A little while after her mystical
betrothal Catherine again saw her Lord in a vision. It was the time of day when the good folk of
Siena gathered round the dinner table.
Jesus said: “You are to go and seat yourself at the table with your
family. Talk to them kindly, and then
come back here.”
When Catherine heard these words
she began to weep—she was so completely unprepared to leave her cell and her
life of contemplation and mix again with the people of the world. But Our Lord was firm:
“Go in peace. In this way you shall serve Me and become
more perfectly united to me through love of Me and your neighbor, and then you
will be able to rise even more quickly to heaven, as though on wings. Do you remember how the desire to bring souls
to salvation burned in you while you were still a child—and that you dreamed of
dressing yourself as a man and entering the order of the Friars Preachers to
work this end?”
Although Catherine was more than
willing to obey the will of God she tried to raise objections: “But how can I
be of any use in the work of saving souls, I who am merely Your poor servant
girl? For I am a woman, and it is not
seemly for my sex to try to teach men, or even to speak with them. Besides they take no notice of what I say,”
she sighed.
But Jesus replied as the Archangel
Gabriel had once replied:
“All things are possible for God
who has created everything from nothing.
I know that you say this from humility, but you must know that in these
days pride has grown monstrously among men, and chiefly among those who are
learned and think they understand everything.
It was for this reason that at another period I sent out simple men who
had no human learning, but were filled by Me with divine wisdom, and let them
preach. To-day I have chosen unschooled
women, fearful and weak by nature, but trained by Me in the knowledge of the
divine, so that they may put vanity and pride to shame. If men will humbly receive the teachings I
send them through the weaker sex I will show them great mercy, but if they
despise these women they shall fall into even worse confusion and even greater
agony.
“Therefore, my dear daughter, you
shall humbly do My will, for I will never fail you; on the contrary, I will come
to you as often as before and I will guide and help you in all things.”
Catherine bowed her head, rose and
went from her chamber and seated herself at the table with her family. It is a pity none of Catherine’s biographers
has described for us the amazement it must have caused Jacopo and Lapa [her
parents] to see their hermit daughter seated among them—not to speak of her
brothers and sisters-in-law and their children.
But although Catherine had returned in the flesh to the bosom of her
family, her thoughts were with her Savior.
And as soon as the Benincasas rose from the table Catherine fled back to
her cell, filled with longing to continue her conversation with her Lord. For the young girl who was later to have such
experiences with unyielding courage, this first return to the family circle
after having lived outside it for three years must have been a terrible
ordeal. [p51-2]
When Catherine went into her contemplative moments, it was
truly an ecstasy, consuming her whole body.
Here is a description of what her body became in one of these moments.
From the time when she began her
life of active charity, her familiarity with the secrets of the supernatural
world became more apparent to the world around her. When her soul rose upwards in prayer and
contemplation, her body became as rigid, cold and insensible as a stone. It happened also that her companions saw the
motionless, kneeling woman lifted from the floor, “so high that one could put
one’s hand between Catherine and the floor”—they had certainly tried for
themselves. At other times, and
especially after she had received the Body of the Lord in the Blessed
Sacrament, as she was withdrawn in ecstasy, it was as though her body was
flooded with such heat that beads of sweat appeared all over her flushed face.
As the ecstasies came over her most
often in church, the whole town was soon talking about her. For her friends, who were convinced that
Catherine was a chosen vessel of God, these extraordinary attacks of unconsciousness
were a source of awe and joy; when her soul had been lifted up to the presence
of Divine Love it always returned bearing gifts for her fellows. Andrea di Vanni, the painter who once, while
Catherine was in her twenties, made a sketch of her on a pillar in St.
Dominic’s church, firmly believed she was completely sincere, although it does
not even seem he had at that time joined the circle of her nearest
friends. He has given us the only
authentic portrait we possess of St. Catherine.
The lily which she holds in her hand, and the woman kneeling before her,
were added after Catherine’s death.
[p58-9]
Other than receiving the stigmata, one of the few saints ever
be so blessed, the most glorious mystical experience was the displacing of her
heart with that of Christ’s heart. I’m
not sure how many saints were praying to Christ’s heart before St. Margret
Mary’s Sacred Heart, but Catherine was doing so three hundred years earlier.
The same day Catherine was
meditating over the words of the prophet, “Cor mundum crea in me, Domine,” and
as she prayed for God to take away her own heart, in which her self-will was
rooted, she saw a vision. Her heavenly
Bridegroom came to her, opened her left side, took out her heart, and carried
it away in His hand. This impression was
so strong and was accompanied by such a physical reaction that Catherine told
Fra Tommaso at confession that she had no heart in her body. The monk could not help laughing, “Now, now,
no one can live without a heart…” But
Catherine was adamant. “But it’s true
Father, I would have to distrust my own senses if I were to doubt that I now
have no heart in my body. It is certain
that with god nothing is impossible.”
A day or two later Catherine had
been to Mass in the Capella della Volte and remained in church to pray along
after all the others had left. Suddenly
Christ appeared to her; in His hand he carried a human heart, deep red and
sparkling with light. When Catherine saw
how it shone she fell on her face. But
again Our Lord opened her left side, and put the burning heart into her body. “My dear daughter, the other day I took away
your heart. To-day I give you My heart,
which will give you eternal life.”
Her most intimate friends assured
her biographer that they had with their own eyes seen the scar under her left
breast where this exchange of hearts had taken place. From now on Catherine no longer prayed,
“Lord, I offer You my heart” but “Lord, I offer You Your heart.” And often when she received the Blessed
Sacrament, the heart beat so violently that those who stood near her heard it
and were amazed. [p.104-5]
I don’t know what to make of such extreme spiritual experiences
that are physically transformative such as that and go outside my personal
ken. The displacing of her heart sounds
more like a bit of folklore, but that would be presumptuous on my part. Ultimately I hold open the possibility of it
being exactly true, especially since I revere St. Catherine so, but I can’t
help a hint of skepticism. I believe,
help my unbelief.
Later that summer she lay in her bed ill (she had a problem
with holding down food most of her life and hardly ate anything) and went into
one of her ecstasies. This passage is
too long to quote in its entirety, so I’ll use ellipses (…) to reduce the
verbiage and get the crux down.
But all these ecstasies seemed to
take such a toll on her physical strength that the moment came that the body
could stand no more…
For many days she remained so weak
that she could not move. But most of the
time she was in ecstasy, and her friend who listened to her low whisperings
said afterwards she seemed transported with bliss: she smiled and laughed
softly, while her lips uttered expressions of love to her Bridegroom, talking
of her ceaseless longings to be called to that heavenly home where Christ would
be hers for ever and no separation could force her back to the world of the
senses.
She was so tired of this body which
shut her out from all she desired. But
when her Lord said to her that she must not be selfish, He had still work for
her which she was to carry out among her fellow men on earth, she humbly bowed
before His will. But she asked that she
might be allowed to taste a little, only a very little—as much as she could
bear—of the agony He had suffered in His body here on earth for the salvation
of mankind…She was granted this. But
when in this way she learned how bitter His pains had been, how boundless was
the love which succumbed to such suffering because His heart pitied mankind,
then it was as though her heart broke and the breath of life left her body…
She wept unceasingly for many
days. But little by little she told
Tommaso della Fonte something of what she had experienced when she lay as
though dead. She was quite certain that
her soul had been freed from its prison of flesh and blood; she had seen a
little of the pain and the burning desires of the souls in purgatory who know
that the time will come when they shall possess God as He is, but as yet are
cut off by their deeds and thoughts from that revelation that is blessedness
itself. She had seen the agonies of the
lost souls in hell, and for a moment had tasted the joy of the blessed in
heaven…
Finally Christ had said to her:
“There are many whose salvation depends on you.
The life you have led up to now will be altered: for the sake of the
salvation of souls you will be required to leave your native town, but I shall
always be with you—I shall lead you away, and I shall lead you back again. You shall proclaim the honor of My name to
rich and poor, to clerks and laymen, for I shall give you words and wisdom
which no one can resist. I shall send
you to popes and the leaders of My church and to all Christians, for I choose
to put the pride of the mighty to shame by the use of fragile tools.”
It is not strange that Catherine
asked her confessor at times, “Father, can you not see that I have
changed? Can you see that your Catherine
is no longer the same? [p.107-10]
It is at this point that Catherine went on first to aid the
poor and ill of her town, and then to be regarded as a true holy woman
throughout her city limits, her region, and then Italy and beyond, from which Princes,
Bishops, and Popes would seek her intervention.
I take her “no longer the same”
to refer the transformation from the shy young girl who wanted to hide to the assertive,
bold woman who scolded men, the aristocracy, and church leaders to have courage
to do the moral thing. She castigated
Pope Gregory XI when he wavered from returning the Papacy to Rome from Avignon
because he feared the French Cardinals to “Be a man.”
I came across this interview on EWTN with Fr. Mitch Pacwa with a Dominican scholar who
has written a book on her teachings and writings, Fr. Thomas McDermott, OP. It’s an hour
long, but it captures her life well.
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