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Vigils Reading – St Elizabeth Ann Seton
January 4, 2023
God In Our World4
A Meditation by St Elizabeth Ann Seton
How happy should we be if every morning our eyes were open to this truth – the invisible presence of God – if we saw by faith, with the eyes of our soul everywhere within and without us the three persons of the adorable Trinity with their divine attributes! What would be the dangers and events of this life to us in His presence to whom earth and hell are subjected? We know that when anything most excellent and admirable attracts our sight, the mind is lost in it, and the attention so absorbed that it is difficult for us to draw away from it; every feeling and thought is taken up by the object so admirable.
What is most striking in this is that when we sin, we not only sin in the presence of God, but in God Himself, for since He is the source of motion and life, it follows that the sinner uses the concurrence of God Himself to offend and sin against Him, turning the means of life: health, time, the powers of nature and space to this horrid perversion and abuse against their Almighty giver. This explains to us in some degree the eternity of hell torments, for the truth is undoubted that God sees each one of us as precisely as if we were alone in the wide universe. What a deep thought that God Himself is the very life of our being, that He dwells in the soul of each one of us as in His own element!
Oh, my God, my blindness has been truly great – to have thought of You so little through my life, though living wholly in You. Every word I have uttered has been known to You; every action seen by You, every secret thought before You. Yet, I have thought, acted and spoken as if You neither heard nor saw me – without respect or love for You or remembrance that the soul You have given me was formed only for You and has the power of enjoying You every moment of my life.
4 Sister Marie Celeste, SC. Elizabeth Ann Seton: A Woman of Prayer – Meditations, Reflections, Prayers and Poems Taken From Her Writings. New York: Alba House, 1993. 69-70.