S.Elizabeth Ann dan B.Angela dr Foligno

 Hari ini adalah hari biasa setelah Penampakan Tuhan.
Gereja mengajak kita semua untuk ikut berbahagia bersama para suster dari Camelites Missionaries (CM-Kongregari Suster-suster Misionaries Karmelit) yang memperingati hari orang kudus mereka yaitu S.Elizabeth Anna Seton
Selain itu, ada Beata Angela dari Foligno yang diperingati oleh Keluarga besar Fransiskan.
Kedua orang kudus ini memiliki panggilan yang istimewa.


S.Elizabeth Anna Seton lahir dalam lingkungan  Gereja Episcopal. Usia 19 tahun menikah dan memiliki 5 anak. badai hidup menerpa mereka sehingga suami S.Elizabeth meninggal dalam sakit. Elizabeth lalu menjadi seorang Katolik dan mulai mendirikan berbagai karya sosial. Sampai akhirnya ia mendirikan sebuah komunitas relijius diluar biara. Ia berdevosi secara khusus pada Sakramen Maha Kudus dan Bunda Maria. Ia meninggal pada usia 46 karena tuberkolosis.



S. Elizabeth Anna Bayley Seton
Elizabeth Ann Seton was born on August 28, 1774 to Richard Bayley and Catherine Charlton of New York City.^[1] She was raised in the Episcopal Church. Her mother, daughter of an Episcopal priest, died when Elizabeth was three. At the age of nineteen, she married William Magee Seton, a wealthy businessman. Five children were born to the marriage, Anna Maria, William, Richard, Catherine, and Rebecca.

Her home in Manhattan, New York City, was located at the site on which church now stands in her honor, with the formerly matching building at the right (7 State Street) forming part of the shrine

Her husband's business lost several ships at sea and the family ended up bankrupt. Soon after, her husband became ill and his doctors sent him to Italy (Livorno) for the warmer climate, with Elizabeth and their eldest daughter accompanying him. In Italy, they were held in quarantine, during which time her husband died. She spent time with a wealthy family where she was exposed to Catholicism. Two years later, after her return to the United States, she converted to Roman Catholicism, on March 14, 1805 and was received into the Church by the pastor of St. Peter's Church, the only Catholic church open in the city at that time due to the recent lifting of anti-Catholic laws under the new Republic. A year later, she was confirmed by the first bishop of Baltimore, John Carroll.
To support her children, she started a hospital, but it failed due to the anti-Catholic sentiment of the day.^{[citation needed]} By chance, around this time Mrs. Seton met a visiting priest, the Abbé Louis Dubourg, S.S., who was a member of the French emigré community of Sulpician Fathers. The priests had taken refuge in the United States from the religious persecution of the Reign of Terror in France, and were in the process of establishing the first Catholic seminary for the United States, in keeping with the goals of their Order. For several years, Dubourg had envisioned a religious school to meet the educational needs of the small Catholic community in the nation.
In 1809, after some trying and difficult years, Elizabeth accepted the invitation of support the Sulpicians made to her and moved to Emmitsburg, Maryland. A year later she established the Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School, a school dedicated to the education of Catholic girls, due to the financial support of Samuel Sutherland Cooper. He was a wealthy convert and seminarian at the newly established Mount St. Mary's College and Seminary, begun by the Abbé (later Bishop) John Dubois, S.S., and the Sulpicians.
Eventually, Elizabeth was able to establish a religious community in Emmitsburg, Maryland dedicated to the care of the children of the poor. It was the first religious community of non-cloistered Religious Sisters to be founded in the United States, and its school was the first free Catholic school in America. The order was called the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph.
The remainder of Elizabeth's life was spent in leading and developing the new congregation. Today, six separate religious communities trace their roots to the humble beginnings of the Sisters of Charity in Emmitsburg, Maryland. In addition to the original community of Sisters at Emmitsburg (though now part of an older institute), they are based in New York City, Cincinnati, Ohio, Halifax, N.S., Convent Station, New Jersey and Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
St. Joseph's Academy eventually developed into Saint Joseph College, which closed in 1973. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) purchased the buildings and land of Saint Joseph College in 1979 and it is now the site of the National Emergency Training Center (NETC) housing the Emergency Management Institute, the United States Fire Administration and the National Fire Academy.
Elizabeth was described as a charming and cultured lady. Her connections to New York society and the accompanying social pressures to leave the new life she had created for herself did not deter her from embracing her religious vocation and charitable mission. She established St. Joseph's Academy and Free School in order to educate young girls to live by religious values. The greatest difficulties she faced were actually internal, stemming from misunderstandings, interpersonal conflicts, and the deaths of two daughters, other loved ones, and young sisters in community. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 46 in 1821 in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Today, her remains are entombed in the Basilica that bears her name: the Basilica of the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton.
Dedicated to following the will of God, Elizabeth Ann had a deep devotion to the Eucharist, Sacred Scripture and the Virgin Mary. The 23rd Psalm was her favorite prayer throughout her life. She was a woman of prayer and service who embraced the apostolic spirituality of Saint Louise de Marillac and Saint Vincent de Paul. It had been her original intention—as well as of the Sulpician Fathers who guided them—to join the Daughters of Charity founded by these saints, but the embargo of France due to the Napoleonic Wars prevented this connection. It was only decades later, in 1850, that the Emmitsburg community took the steps to merge with the Daughters, and become their American branch, as their foundress had envisioned.

"We must pray literally without ceasing—without ceasing—in every occurrence and employment of our lives . . . that prayer of the heart which is independent of place or situation, or which is rather a habit of lifting up the heart to God as in a constant communication with Him." Elizabeth Ann Seton.


Beata Angela Blessed the Soul
In the plaid of great mystics which stud the history of the church, Angela shines forth with a unique splendor because of the intensity of her experience, the depth of her concepts, and the bold vividness of her expression". The external history of this woman, a lay woman, mother, widow and literary figure (she was later declared Mistress of theologians) is limited lo very little, and not entirely reliable information. She was born in Foligno around 1248, twenty-two years after the death of St. Francis of Assisi. Thanks lo the lands and palaces her family owned in and outside the city walls, she lived her youth in a rich and comfortable atmosphere sustained by the affection of her mother who adored her. We do not know about her family or her father and from this it can be surmised that she was orphaned at an early age. Lella (as she was called familiarly at home) was a beautiful, intelligent, willful and rich girl, an explosive combination for a medieval woman or for a woman in our times. She herself would confess this later: "You should know, that for in whole lifetime I sought in every way how) I could be adored and honored. This thirst for adulation and her incessant search for life vanities soon drew her away from practicing religion and perhaps even from faith. Not even her marriage at an early age lo a local country gentleman and the children to who in she gave birth soon after succeeded in bringing her back lo the straight and narrow path. Despite the bad habits that were perhaps overly consolidated, Angela succeeded nonetheless in finding a positive answer to the failure of her life thanks also lo the extraordinary events that took place in those years in Foligno (the dreadful earthquakes of 1279 and 1282, a disastrous flood, and the war with Perugia) which deeply disturbed her fellow-citizens, some of whom felt the impelling need for a stricter behavior in life. Angela was especially influenced by the truly extraordinary example of Pietro Crisci, called 'Pietruccio', her fellow citizen, who sold all his huge patrimony and distributed it to the poor in order lo lead a life of strict ascesis and prayer. She, who initially ridiculed him, was later struck by his spiritual serenity and felt attracted to imitate him. Presumably in 1285, after a period of mundane and carefree life, she under-went a profound change which would gradually lead her lo a very lofty spiritual perfection. Being deeply attracted by Francis of Assisi's ideal, in 1291 she joined the Third Order, aided by the Franciscan friars of the nearby convent and especially by one of them, Friar A(rnaldo), who was also her cousin. He heard her first confession which marked the beginning of her new life, he again led her along the way of perfection and recorded her visions in a book. Angela died in 1309 comforted by many disciples for whom years beforehand she had instituted a "Cenacle" of spiritual life and social action. Her body is venerated in the church of St. Francis in Foligno.

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