Pray with us

This is the greatest action we can take in addressing the issues we face with our children's Catholic education.  Below are the daily prayers we are using to gain the intercession of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and St. Catherine of Siena, the patron saints we've selected to help with this cause.  We invite you to select one or both of these prayers for a 9-day novena.

Novena to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

O Father, the first rule of our dear Savior's life was to do Your Will. Let His Will of the present moment be the first rule of our daily life and work, with no other desire but for its most full and complete accomplishment. Help us to follow it faithfully, so that doing what You wish we will be pleasing to You, especially regarding this intention I bring before you now...(Make your request)...Amen.

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be...   [Pray for nine consecutive days]

Novena to St. Catherine of Siena

Heavenly Father, your glory is in your saints. We praise your glory in the life of the admirable St. Catherine of Siena, virgin and doctor of the Church. Her whole life was a noble sacrifice inspired by an ardent love of Jesus, your unblemished Lamb. In troubled times she strenuously upheld the rights of His beloved spouse, The Church. Father, honor her merits and hear her prayers for each of us, and for our whole parish family dedicated to her. Help us to pass unscathed through the corruption of this world, and to remain unshakably faithful to the church in word, deed, and example. Help us always to see in the Vicar of Christ an anchor in the storms of life, and a beacon of light to the harbor of your Love, in this dark night of your times and men's souls. Grant also to each of us our special petition . . . (pause to pray for your own intentions). We ask this through Jesus, your Son, in the bond of the Holy Spirit. Amen.   [Pray for nine consecutive days]

About these Saints

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton was the first saint who was born in the United States of America. She was beatified in 1963 and declared a saint in 1975. Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton's feast day is January 4. She is a patron saint of children near death and persons rejected for their Catholic faith.

Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born on August 28, 1775, in New York City to Richard Bayley, the anatomy professor at Columbia, and his wife, Catherine Charlton, daughter of an Anglican minister. The mother died three years later. Mr. Bayley not only taught at the university, but took charge of his daughter's education. Elizabeth was well-read, but her favorite book was always the Bible.

In 1794, Elizabeth married William Seton and the two enjoyed much prosperity and happiness in their marriage's early years. Their years of trial started in 1798, when William's father passed away, leaving the young Setons not only the family's thriving import business, but also William's seven half-brothers and sisters to care for. William's business and health both failed. Leaving four of their five children in the States with William's sister, Rebecca, the Seton couple went to Italy where the family had business associates. Hoping for reversals in business and health, the couple were disappointed to obtain neither. Mr. Seton passed away of tuberculosis in 1803. Elizabeth and her daughter delayed in returning to the United States until the following summer because of their own health problems.

While in Italy, Elizabeth was grateful for the hospitality and care that her Catholic friends and neighbors offered and she began to learn about the Catholic faith. Because of the loss of her own mother, Elizabeth found particular comfort in the teachings about the motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Elizabeth and her youngest daughter rejoined their family in the United States in the summer of 1804, and Elizabeth joined the Catholic Church in 1805 in St. Peters Church, Barclay St., New York. She did this despite her need for financial support from her family as she was a young widow with five children of her own and other relatives to care for. She knew that support from her family would be less than forthcoming upon her conversion.  Elizabeth tried to start a Catholic school in New York City with friends, but the effort was not a success. They were condemned in the community as "proselytizers."

After a few years of searching for a place to serve in the Church and to provide for her family, Elizabeth was encouraged to move to Baltimore, Maryland, to start a school. With two other young women, she started the first Catholic school in the United States. On March 25, 1809, she took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and began to be called Mother Seton.

Elizabeth and the two other young women attracted others to their work and began a Sisterhood (Sisters of Charity in the U.S.) based on the Rule of St. Vincent de Paul for the Daughters of Charity in France. By 1818, they still maintained the original school, but had added another school and two orphanages to their work. Elizabeth suffered with illness during the last three years of her life and passed away in 1821 in Maryland.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton is credited with starting the parochial system in the United States and today six orders of sisters trace their roots to her work. She did this while raising her five children. Quite an accomplishment!!!

St. Catherine of Siena

She was the youngest but one of a very large family. Her father, Giacomo di Benincasa, was a dyer; her mother, Lapa, the daughter of a local poet. They belonged to the lower middle-class faction of tradesmen and petty notaries, known as "the Party of the Twelve", which between one revolution and another ruled the Republic of Siena from 1355 to 1368. From her earliest childhood Catherine began to see visions and to practice extreme austerities.

At the age of seven she consecrated her virginity to Christ; in her sixteenth year she took the habit of the Dominican Tertiaries, and renewed the life of the anchorites of the desert in a little room in her father's house. After three years of celestial visitations and familiar conversation with Christ, she underwent the mystical experience known as the "spiritual espousals", probably during the carnival of 1366. She now rejoined her family, began to tend the sick, especially those afflicted with the most repulsive diseases, to serve the poor, and to labor for the conversion of sinners. Though always suffering terrible physical pain, living for long intervals on practically no food save the Blessed Sacrament, she was ever radiantly happy and full of practical wisdom no less than the highest spiritual insight.

All her contemporaries bear witness to her extraordinary personal charm, which prevailed over the continual persecution to which she was subjected even by the friars of her own order and by her sisters in religion. She began to gather disciples round her, both men and women, who formed a wonderful spiritual fellowship, united to her by the bonds of mystical love. During the summer of 1370 she received a series of special manifestations of Divine mysteries, which culminated in a prolonged trance, a kind of mystical death, in which she had a vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, and heard a Divine command to leave her cell and enter the public life of the world.

She began to dispatch letters to men and women in every condition of life, entered into correspondence with the princes and republics of Italy, was consulted by the papal legates about the affairs of the Church, and set herself to heal the wounds of her native land by staying the fury of civil war and the ravages of faction. She implored the pope, Gregory XI, to leave Avignon, to reform the clergy and the administration of the Papal States, and ardently threw herself into his design for a crusade, in the hopes of uniting the powers of Christendom against the infidels, and restoring peace to Italy by delivering her from the wandering companies of mercenary soldiers. While at Pisa, on the fourth Sunday of Lent, 1375, she received the Stigmata, although, at her special prayer, the marks did not appear outwardly in her body while she lived.

In the meanwhile the Great Schism had broken out in the Church. From the outset Catherine enthusiastically adhered to the Roman claimant, Urban VI, who in November, 1378, summoned her to Rome. In the Eternal City she spent what remained of her life, working strenuously for the reformation of the Church, serving the destitute and afflicted, and dispatching eloquent letters in behalf of Urban to high and low in all directions.

Her strength was rapidly being consumed; she besought her Divine Bridegroom to let her bear the punishment for all the sins of the world, and to receive the sacrifice of her body for the unity and renovation of the Church; at last it seemed to her that the Bark of Peter was laid upon her shoulders, and that it was crushing her to death with its weight. After a prolonged and mysterious agony of three months, endured by her with supreme exultation and delight, from Sexagesima Sunday until the Sunday before the Ascension, she died. Her last political work, accomplished practically from her death-bed, was the reconciliation of Pope Urban VI with the Roman Republic (1380).