Abstract
Sung-Hae Kim describes how three key spiritual experiences in Elizabeth Seton’s life confirm her identity as a mystic according to William James’s four characteristics of the mystic state. These traits are ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, and passivity, and such experiences must lead to union with God. Elizabeth wrote about these experiences, which occurred when she was fourteen in New Rochelle, New York; twenty-nine in the lazaretto of Livorno, Italy; and sometime near her death at the age of forty-six in Emmitsburg. As Kim says, these “purify[ied] her ability to love, leading to serene peace and union with God and his creation.” They happened after periods of extreme stress and sadness and enabled Elizabeth to continue to follow or carry out God’s will. Nature played a great role in them, and Elizabeth also saw herself as part of nature, as part of God’s ordering of the universe. She described herself in three images, a coral, a rotten tree, and as part of a spider web of interdependent relationships. For the most part, Elizabeth was a kataphatic mystic, which is one who “ascribes positive attributes to God such as beauty, goodness, mercy, justice, and compassion.”