CCD Students Visit the National Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes and National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg

On Sunday, September 29,  OLOL's 5th-8th grade CCD students visited these shrines in Emmitsburg, Maryland.  It was a spritual and life-changing encounter.  On the bus ride up, they watched movies about St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and St. Bernadette.   Upon arrival, they had a pizza lunch in the seminarians' dining room at Mount Saint Mary's University and Seminary.  Seminarian Andrew d'Andrea, who is preparing for the priesthood in the Arlington Diocese, talked about the history of Mount St. Mary's and how another saint and martyr, Blessed Stanley Rother (https://archokc.org/stanleyrother), helped build the steps they would climb up the mountain to the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes.  After climbing the steps and entering the grotto's sanctuary, Andrew talked about the apparitions of Mary - who introduced herself to Bernadette as the "Immaculate Conception" - in 1858 in Lourdes, France. 

Afterwards, the group bussed to the Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton for a tour of where the first American-born saint started the first Catholic school for girls - Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School - in 1810.  Seton also started the Sisters of Charity.   The students had a guided tour of Seton's convent and school.  They saw the bed from where Seton, as she was dying from tuberculosis, devoutly watched Mass.  From that bed, Seton's soul went straight to Heaven.  After the tour,  Father Edlefsen celebrated Mass for the OLOL pilgrims in the church.  In the homily, he read excerpts from a letter that Seton wrote to her new community of missionary sisters.

What did Seton say in that letter?  Here is a passage:

"What are our real trials?   By what name shall we call them?  One cuts herself out a cross of pride; another, one of causeless discontent; another, one of restless impatience or peevish fretfulness.  But is the whole any better than child's play if looked at with the common eye of faith?   Yet we know certainly that our God calls us to a holy life, that he give us every grace, every abundent grace; and though we are so weak of ourselves, this grace is able to carry us through every obstacle and difficulty."