There was a marvelous meditation in the June 2021 Magnificat taken from a letter of St. Catherine of Siena. The Magnificat editors pull parts of that letter to form this wonderful quote:
In the name of Jesus
Christ crucified and of gentle Mary. I
Caterina, useless servant of Jesus Christ, send you my greetings. I long to see us united with and transformed
into the gentle pure eternal truth, the truth that rids us of all falsehoods
and lies…I shudder at the thought of the devil’s deceptiveness. My only trust is in God’s goodness. I do not—I know that I cannot—trust in
myself…
I am always fearful of my
own weakness and the devil’s cleverness.
For I realize that though the devil lost beatitude he did not lose his
intelligence—or better, cleverness—I know, as I said, that he could deceive
me. But then I turn to the tree of the
most holy cross of Christ crucified; there I lean; there I want to nail myself
fast. I have no doubt that if I am
nailed fast with him in love and in deep humility, the devils will have no
power over me. And this is not because
of my own power but because of the power of Christ crucified.
Keep living God’s holy
and tender love. Gentle Jesus! Jesus love!
O fire, oh abyss of charity! You
are a fire ever burning but not consuming.
You are filled with gladness, with rejoicing, with gentleness. To the heart pierced by this arrow, all
bitterness seems sweet. Oh sweet love the
feeds and fattens our soul!
Yet even though we said it burns without consuming, I say also that it burns and consumes: it dissolves and destroys all sin, all ignorance, all indifference in the soul, for charity is not inactive; no, it does great things. (Magnificat, June 2021, p. 421-2)
That is such an incredible quote, and the entire letter can be found in Suzanne Noftke’s The Letters of Catherine of Siena: Volume I. Indeed, I found it and it’s identified as “Letter T92/G305/DT19” for those who understand that numbering scheme, and the letter is addressed to “a religious person in Florence.” There was no name provided of the addressee but from the contents of Catherine’s letter we can tell she was responding to a religious person, that is, one with religious orders. Also from the entire content of Catherine’s letter we can see that the religious person has written to her criticizing what he sees as her severe fasting, which he suggests can be at the result of the devil. The letter is dated as being between “July 1375 to early 1376.” This would put St. Catherine as being twenty-eight to twenty-nine years old. She died in 1380.
For those that may not know, St. Catherine did subject herself to severe fasting, especially from her late teens to her early twenties, which in time caused her digestive system to shut down. And in this letter, which I think is the central intent of the letter, is to explain her situation and that she no longer can hold food down and that she prays for this to change.
So in the quoted part from Magnificat, we see that in the first stanza, after her typical way of opening a letter, she acknowledges she cannot trust herself. In the second paragraph she acknowledges that the devil is capable of deceiving her. But then in that paragraph she identifies what ultimately saves her: “But then I turn to the tree of the most holy cross of Christ crucified; there I lean; there I want to nail myself fast. I have no doubt that if I am nailed fast with him in love and in deep humility, the devils will have no power over me. And this is not because of my own power but because of the power of Christ crucified.”
The third paragraph is one of her typical disjointed digressions—but which are so poetic—where she starts speaking to Christ. Notice that she ends that it is Jesus who “fattens her soul.” So while addressing the thinning of her physical body, she refers to the fattening of her soul.
She concludes by modifying her metaphor to say that by grasping the cross with crucified Jesus, it consumes sin, ignorance, indifference, and leads her to holy charity.
St.
Catherine of Siena, pray for us!
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