Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset, 2nd Read, Post #2

This is the second post on the second read of Sigrid Unset’s Catherine of Siena.  

You can find Post #1 here.  

Summary

Chapter 1:

The Benincasa household, Catherine’s childhood, her relationship with her mother, her first mystical experience that initiated her calling, and the growing devotion to commit wholeheartedly to Christ.

Chapter 2:

When Catherine approached marrying age and her parents tried to prepare her for marriage, Catherine rebelled, even cutting her hair off.  In retribution, her parents made her a servant in the household and limited her to share a bedroom with her brother.  All of this Catherine gladly accepted.  She would later discover in this the cell of one’s inner being from which one’s spirituality is nurtured.

Chapter 3:

In time Catherine made her parents aware she would never consent to marriage, and through a family member who was a priest informed them that she had made a vow to Christ to remain a virgin.  She made them aware that she wished to join the Mantellate, a third order Dominican group composed of widows.  It was her father who was convinced first of Catherine’s calling and consented and arranged for her to join the lay order.  He allowed her to have her own bedroom which became her private cell.

Chapter 4:

She spent three years in that private cell, praying and disciplining herself, only to go out to daily Mass.  It was in her cell that she had regular visions of meeting Christ, and then for a while Christ disappeared only to have the visions replaced with satanic visions of hedonistic orgies.  When the Lord finally returned to her and the visions ended that she realized He was there all along.  It was in this time in her cell that many of her insights into the faith came to fruition.  Finally her third year ended with a vision of her spiritual betrothal to Christ. 

### 

The vision Catherine had when she was six years old is monumental in her life.  She is walking through Siena with her brother and another boy when suddenly she sees some metaphysical beings over a church.

 

The little girl looked over the valley—it is called Valle Piatta.  And then she looked up, over the roof of the church.  She saw a sight so wonderful that she could never have dreamed of anything like it: the Saviour of the world sitting on a royal throne, clothed in bishop’s robes, and with the triple crown of the Pope on His head.  Beside Him stood the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and St. John the Evangelist.  The child stood as though rooted to the spot.  She stared enraptured at the vision “with eyes both of her body and her soul.”  Our Lord smiled lovingly at her, lifted His hand and blessed the child with the sign of the cross, as a bishop does…  (p. 11)

With Undset writing this in the 20^th century (1940’s I believe) we sense in that paragraph that this was a defining moment in Catherine’s life.  And surely it was, but Catherine must have related this experience to her biographer, Blessed of Raymond of Capua, where it was written down (Undset even quotes from it) and if you can step back from Undset’s semi-psychological reading of this experience and understand it from a more hagiographical perspective, you can see various elements of this that would define Catherine’s life.  Christ dressed as the Pope, even wearing the Papal tiara, will be important to Catherine later in life as she understands the seriousness of the Pope, being the vicar of Christ, not being in Rome but in Avignon.  Saints Peter and Paul were martyrs in Rome, and that established Rome as the center of the Catholic Church.  St. John the Evangelist would become Catherine’s intellectual father in essence, where her theology would flow out his Gospel.  While this is a defining experience, it is filled with hagiographic imagery that projects to Catherine’s greatest achievement.

I did not know Popes had crowns.  According to Wikipedia, “From 1143 to 1963, the papal tiara was solemnly placed on the pope's head during a papal coronation. The surviving papal tiaras are all in the triple form, the oldest being of 1572.”  But if you read the entire entry you see they go back way before that.  It would also be interesting to know what a bishop’s dress was like back then.  Popes wearing white that we see today was a tradition started by Pope Pius V who died a couple of hundred years after Catherine.  So Popes must have worn a bishop’s vestments before that.  I would imagine a bishop still dressed in red back then. 

### 

One of the practices that is critical to Catherine spirituality was the building of a cell from which to communicate with God.  She would later come to call this the “cell of self-knowledge.”  We see the rudiments of this cell as a teenager as her parents isolate her for resisting marriage.

 

The Holy Spirit had taught her how to build herself an inner cell, a place of refuge where she could pray and think of her Beloved, and from this no one could recall her; here no one could come and disturb her.  “The kingdom of God is within you”: now she understood the meaning of these words, spoken by Him who is truth itself.  Within us—it is there that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are poured out upon us to perfect our natural talents, to break down internal and external obstacles.  If we passionately desire the true good, the heavenly Guest comes and lives within us—He who has said “Be of good courage, I have conquered the world.”  (p. 25)

Here the cell is a physical place, but eventually that cell would grow to within her.  Future Dominican mystics, like Meister Eckhart would echo very similar concepts.  I’m not sure if they took it from Catherine but it’s possible.  

###

My Reply to Irene:

Irene wrote: "Catherine's poor mother. I loved the image of her carrying her daughter into her bed out of fear that she would destroy her health. I have been around enough anorexia in my life to understand the anguish of the family as they watch a loved one engage in behavior that is life threatening. I also loved watching the mother beg for Catherine's acceptance into the order when she realized that her daughter's severe illness was a result of her thwarted desire. She might not have understood Catherine's spirituality or call, but her love for her daughter is so beautiful."

Haha, yes, Catherine had a contentious relationship with her mother. I think her father understood her better. One thing you have to realize was that Catherine was going outside the norm. First she was refusing to marry. Second she did not choose to become a cloistered nun. I think if she had I think her parents would have been a little more understanding. They could put that into context. But Third Order for women in her day meant she was essentially joining older women who were widows. She was still a teenager, and so her parents just could not conceptualize what she was doing and really had no way of understanding how she would survive. Her parents fretting over this was quite understandable.

But her mother did have a very strong busy-body type of personality who expected to be listened to. She really did not understand Catherine at all until much later in life. Her later in life mother actually joined the band of Catherine's followers who were I think called the Bella Brigada.

 

My Reply to Gerri

Gerri wrote: "Finally, other passages raise a question for me for those of you of a more philosophical bent. More than once, I detected a sense of dislike toward the physical self. For example, one of Catherine's long quotes was about her visions and how they lead toward Truth, and that through Truth a soul gains a better understanding of God and self. "This makes the soul honour Me [God] and despise itself and that is the meaning of humility." Was Gnosticism a force in the 14th century? If yes, it might also help account for Catherine's intense self-disciplines and a comment such as the quoted sentence."

Actually Catherine was quite physical in her devotion. Blood and suffering and physical touch is there in her spirituality. She was very incarnational. If you're thinking that because of the anorexia, I think it's off base. Her anorexia was a discipline to train her soul. It was not because of hatred of the physical or hatred of her body. She loved people. What I find is the biggest misconception about Catherine is that they don't realize she was such a gregarious person. She was bubbly and joyful, and very charismatic. She had a very outgoing personality. Think of Italian extroverts. Once she comes out of her cell, she was an extrovert.

I just read Irene's reply. Yes I agree with the general comment that the ascetic practices were to subdue one's passions more than any philosophic antipathy toward the physical.

### 

Concerning Catherine’s ascetic practices, Undset brings up what would be Catherine change of mind early in the book while Catherine is still you. 

Many years later Catherine wrote in her book The Dialogue what her heavenly bridegroom had told her, when she was in ecstasy, about physical discipline: “What I demand of my servants is inner virtue and the struggle of the soul, not such external deeds as have the body alone as the instrument.  These are means of increasing virtue, but these are not virtues in themselves.”  And sometimes a soul becomes enamored of such outward penitential exercise, and then it becomes an obstacle on the way to perfection.  Complete trust in the love of Christ and a hatred of one’s own ego; true humility, perfect patience, hunger and thirst for God’s sake and the salvation of the soul—these were signs of a pure heart which has killed sensual desire by the love of righteousness.  (p. 30-1)

 

The writing outside the quotation is in essence a paraphrase of Catherine’s later thought.

###

My Reply to Irene:

Irene wrote: "Manny, yes I do realize that Catherine was electing a life style that was outside the norm for young women. Undset makes this quite clear. She did say that the family would have supported a vocation to a monastery."

Does Undset actually say that? I've read so much on St. Catherine that I lose sight of where my memory is pulling it from. I don't remember reading it in Undset's book.

Irene wrote: "Her choice to defy social norms did not just open her to ridicule or dismissal, it opened the entire family to ridicule, to loss of face, to financial ruin, to the nephews and nieces lack of marriage partners and social stability. But as she saw it, her choice also had a huge impact on the standing of these family members in the Heavenly Kingdom which was of far greater consequence than their standing in the kingdom of Siena.."

Yes, certainly but I don't recall ever seeing a negative impact to her family. I don't think there was a negative impact. Her joining the Matallate (the local third order in Siena at the time) was probably rather discrete. What they did was mostly take care of the ill around town. Given that the Black Plague raged in some of her years, I would think she was a relief to many. While I guess there was a potential for a negative impact on the family, I don't think that ever happened.

 

My Reply to Joseph:

Joseph wrote: "Did anyone else get the sense that the entire text of Chapter 1 could be read out as a corrective to our own culture's post-Christian orientation? Undset basically anticipates the standard attacks ..."

Catherine of Siena is what is so needed in today's world.

 

My Reply to Nikita:

Nikita wrote: "We have to remember not everyone who reads this book is going to be a well-formed in the teachings of the Church or let alone Catholic. But even my Godmother mentioned that currently the Church has not really discussed mortification."

Nikita, I guess we have fasting during Lent and we try to limit excessive indulgences today. As far as I now the church doesn't advocate flagellation. As far as I know the Church has never advocated practices that do harm to ones self. People (I think) took it upon themselves to go overboard. Did the Church actually advocate the Desert Fathers living in a cave or up a pole for a lifetime? My personal perception is it did not, but I am not an expert on this. St. Catherine of Siena is not a saint because of her extreme mortifications.

 

Nikita wrote: "I think why we zero in is because that she is not the only one who did mortifications. Mortifications that she had done some of those what people call the modern day Catholics has done this. You ma..."

I know, some people do jump to conclusions. I think that's why Undset brought up Catherine's latter repudiation of those extreme mortifications early in the book. Just to emphasize this is not how she really wants you to now live. Perhaps this is why I don't focus on it. I've come to understand how Catherine really felt once she fully understood it. As I said I don't think the Church ever really advocated such extreme mortifications, but I don't know.

###

Whenever there is a discussion of St. Catherine's life, it's inevitable it seems that her mortifications become a big part of the discussion. I just want to re-emphasize, Catherine repudiated these severe mortifications later in life. Read my comment #12 above and the Undset quote.

Knowing so much about Catherine, I don't feel that this is the most important part of her life. I don't really understand why everyone seems to zero in on this. This was part of medieval culture. Catherine took it a step further than most, but it was (1) not a psychological issue as anorexia is today and (2) she did everything with such intensity it is not surprising she went further than most. If she were a runner today she would have been a marathon/triathlon runner all in one. She did everything to the max.

###

Chapter four is one of the most important chapters in the book.  If you can I would urge you to re-read it.  Here she spends three years in her cell in prayer and contemplation and experiencing intense mystical experiences.  This is where she lives within her cell of “self-knowledge,” which is really a cell harboring the indwelling of God.  Here through the intensity of prayer she meets God within herself.  The German Dominican mystics of the century after Catherine would develop this further, but I have to believe they had Catherine as a model.  When you really think about this, it is not much different than St. Teresa of Avila’s interior castle writing two hundred years later.  Catherine’s cell of self-knowledge is way more important to understanding Catherine than her mortifications.

Remember I said she did everything to the max.  For three years she was essentially a hermit, living in her room and only going out for Mass.  Once at Mass she stayed at the church in prayer for hours, “a habit which came to annoy even the sisters of her own order and many of the friars’ (p. 38-9).  With such intensity she began to have mystical experiences.  Here is a key one, one Undset identifies as a “fundamental truth upon which she [Catherine] built her whole life.”

 

One day while Catherine was praying, Jesus appeared to her and said: “Daughter, do you know who you are and who I am?  If you know these two things you will be very happy.  You must know that you are that which is not, but I am That Which is.  If your soul is possessed of this knowledge the devil will never be able to cheat you, and you shall escape all his snares and all his cunning without suffering.  You will never consent to anything which is against My commands.  Without difficulty you will attain all the gifts of grace and all the virtues of love.” (p. 40)

“You must know that you are that which is not, but I am That Which is.”  That really is at the heart of Catherine’s thought.  I have tried to probe the meaning of that for years.  I can’t say I fully understand it.  On the simplest level, it says we exist and continue to exist only by the grace of God.  On a deeper level it seems to say that our existence is only possible as part of the body of Christ.  If we separate ourselves from Christ’s body, we don’t actually exist?  Perhaps.  Perhaps more.

So much of her theology comes out of these three years.  In another vision Christ says to her:

“…And because I am the Truth My visions always lead to a greater knowledge of the Truth, and it is of the greatest necessity that a soul gains knowledge of Me and of itself.  This makes the honour me and despise itself, and that is the meaning of humility.  Visions which come from the devil make the soul which it visits proud, for he is the father of lies and of pride, and the soul is filled with vanity which is the core of all pride.”  (41-2)

 

What are we to make of such visions?  Is it Christ who is actually there visiting her or is she imagining all of it?  Where does an uneducated teenage girl get such profound thoughts?  Were the homilies so good at her church that by listening she absorbed the foundations of Christian thought and was able to build on it?  I know the Dominicans were preaching around Siena, but my goodness she must have absorbed everything.  But then I do believe Christ visited her.  I do believe her mystical experiences were actually encounters with God.  I don’t necessarily believe the mysticism of other saints, but I do believe St. Catherine’s.  This is rich thought that goes beyond a single person’s deliberation.

###

Not all visions in these three years were spiritually wholesome.  There was a period where Christ stopped coming, and images of graphic sex came to her.

 

She never replied to the tempters, but only tried to pray even more earnestly, and chastised her body with firm and strict discipline.  Only when the evil spirit said to her, “It is impossible for you to hold out to the end,” she replied, “I do not depend upon myself, but on my Lord Jesus Christ.”

 

She was thereupon attacked by a crowd of sensual and unchaste thoughts, of abominable visions and devilish illusions.  She saw before her men and women who openly before her eyes committed disgusting and infamous acts, while they tried with threatening words and touches to force her to join in their orgies.  (p. 44)

 

It has always struck me that St. Catherine should be the patron saint of those afflicted with porn addiction.  Of course the difference is that she doesn’t choose to have them, but at some point if it’s truly an addiction neither can the addicted.  Catherine overcomes them.  When a demon threatens to have these images before her for her entire life,

 

Catherine answered, “with holy temerity,” as her biographer expresses it: “I have chosen these temptations as my refuge, and I say that I am happy that I may bear these and all other sufferings, from wherever they may come, out of love for my Saviour and my gentle Bridegroom, and for His honour, as long as He in His eternal goodness wills it.”  (p. 45)

 

And with that the devils disappeared and Christ reappeared, and when she asked Him where He had been, Christ replied, “I was in your heart.”  And He goes on to further explain:

 

“It was My presence which caused the sorrow and bitterness which I know you felt when the devils raged around you.  And My grace guarded your heart so that you did not give in to the temptations of the demons.  I would not that you should be spared these struggles as you wished, for I was filled with gladness to see how bravely you fought for your crown of honour.  But when you offered so chivalrously to suffer every pain out of love for Me, you were immediately freed from these temptations of hell, because it was My will.  And because you fought like a hero, you have earned and won still more grace, and I will appear to you more often than before and show you greater confidence than before.”  (p. 46)

 

And so we see her grow in spirituality and confidence.  Part of what this period of being within the cell of self-knowledge does is allow her to tap into God from within and give her the confidence that she speaks with Christ’s authority.  She will no longer be a shy teenage girl but will have the poise and assurance of any man in the public world.  St. Catherine of Siena should be a feminist icon.

###

One last thing on the mortifications. I just finished reading Utopia and I went back to read the Introduction in my edition. Apparently More had a schedule of mortifications too. Whoever wrote the Introduction (strangely it only lists his initials, "H.M.") had this to say about More.

"More’s earnest character caused him while studying law to aim at the subduing of the flesh, by wearing a hair shirt, taking a log for a pillow, and whipping himself on Fridays."

More lived about two hundred years from Catherine. But what crossed my mind was, how severe were these whippings? Was it so severe that it drew blood and scars? Or were they mostly a swing of a rope against the back to cause a slight sting? The difference is significant. Same thing applies to Catherine. The level of pain and damage from the mortifications makes a difference. We're just not told.

###

My Reply to Irene:

Irene wrote: "Yes, severe mortifications of the flesh was promoted for penitential purposes. It is not just saints like Francis or Catherine that punish their bodies, many people who sought to grow in holiness d..."

Yes, that has to be the case. And Catherine didn't do anything half way. If you look up an anchoress, you would see they sealed themselves in for life. That's pretty extreme.

 

My Reply to Joseph:

Joseph wrote: "I took a couple of classes with Dr. Peter Kreeft and he's fond of noting that in the middle ages, ascetical practices were what we would call extreme because it was a broadly Christian culture and ..."

That does make sense. Aren't we lucky then!

One other thing. We do offer up our pains to the Lord as they come. I know I do. That is still a good Catholic practice. I encourage it. I jammed several of my fingers on my right hand last week and it's been sore all the way to mid palm. Every time I feel that pain I offer it up to the Lord in the hopes it eases the pain in His hand on the cross.

###

There is one more important incident in chapter four that should be highlighted, and that is Catherine’s mystical betrothal to Christ.  A number of saints – seventy-seven according to New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia - have undergone a mystical marriage (Saints Catherine of Alexandria, Teresa of Avila, St. Mary Magdalen de' Pazzi, etc.) with Christ.  Here’s how Undset depicts Catherine of Siena’s.

 

Around Christ there now appeared His blessed mother, the apostle St. John the Evangelist and St. Paul, and David the poet-king bearing a harp upon which he played beautiful melodies.  As is the custom at betrothals the mother, the Virgin Mary, stepped forward and took Catherine’s right hand.  She lifted it up towards her Son, and bade Him bind His bride to Him in faith as He had promised.  Jesus put a beautiful ring on her finger; it was adorned with a brilliant diamond surrounded by four large pearls.  He spoke the solemn words which the bridegroom says to his bride: “I here betroth you as My bride in perfect faith, which for all time shall keep you pure and virgin, until our marriage is celebrated in heaven with great rejoicing.  My daughter, from now on you must undertake without protest all the works which I come to demand of you, for armed with the power of faith you shall triumphantly overcome all your opponents.”

 

The vision disappeared.  But afterwards the maiden could always see this engagement ring on her finger, although it was invisible to others.  (p. 49)

 

This scene has been depicted in several paintings of Renaissance art.  It should be pointed out that this is an engagement, and not the actual marriage.  The actual marriage is to happen in heaven.  Here the engagement ring is said to be a diamond.  There is an alternative version to this story where the ring is actually Christ’s flesh.  In a particular letter, St. Catherine says this to a nun, referring to the nun’s marriage to Christ.

"He has espoused you - you and everyone else - and not with a ring of silver but with a ring of his own flesh. Look at the tender little child who … when he was circumcised, gave up just so much flesh as to make a tiny circlet of a ring!"

 

So to Catherine, the ring all women who consecrate their lives to Christ is made up of Christ’s foreskin.  This is the alternative legend to Catherine’s engagement ring.  I said that Catherine was very incarnational.  I believe the alternative. 

Personal Essay: "A Great Man is Always Willing to be Little" -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today, December 16^th is sometimes attributed to be the birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven, perhaps the greatest musical composer who ever lived.  There’s no official birthday since there is no record.  There is a record of him being baptized on the 17^th, and so they assume he was born the day before.  [I like to think he was born two days before actually, the 15^th, and so it would make him born on my birthday!]  It’s not just any birthday; it’s the 250^th anniversary of his birth, and should be a moment for reflection.  When one thinks of Beethoven, one’s thoughts have to go toward just how great a composer he was.  We know of his greatness: the nine symphonies, the five piano concertos, the one violin concerto, the sixteen string quartets, the countless sonatas of various instrumentation, and so on, all of the highest craftsmanship and sublimity. 

And his ego went along with all of that greatness.  He knew he was great, and he acted on the belief that fate had led him to greatness.  Even as a young man when he came to Vienna to study under the almost equally great composer and his senior, Joseph Hayden, and let us say that after some lessons the twenty year old Beethoven began to scorn at his elder.  Their two styles are very different.  Hayden seems to always strive for a certain elegance and order, and even humor, while Beethoven can be dark, chaotic, and brooding.  I’ve always felt that Beethoven’s innovation of making the third movement of his symphonies into a scherzo was a direct mock at Joseph Hayden.  Typically, before Beethoven, and perfected by Hayden, the third movement of symphonies was traditionally set as a Minuet and Trio, a highly ordered and stylized dance genre.  Scherzo means joke in Italian and Beethoven, as Romantic era egoist, by overturning the tradition with a “joke”is ridiculing the order and formulaic style of the classical era. 

And this brings me to my quote of the day, "a great man is always willing to be little,” articulated by the Romantic era essayist, and perhaps also a bit of an egoist, Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Now by egoist I don’t mean to say Beethoven was necessarily selfish.  I don’t believe he was.  By egoist I mean to say that his aesthetic was built on the ego of the individual and the greatness that one perceives the artist to be.  He was bold and self-affirming, and thought of himself as a “great man.”  The roots of the artist as a self-inspired genius might be traced to Beethoven. 

And yet, later in life, we get a sense that he had gained humility.  He was not in good health for most of his later years, and he only lived to 56.  His output was immense, so one gets a sense of a man having lived a long life.  But that is not so.  Besides his deafness, he had intestinal problems, kidney problems, probably Paget’s Disease of the bone, and some sort of virus (perhaps measles) that kept recurring.  All these ailments produced an irritable man who drove people away.  He couldn’t hear them, and they didn’t want to hear him. 

But in 1825, two years before his death, he had an intestinal issue which brought him close to death.  From that near-death experience came what some call his greatest musical composition, the third movement of his String Quartet in A minor Op. 132 (No. 15), the third movement given the name “Hymn of Thanksgiving.”  You can read about his illness and the composition here in this BBC article by Andrea Valentino, “Beethoven 250: The ultimate songof health after illness.”  

In the piece, the great man becomes small.  The full name of the movement that Beethoven himself gave it is "Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian mode" ("Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart").  The piece is slow, meditative, a conversation with God, thanking him for his recovery.  What I get is pure humility, the early dissonance resolving into harmonious psalm.  Valentino from the article tries to describe the piece.

 

How, then, to explain the Heiliger Dankgesang? Perhaps the fifth and final part of the movement can help. At the end of the second New Strength section, the slow pace returns again – but only for a moment. From there the original eight-note chorale is reduced to five notes, then three, then two, then one. At the same time, the simple accompanying prelude becomes more complex, turning the whole soundscape into a floating world of transcendental emotion, the composer ordering musicians to play with the “utmost, deepest, and sincere feeling”.

On his 250th anniversary of his birth, please listen to a great man turn small before the face of God.

Very few of us will ever be acknowledged on the 250^th anniversary of our birth.  I know I won’t.  Only a great man will have such acknowledgments.  But remember, even a great man returns to the littleness of dust, and unto dust we shall all return.

Edit: If I may point out something about the composition, the fifth and final part of the piece that Valentino refers to starts at about 10:20 and is about a third of the entire length. Leading up to 10:20 you have sections that could be described as slow/fast/slow/fast, and I think they are supposed to reflect illness, semi-recovery, relapse, recovery. The fifth part is an expression of thanks to the Almighty for his ultimate recovery. The melody in that fifth part is heart wrenching. When one puts it into the context, the psalm – as I called it – is a beautiful prayer of gratitude.

Sunday Meditation: Make Straight the Way of the Lord

John’s first chapter is one of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible. 

 

“I am ‘the voice of one crying out in the desert,

Make straight the way of the Lord.”

       -John 1:23

 

What does it mean to make “straight the way of the Lord?”

 

Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset, 2nd Read, Post #1

This is the second read of this great biography of my beloved patron saint and patron saint of this blog.  Indeed it was this book that made me aware of St. Catherine of Siena in the first place.  It was in my first year of this blog that I read Catherine of Siena written by the great Nobel winning author, Sigrid Undset.  That was in 2013, and between March and April of that year I wrote four posts on the book. I called them “Book Excerpts” back then but they are essentially the same type of posts I have been writing on books that you see now.  To my surprise the Catholic Thought Book Club and Goodreads selected Undset’s book for a recent read and I happily participated.  In this and several following posts I will post my thoughts and comments from the second read.  I don’t know if I’ve had a book read twice while I’ve been blogging.  I think this is the first.  I don’t know if I’m repeating myself, contradicting myself, or adding new observations that reflect a more devout person from seven years ago.  Someday I may compare. But I have no intention now.  I want this to be fresh, as if I had not written on my St. Catherine before.  First let me start with an introduction to the saint.

Introduction to St. Catherine of Siena

Bishop Baron in the first group of his Pivotal Players series had only six men and women who he considered important enough to be considered pivotal to Catholicism, and included in those six was St. Catherine of Siena, the only woman I may add.  Why did he include St. Catherine with Saints Thomas Aquinas and St. Frances of Assisi?  Well, you probably have to watch his video of her life and teachings to hear his answer, but I think by reading this book you will come to a similar conclusion: St. Catherine of Siena incorporates into her being every element of sainthood possible.  She lived a life of uncompromising holiness.  You may be surprised to learn she was not a consecrated religious, but a Third Order Dominican.  Prayer was the foundation of her life, which then led to an active ministry of taking care of the sick and the poor.  She was a mystic who had who supernatural experiences on an almost daily basis but was involved in the issues and politics of her day.  Though uneducated, she learned Catholic theology so well she was correcting theologians, and she went on to write—at some point she learned to read and write either mystically or through perseverance—one of the great Catholic theological classics, her Dialogue.  I marvel at her writings—mostly her letters—for her intense prose and wonderful imagery.  She was a natural poet.  She was a little woman from a non-aristocratic family who became so influential she was offering advice to kings and queens, and her greatest accomplishment was in persuading Pope Gregory XI to return the papacy to Rome after almost a century in Avignon. 

I once put together for my Lay Dominican chapter an outline of her life.  I’ll share it with you here.  I broke it down to four parts: her biography, her mysticism, her ministry, and her writings and theology.  And then for good measure I ended it with a number of her quotes.  Perhaps this will be useful as you read her biography.

 

1)      Biography

a)     Born March 25, 1347 with a twin sister (Giovanna) as the 23^rd and 24^th children of Jacopo di Benincasa and Lapa di Puccio Piagenti.

b)      She has a vision of Christ at the age of six and at seven vows to virginity. 

c)      At the age of fifteen she cuts off her hair to prevent being married.

d)     At the age of sixteen she joins the Dominican Sisters of Penance, otherwise known as the Mantellate. 

e)      From the age of seventeen to twenty she is confined to a small room, ostensibly as punishment for not willing to marry.  This is her “cell” in which she performed many performed many austerities and penances.  This is when she started her extreme fasting.

f)       Throughout her life she went around performing many acts of mercy but especially from the age of twenty, when she symbolically comes out of her cell, through age twenty-eight when the most recent plague ends.  It is the activities in this period that led her to be the patron saint of nurses.

g)      At the age of 29 at the behest of the Florentines she travels to the Pope in Avignon to resolve a dispute between the Papacy and Florence.  There she urges the Pope to return the Papacy back to Rome.

h)      Her fasting led her not keep any food down; she lived for a number of years entirely on the Eucharist. 

i)        At the age of 33 dies in Rome on April 29, 1380.  She is buried in Rome (Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva) except for her head and thumb which were sent to Siena and reside at the Basilica of San Domenico.

j)        She was canonized in 1461 and made a Doctor of the Church in 1970.

 

2)      Mysticism

a)      Vision of Christ in papal garb at the while walking in Siena (age 6).

b)      Mystical marriage with Christ (age 20?).

c)      Vision and conversation with Christ who forces her to come out of her cell (age 20).

d)     Mystical exchange of hearts with Christ (age 23).

e)      Mystical death (age 23).

f)       Receives the Invisible Stigmata (age 28).

g)      Soul separation from her body (age 32).

h)      Whenever at Mass the experience would be so intense that she would faint and go into a trance.

i)        Whenever in that trance state, she would babble off her conversations with Christ.  Her followers would jot down whatever they could gather from her mumblings.  It is in this state that we get her prayers and her theological book called The Dialogue.

 

3)      Ministry

a)      Corporal works of mercy as part of the Montellate, especially taking care of the sick and dying. 

b)      Tirelessly helped in care of those inflamed with the Black Death plague of the mid fourteenth century.

c)      She attracted a band of followers which she called her spiritual family who went around and helped and fulfilled her acts of mercy.  The group included religious and secular, poor and rich, peasantry and nobility.  It was through her personality, gregarious and upbeat, that so many people listened and followed her.

d)     Through her letters and preaching, she led many people to return and enrich their faith.

e)      She intervened to resolve disputes between various Italian City States, including the Papal State.

f)       She was instrumental in convincing Pope Gregory XI.  She even had the chutzpa to tell the Pope to “be a man” when he was wavering in fear.

g)      She tried to resolve The Great Schism that broke out after Pope Gregory XI’s death, where ultimately three different Popes claimed the papal title.  She was unsuccessful and perhaps contributed to her loss of strength and subsequent death.

 

4)      Writings and Theology

a)      It should be noted that she was uneducated and either through miracle or through self-teaching, learned to read and write.  I don’t know for sure if she physically wrote down things herself.  From what we know she had scribes that wrote her words down.

b)      She wrote elaborate prayers of which 26 survive, many of which seem like poems.

c)      She wrote hundreds of letters to all strata of people, the Pope, religious, secular, soldiers, rulers, and aristocracy, both men and women, either imploring them to do some good action or preaching some theological point.  380 letters survive.

d)     She dictated The Dialogue, a series of conversations she had in a trance with God the Father which consolidated her theological ideas.  Among these ideas is the notion of the Christ Bridge—Christ crucified as a bridge between earth and heaven.

e)      Her writing is filled with intense imagery, almost like that of a poet.

Famous Quotes:

"You know...that to join two things together there must be nothing between them or there cannot be a perfect fusion. Now realize that this is how God wants our soul to be, without any selfish love of ourselves or of others in between, just as God loves us without anything in between."  Letter T164

"The human heart is always drawn by love." Dialogue 26

"In your nature, eternal Godhead, I shall come to know my nature. And what is my nature, boundless Love? It is fire, because you are nothing but a fire of love. And you have given humankind a share in this nature for by the fire of love you created us." Prayer 12

"It is the nature of love to love as much as we feel we are loved and to love whatever the one we love loves." Letter T299

You, eternal Trinity, are a deep sea. The more I enter you, the more I discover, and the more I discover, the more I seek you." Dialogue 167.

"You are a fire always burning but never consuming; you are a fire consuming in your heat all the soul's selfish love; you are a fire lifting all chill and giving light." Dialogue 167.

"This [painful thing] happens to me with the permission of God, according to His providence, as in all things that befall me, all tribulation that He sends me He wills only one single thing: my sanctification." Spiritual Document (William of Flete's account of a meeting with St. Catherine at which she briefly summarized her doctrine).

"O God eternal, Oh boundless Love! Your creatures have been wholly kneaded into you and you into us--through creation, through the will's strength, through the fire with which you created us, and through the natural life you gave us."  Prayer 14

"Love follows knowledge." Dialogue 1

### 

To get a feel for her writing, let me give you a sample, this from one of her letters.  It’s in my personal notes and unfortunately I didn’t write down which letter this came from.  this little passage outlines one of her most profound theological ideas, Christ crucified as a ladder to holiness, a ladder to God.  She would go on to develop this further in her great work, The Dialogue.

 

And if you ask, “What is the way?” I will tell you it is the way Christ chose, the way of disgrace, suffering, torment, and scourging.  “And how?”  Through genuine humility and blazing charity, an indescribable love by which we renounce all worldly riches and ambition.  And from humility we progress to obedience, as I have said.  Upon such obedience follows peace, since obedience frees us from all suffering and gives us every joy—for the selfish will, the source of suffering, has been done away with.

 

To make it possible to climb to this perfection, Christ actually made for us a staircase of his body.

 

If you look at his feet, you see that they are nailed fast to the cross to form the first stair.  This is because we have first to rid ourselves of all selfish will.  For just as the feet carry the body, desire carries the soul.  Reflect that we can never have any virtue at all if we don’t climb this first stair.  Once you have climbed it, you arrive at deep and genuine humility.

 

Climb the next stair without delay and you come to the open side of God’s Son.  There you find the fiery abyss of divine charity.  At this second stair, his open side, you find a storehouse filled with fragrant spices.  There you find the God-Man.  There your soul is so sated and drunk that you lose all self-consciousness, just like a drunkard intoxicated with wine; you see nothing but his blood, shed with such blazing love. 

 

Then, aflame with desire, you get up and climb to the next stair, his mouth.  There you find rest in quiet calm; there you taste the peace of obedience.  A person who is really completely drunk, good and full, falls asleep, and in that sleep feels neither pleasure nor pain.  So too the spouse of Christ, sated with love, falls asleep in the peace of her Bridegroom.  Her feelings too are asleep so that, even if all sorts of troubles befall her, they don’t disturb her at all.  If she is materially well off she feels no disproportionate pleasure, because she has already stripped herself of all that is at the first stair.  This, then, is where she finds herself conformed with Christ crucified, united with him.

 

Now mind you, this is a woman with no formal education.  Notice how vivid the imagery and how the imagery develops into abstract ideas.  So much there in just a handful of words. 

Sunday Meditation: The Lord Will Come Like A Thief

From today’s second reading:

 

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be found out.

       -2 Peter 3:10

 

That simile, to “come like a thief,” has such great resonance.  It is so powerful, and then the imagery of disintegration sends shivers down ones spine.  Peter is referring to the end of times of course but it can also be read as our mortal end.