It’s hard to remain open when we have a broken heart. Amid loss - whether that’s the death of a loved one, an abrupt change in circumstances, or a bad breakup - our instinct can be to close our hearts, in an attempt to soften the suffering and protect ourselves from more of the same. We may feel, in our brokenness, that we are no longer able to give of ourselves, to God or to others. Suffering can feel like an invitation to turn inwards and close down. As we enter into a state of shielding our hearts, we may also become less open to the voice of God, who is calling us through the barricades.
And yet, as followers of Jesus, we are continually invited to remain open to the Lord, especially in times of suffering. An open heart is an inroad for the Father’s healing love and a conduit for the voice of God to reach and transform us. Our broken hearts may beckon us to close down, but the Father beckons us in another direction, saying, “do not be afraid. . . For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand” (Isaiah 41: 10,13).
But then again, this whole idea of staying open, even amid our pain, can seem idealistic, unattainable in our weakness and grief. What does this actually look like? Who can help us with the process?
When it comes to keeping a broken heart open, and allowing God to work amid suffering, the life of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton has become an icon of inspiration for me. I only recently learned about the details of her life and I was shocked and inspired by how she had such greatness and openness of heart throughout tremendous and persistent suffering.
This is her story.
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was born in New York City in the 1700s where she grew up in a prominent Protestant family. As a child, Elizabeth’s mother died and her father remarried. Elizabeth and her sister were rejected by their new stepmother and this rejection corresponded with a period of depression that led young Elizabeth to consider suicide. She later wrote in her journal of her “praise and thanks of excessive joy not to have done the ‘horrid deed’.” At the age of 19, she met affluent businessman William Magee Seton and, in a time where many marriages were made for reasons of convenience and status, rather than love, Elizabeth and William fell deeply in love. They got married and proceeded to have five children over the next decade.
However, Elizabeth’s life continued to be marked by a succession of grave tragedies, early into her married life. First, her father-in-law died, leaving Elizabeth and William in charge of William’s seven half-siblings. Then, William died. After only a decade of marriage, Elizabeth was widowed with five children under the age of 8. In the decade after her beloved husband’s death she would also lose two of her daughters, Anna Maria and Rebecca, along with her best friend and sister-in-law, to tuberculosis.
Elizabeth, of all people, had reason to become a hardened woman. It could be seen as understandable for a woman in her circumstances to become closed off to others and closed off to God. And yet Elizabeth Ann Seton is an exemplar of open-hearted love and receptivity to the Lord amid the worst of times.
During these years of suffering she wrote the following words:
“But O my heavenly Father, I know that…contradictory events are permitted and guided by Your wisdom, which only is light. We are in darkness, and must be thankful that our knowledge is not wanted (needed) to perfect Your work and also keep in mind the infinite mercy, which in permitting the sufferings of the perishing body, has provided for our souls so large an opportunity of comfort and nourishment for our eternal life where we shall assuredly find that all things have worked together for our good-for our sure trust in you.” (Collected Writings Volume I, page 271)
The Lord permitted her heart to be broken many times over, and yet Elizabeth continued to invite our Lord into her brokenness. She placed her trust in the Lord, despite the confounding litany of tragedies that she faced.
Elizabeth didn’t just write of her trust in God; her life was an active witness to her continued openness to God and her capacity to love those around her with a great love.
When Elizabeth was 29, she traveled to Italy with her husband William and their oldest daughter, Anna Maria, in hopes that the warmer Italian climate would aid in the healing of William’s advancing tuberculosis. However, when the Setons arrived in Italy, the Italian authorities forced them to isolate in a cold, stone quarantine station, since they feared the Setons may have been carrying the then-dreaded yellow fever. In the primitive conditions of the quarantine station, William died just two days after Christmas in the country where he had come to seek healing.
Here was Elizabeth, a young widow, having just lost the love of her life, and separated from most of her children, in a country that was arguably instrumental in her husband’s death. Bitterness, doubt, hardness of heart, could have all been responses that Elizabeth chose. At the very least, it might’ve been expected that she would turn inwards and become focused on her own pain. And yet she remained open.
Even while grieving her husband, it was in Italy that Elizabeth, a life-long Episcopalian, discovered and began to embrace Catholicism. While waiting to return to America in the spring, Elizabeth was drawn to the Catholic teaching on Jesus in the Eucharist and she started her journey of formation to become a Catholic. Despite hostility from friends and family who didn’t want her to become Catholic, Elizabeth remained steadfast in her newfound love of the Catholic Church. She received her First Communion only a year and a few months after her husband passed away.
We could interpret Elizabeth’s remarkable tenacity as a result of grit and strong personality. But Elizabeth herself, in her extensive writings, attributed everything to the grace that the Lord gave her. Drawing from a life of deep prayer and devotion to the Eucharist, Elizabeth relied on God alone for her strength.
She wrote that “Confiding hope and consoling peace have attended my way through storms and dangers that must have terrified a soul whose rock is not Christ . . .” (Collected Writings Volume I, page 245).
She also wrote, “I am satisfied to sow in tears if I may reap in joy. And when all the wintry storms of time are past, we shall enjoy the delights of an eternal spring” (Collected Writings Volume I, page 335).
Elizabeth seemed to understand that she did not need to become self-reliant in her suffering, because Christ was her strength and heaven was her eternal home. Since she knew that Christ would tend to her wounds, she knew she was free to remain open. Her great loss was not a cause for despair, because she was confident that the forever joy of heaven was her ultimate end.
When we are experiencing heartbreak of any sort, the eyes of our soul can drift away from Jesus and our ultimate end in heaven. When this happens, we are able to ask Jesus to help us do the impossible: to keep our hearts available to love and to keep our eyes fixed on heaven. The despair that tempts us in suffering is no match for the grace that Jesus wants to pour into us. From her conversion to Catholicism and onwards, Elizabeth’s life continued to be a testament to all of this.
In the years after her husband’s death, and amid the subsequent deaths of two daughters and her best friend, Elizabeth founded an order of religious sisters—the American Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s—who were dedicated to the education and care of the poor and sick, and especially children. By 1821, when Elizabeth died of tuberculosis at the age of 46, the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph had 20 communities across America who were running tuition-free schools, orphanages, boarding schools, and hospitals.
She was an industrious and visionary leader who shared the love of Christ with thousands of suffering people in her lifetime, and yet she was also widely known to have been a committed mother, who regarded her children, her “five darlings,” as her foremost responsibility.
Perhaps this woman’s example seems lofty, an unattainable exception that doesn’t relate to you. Perhaps it seems impossible to have such a magnanimous vision for life, such an extraordinary openness to God, when opening your heart has only caused pain. Perhaps you feel like closed doors are all you can manage. Versions of these thoughts have pestered me as well.
I invite you to consider this: God has called all of us to “put out into the deep and let down [our] nets for a catch” (Luke 5:4). The greatness that we see shining through the lives of saints such as St. Elizabeth is a greatness that the Lord makes possible for all of us. Greatness will look different in each one of us, but nevertheless, God has crafted within each one of our hearts the capacity for his Great Adventure.
When we are confronted with immeasurable pain and brokenness, like St. Elizabeth was, it’s impossible to remain open on our own. St. Elizabeth was a woman of deep prayer and while a cursory review of her life may seem to indicate that she was busy working and mothering all day long, it was her prayer life and her connection to Jesus in the Eucharist that sustained her. Under the surface of her tremendous achievements and personal resilience was an utter reliance on Jesus.
If you feel your heart closing, amid whatever you’re going through, turn to Jesus. Of course we should be prudent about how we open ourselves to other human beings, but there is nothing to be lost from opening ourselves utterly, and in all circumstances, to Jesus. The capacity to remain open to Christ and to offer ourselves in love to others, despite our own pain, is a supernatural grace. Suffering does not need to make us self-inverted. The Lord can transform our suffering into a capacity for love that we can’t even imagine.
If you desire that, turn to Jesus. Receive him in the Eucharist, like St. Elizabeth. Commit to daily prayer, like St. Elizabeth. And even if it feels counterintuitive, turn yourself outwards in your pain and look for opportunities to love those around you. The Lord will care for your broken heart and you can’t even imagine the miracles he will work through you, despite all the odds. Do not be afraid; open your heart to Jesus. He is “holding your hand” (Isaiah 41: 13).
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, pray for us!