Recommended Book: First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians - Kindle Edition (get Kindle app for phone) (paid link)

Ecclesiastically Approved

Lord God, you blessed Elizabeth Ann Seton with gifts of grace as wife and mother, educator and foundress, so that she might spend her life in service to your people.

Through her example and prayers, may we learn to express our love for you in love for our fellow men and women.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Litany to Saint Elizabeth Seton

Elizabeth, Loving Daughter
Encourage in all children obedience and love

Elizabeth, Troubled Teenager
Speak to today's confused, sometimes abused young people

Elizabeth, Faithful Wife
Grant gifts of love and generosity to all spouses

Elizabeth, Caring Mother
Share your mother's heart with all parents

Elizabeth, Grieving Widow
Look with compassion on all bereaved wives

Elizabeth, Loyal Friend
Teach us to share friendship generously

Elizabeth, Heroic Searcher of Truth
Guide all who, with fear and doubt, seek the way

Elizabeth, Courageous Convert
Strengthen the newly baptized as they embrace the faith

Elizabeth, Sorrowing Mother
Console those parents suffering the loss of a child

Elizabeth, Steadfast Religious
Inspire young women to follow in your path

Elizabeth, a Woman for All Women
Bestow your charism of love and service on all women today

M. Irene Fugazy, S.C.
Sisters of Charity, Mount St. Vincent, New York

Prayer by St. Elizabeth Ann

Our Father, you would not willingly call on us to suffer. You say all things work together for our good if we are faithful to You. Therefore, if You ordain it: through disappointment and poverty, sickness and pain, even shame and contempt and calumny, You will support us with the consolation of Your Grace and compensate us for any temporal suffering by the possession of that peace which the world can neither give nor take away.

The Expectant Mother's Prayer

O God our Father, through the Blessed Virgin Mary you have glorified motherhood in the virgin birth of Your Son, Jesus Christ, and You have raised up as an example to wives and mothers Your servant, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. Grant me, I pray You, the grace to imitate her by accepting as Your charge and as an heir to heaven the child that is to be born of me. Bless, dear Lord, this coming event with safety both to my child and to myself.

I also pray that the noble life of Mother Seton may always be a model to mothers.

The prayer so often on her lips will be always mind. With all my heart I repeat it:

"May the most high, the most just and the most holy Will of God be praised, adored and loved." Amen.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774-1821), was canonized September 14, 1975. Prayers reprinted with the permission on April 11, 1997 of the Administrator of the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, 333 South Seton Avenue, Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727-9298.