"Love follows knowledge."
"Beauty above all beauty!"
– St. Catherine of Siena

Friday, August 13, 2021

Faith Filled Friday: The Bonds of Love by St. Catherine of Siena

I happened to be glancing at the Office of Readings from the Liturgy of the hours this past Sunday and came across this gem of a passage from my beloved St. Catherine of Siena.  I typically pray the Morning (Lauds) and Evening Prayers (Vespers) of the Divine Office but on the Feast Day of St. Dominic (August 8th) I decided to glance at the Office of Readings to see if there was something by the founder of the Order of Preachers.  There wasn’t but I was blessed with this passage from St. Catherine’s Dialogue.  Here Catherine is speaking to God the Father about her desire for all souls to be saved.

 

From a dialogue On Divine Providence by Saint Catherine of Siena, virgin

The bonds of love

 

My sweet Lord, look with mercy upon your people and especially upon the mystical body of your Church. Greater glory is given to your name for pardoning a multitude of your creatures than if I alone were pardoned for my great sins against your majesty. It would be no consolation for me to enjoy your life if your holy people stood in death. For I see that sin darkens the life of your bride the Church—my sin and the sins of others.

 

It is a special grace I ask for, this pardon for the creatures you have made in your image and likeness. When you created man, you were moved by love to make him in your own image. Surely only love could so dignify your creatures. But I know very well that man lost the dignity you gave him; he deserved to lose it, since he had committed sin. Moved by love and wishing to reconcile the human race to yourself, you gave us your only-begotten Son. He became our mediator and our justice by taking on all our injustice and sin out of obedience to your will, eternal Father, just as you willed that he take on our human nature. What an immeasurably profound love! Your Son went down from the heights of his divinity to the depths of our humanity. Can anyone’s heart remain closed and hardened after this?

 

We image your divinity, but you image our humanity in that union of the two which you have worked in a man. You have veiled the Godhead in a cloud, in the clay of our humanity. Only your love could so dignify the flesh of Adam. And so by reason of this immeasurable love I beg, with all the strength of my soul, that you freely extend your mercy to all your lowly creatures.

She implores God that though our bond of love—we to Him, He to us—to have mercy on all of us.  He made us in His image because of love. He reconciled us through a man because of love.  Human flesh itself contains the cloud of divinity which is love, and which we are blessed with immeasurable dignity.  And so after reminding God of this bond of love, she begs “with all the strength of [her] soul” to extend mercy to all.  What a great desire and line of reasoning. 




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