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The people of the Albany Diocese hold St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and the Daughters of Charity religious order she founded in high esteem. The good work the Daughters have done has earned them many admirers and influenced many lives.

It isn't unusual for the Daughters to produce extraordinary women, but it's rare for its more extraordinary members to come from the same family. But that was the case with my mother's sisters: Sisters Anna Marie and Serena Branson, DC, who profoundly influenced my life.

I, too, root my life in the Gospel. Following their lead, I work to end the death penalty, war, poverty and racism. To understand the depths of my aunts' influence upon me, however, you must know more about their astonishing lives.

The first woman to run a Catholic Charities agency, Sister Serena courted the powerful to help the powerless. She shook your hand with one hand and took your donation with the other.

Sister Serena started many innovative programs to help abused, disturbed and mentally challenged children. For instance, long before others recognized the need, Serena began a program to care for children born with HIV and addicted to crack cocaine.

Her prodigious fundraising skills and significant innovations made Sister Serena something of a legend among national colleagues. And in 2003, Catholic Charities USA bestowed Serena - then age 90 -with its highest honor, the Vision Award.

Sister Anna Marie spent her last 20 years as a missionary in Bolivia. She devoted her life to street children who fended for themselves because their families couldn't afford to raise them. She started a home for boys, and educated them.

She slept in a supply closet, but was always mindful the people whom she loved lived in mud huts, subsisted on $100 annually and foraged through the trash for something to eat.

These conditions shocked seasoned social worker Sister Serena when she visited her sister in 1981.

Sister Anna Marie was so devoted to these indigenous people that she often neglected her own health and only begrudgingly returned to the U.S. for overdue medical attention.

In February 1982, she returned to Albany to receive care for an aneurysm. Before she left Bolivia, another sister said to her, "Oh, Sister, we're going to miss you so much." Anticipating that her happy reunion with the Lord was coming soon, Anna Marie replied, "I can hardly wait."

She was prescient. Just 64, she died soon after her return to Albany.

Her life embodied Pope Paul VI's words: "To do swiftly, to do perfectly, to do joyfully all you ask of me now, even if it surpasses my strength and demands my life."

I can't measure up to the legendary Sister Serena and the holy Sister Anna Marie, but I try to be as savvy as Serena and as compassionate as Anna Marie. That's how the Kingdom of God is spread: One generation stands on another's shoulders to remove the barriers that block its coming.

The spirit's movement through St. Elizabeth Ann Seton to my aunts and to me links us with countless others the saint inspired to be "Gospel people." That's what I celebrate each January 4.

(Mr. Byrd works for Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington.)

(12/23/10)[[In-content Ad]]

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