June 24 is the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, coming exactly half a year from Christmas. Interestingly, the Church never lets three months go by without some form of baby news: Christmas (Dec. 25), Annunciation (March 25), St. John the Baptist\u2019s Nativity (June 24), the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Sept. 8), and the Immaculate Conception (Dec. 8).<\/p>\n
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s life and insights help us take a deeper look at these birthdays\u2014and our own.<\/p>\n
First, it\u2019s practically automatic, but it\u2019s meaningful all the same: Births bring joy\u2014even in tough times.<\/b><\/p>\n
Speaking of John in the Gospel in the Vigil Mass for the day, the angel tells Zechariah, \u201cAnd you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, mother of five, knew the sweetness of babies\u2019 births. As a mother she reveled in her babies, telling her sister-in-law, Rebecca, that she would kiss her baby Richard, \u201cyour little angel,\u201d a thousand times, and sharing \u201ca little curl of his beautiful light hair cap.\u201d<\/p>\n
She called her daughter Catherine \u201ca little cherub\u201d and said, \u201ca more peaceable serene little being you cannot imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sometimes, though, it isn\u2019t obvious how the birth of a child can bring joy. In fact, children can bring pain, difficulty, and heartache.<\/p>\n
In 1796, not long into their marriage, Elizabeth and her husband faced deep financial difficulties. \u201cIn these hours of sorrow, I have not only my poor husband\u2019s spirits to support but also to sustain myself expecting every day the birth of another little dependent in addition to our son and daughter,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
As little Anna and William met their new brother Richard, the future saint noted that her husband \u201chas come through each severe trial and anguish of heart as our heavy loss\u201d only \u201cby referring everything to him who gives us power to support those evils which every human being must endure their proportion of.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is what babies are for us: A reminder that we are co-creators with God, in whose image and likeness every child is made.<\/p>\n
Second, birthdays don\u2019t just mark our physical life\u2019s beginning. They bring to mind our vocation, also.<\/b><\/p>\n
The first reading in the Mass for the day couldn\u2019t be clearer. \u201cThe LORD called me from birth, from my mother\u2019s womb he gave me my name. He made of me a sharp-edged sword,\u201d it says (Isaiah 49:1b-2a).<\/p>\n
Of course, it goes on to prophesy further about St. John the Baptist\u2019s unique, exalted vocation, but each of us is also born with a vocation.<\/p>\n
The Psalm for the Nativity of St. John the Baptist is a favorite. Think of it as a birthday song we can all sing to ourselves. \u201cI praise you for I am wonderfully made. Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother\u2019s womb. I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made\u201d (Psalm 139:14).<\/p>\n
Elizabeth shared her version of this song when she turned 33, and remarked in a letter, \u201cMy happy birthday\u2014the first in course of thirty-three years in which the Soul has sincerely rejoiced that it exists for Immortality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mother Seton celebrated birthdays that way. She summed up the meaning of her daughter Anna Maria\u2019s eighth birthday, saying, \u201cIt is your birthday\u2014the day that I first held you in my arms. May almighty God bless you my child and make you his child forever. Your mother\u2019s soul prays to him to lead you through this world.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it is because of this that your birthday can also remind you of your death.<\/p>\n
In early America, an age when medicine was still primitive and hygiene was not advanced, sickness, disease and death were a constant part of life. One needn\u2019t go far out of one\u2019s way to see the strong connection between birth, vocation, and death.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth, after having lost two of her children, wrote an ode for Catherine Seton\u2019s 19th birthday. \u201cWhose birthday is this, my dear Savior? It is my darling one\u2019s, my child\u2019s, my friend\u2019s\u2026 Whose birthday did you say? Of the redeemed soul so dear, the dearest portion of myself on earth to be a dearer portion still in heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n
As spiritual guide to Mother Seton, Father Simon Brute wrote to her, \u201cevery moment your birth … his death\u2014our Eternity!\u201d<\/p>\n
But, a birthday is a call not just to an individual, but to a whole community.<\/b><\/p>\n
The Gospel describes John\u2019s birthday like this. \u201cWhen the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child, she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her, and they rejoiced with her\u201d (Luke 1:57-58).<\/p>\n
A birthday is the day that a person enters the world absolutely at the mercy of the elements, and under the care of other human beings, unable to survive without others. Parents take care of this new person, and a community helps take care of them.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Ann Seton\u2019s friend, Catherine Mann Dupleix, whom she affectionately called Due, helped her after the birth of her fifth baby. Elizabeth wrote later, \u201cThis is your sweet Rebecca\u2019s birthday\u2014memorable day to us both. What did you not suffer for me, my Due, on that day! You were the first person who cherished and nursed the dear little being, and many, many days and nights of watching and anxiety you gave us after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But for some, there is more than one kind of giving birth.<\/b><\/p>\n
The Old Testament reading describing the vocation of John says, \u201cIt is too little, he says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel; I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth\u201d (Isaiah 49:6).<\/p>\n
St. John the Baptist was called to be a leader of many. In the same way, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton wasn\u2019t just a mother of five. She was Mother of many\u2014with more being added to that number to this day. She had lived with and for children before becoming a religious, and she continued to do so after founding a community of religious women to whom she was also truly \u201cMother.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1810, she wrote that she was \u201cat peace \u2026 in the midst of fifty children.\u201d<\/p>\n
As St. John the Baptist was the forerunner of Christ, her babies were the forerunners to a spiritual motherhood\u2014a motherhood that now includes each of us. \u201cI am a mother encompassed by many children of different dispositions\u2026 bound to love, instruct, and provide for the happiness of all.\u201d<\/p>\n
TOM HOOPES<\/strong>,\u00a0autor m\u00e1s reciente de El Rosario de San Juan Pablo II, es escritor residente en el Benedictine College de Kansas, donde imparte clases. Es anfitri\u00f3n de La extraordinaria Stor<\/a>y podcast sobre la vida de Cristo. Su libro Lo que dijo realmente el Papa Francisco<\/a> ya est\u00e1 disponible en Audible<\/a>. Antiguo reportero en la zona de Washington, D.C., fue secretario de prensa del Presidente del Comit\u00e9 de Medios y Arbitrios de la C\u00e1mara de Representantes de los Estados Unidos y pas\u00f3 10 a\u00f1os como editor del peri\u00f3dico National Catholic Register y de la revista Faith & Family. Su trabajo aparece con frecuencia en el Register, Aleteia y Catholic Digest. Vive en Atchison, Kansas, con su esposa, April, y tiene nueve hijos.<\/em>Imagen: Dominio p\u00fablico<\/em><\/p>\n