Poem, “The One Who Calls Us Friends” by St. Catherine of Siena

Today is St. Catherine of Siena’s feast day.  She is the patron saint of this blog.  I came across this poem in the April 2016 edition of the devotional magazine Magnificat, supposedly written by St. Catherine herself.  The poem was translated by Dr. Lisa M. Vitale of Southern Connecticut University and published in 2012. I hope she doesn’t mind me posting it.

I’m not actually sure where St. Catherine wrote this.  It looks like it’s one of her prayers, which you can read in translation by Suzzane Nofke in The Prayers of Catherine of Siena.  Magnificat credits the work in something called Magliabechiano-Strozziana XXXVIII.  I just don’t know what that is. 

Here is the poem:

The One Who Calls Us Friends

Oh transformed love

  Of Lord God servant and Creator created

  Too much of a dark thing it appears

  Seeing God so humbled

Thinking of your greatness oh my Lord

  The heart lowers itself in the body I shake so

  Seeing you mortal man being God

  Enclosed in the womb of a poor young girl

  My faith turns to nothing

  Thinking of your greatness so removed

  If not it appears that ease opposed

  Crying out God, God, you are crazy

And with enflamed desire

  You go searching for who the young woman is

  Who in herself enclosed this true Word

  With the eyes of the mind of a girl

  I see she is closed in a cell

  Alone worthy of having him

  Such a humble daughter

  Who joined the lover to the loved

And I looking at this holy Virgin

  In whom I see no flaw

  Looking at her from her head down to her feet

  So the more I look at her the more she gives me delight

  Pregnant in appearance

  She shows me and is always with eyes lowered

  And I her servant she makes

  And I find myself bound by her love.

I see well what commodity and the cost of you

  The price that cost you when

  The good Jesus was put on the cross for you

  In order that he pay for you the infernal banishment

  To the heart goes sighing

  Looking up at Jesus on the cross and strongly languishing

  She looks at the shed blood

  With which you were repurchased from death.

It’s interesting that St. Catherine sees the young Virgin “closed in a cell” (l. 17).  Catherine herself was closed in a cell for a number of years as a young woman, partly self-imposed but partly because she refused to marry and that is where her parents forced her to live.

Keep St. Catherine of Siena in mind on her feast day.  And do look up some of her wonderful works.  And kudos to Dr. Vitale for this.  It’s not easy to translate poetry.