can learn from her example and hopefully my story with my dad has inspired you.  Contemplate how the past few years have helped you depend more on God. Even if you don’t see a connection in your struggle, how has it provided more compassion for others, more charity as the result of your experiences? If you see the connection, how has the struggle put before you helped you grow in your faith?


Faith lifts the soul, Hope supports it, Experience says it must and Love says...let it be!- St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.


As we move into 2025 , think about how God  has used those moments to bring you closer to him.  If you are still facing challenges, maybe its time to try a new approach. Trust in him. What have you got to lose?

 

Love, Andrea

 

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