Faith Filled Friday: St. Catherine of Siena as a “Pivotal Player”

Bishop Robert Barron’s video series are spectacular.  I bought the Catholicism series and it was well worth it.  When he came out his The Pivotal Players was very tempted to buy it, but it was very expensive.  Volume 1, which I think is the only volume put out so far, might have been around $199 when it first came out.  The Pivotal Players is a series of videos on the people in the history of Catholicism who have been instrumental in shaping its thought and culture.  Volume 1 consists of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, Bl. John Henry Newman, G. K. Chesterton, Michelangelo, and St. Catherine of Siena.  Now, of course if you knew my love for St. Catherine of Siena, you quickly see how tempted I was.  However, at that time I figured, what could Bishop Barron say about St. Catherine that I didn’t already know? 

So I didn’t buy it, but I had hoped there would one day be a means of buying only one of the series and not the whole volume.  There wasn’t but recently I got an email where Bishop Barron put Volume 1 on sale for $99, which amounts to just over $16 per video, each video being about an hour long.  Now that I figured was a sale and worth getting.  As soon as I got the shipment I went and put on the episode on St. Catherine.  Goodness, it’s beautiful.  Yes, I probably already knew 90% of the information given, the video images of the locations and visuals of the paintings and statutes of St. Catherine was breathtaking.  Bishop Barron’s company, Word on Fire, does such a wonderful job on these videos.  But what really moved me was the love and admiration the video had for my beloved patroness.  More than once did it bring tears to my eyes.

Here is a trailer for the Catherine of Siena episode.

And I also found an interview Bishop Barron had on St. Catherine shortly after completing filming the episode on her.  He makes these points in the episode, but the episode is so much more.

If you want to learn a little bit about the patron saint of this blog and why I love her so without having to read books about her, get the Pivotal Player episode on her life and teachings.  It’s well worth it.