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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