Faith Filled Friday: St. Catherine of Siena’s Letter to the Queen of Naples

Today, April 29^th, is the feast day of St. Catherine of Siena, patron saint of this blog and my personal patron, as many of you know.  In honor of this day I want to go through one of her letters, a letter to Giovanna d’Angiò, also known as Joanna I of Naples, the queen of Naples in Catherine’s day.  This letter is remarkable for several reasons, which I’ll get to. 

First some context.  Suzanne Noffke in her editing of The Letters of Catherine of Siena provides this biographical note about Queen Joanna:

 

GIOVANNA D’ANGIÒ (Jeanne d’Angou): Letters T133, T138, T143, T312, T317, T348, T362.

Great-granddaughter of Charles Martel, she became queen of Naples in 1333, when she was only seven.  She was licentious, violent, and fickle, an opportunist of the first degree.  It was she who had sold Avignon (which she owned as Countess of Provence) to the pope for a nominal sum in 1347 after convincing him of her innocence in the murder of her husband, Andrew of Hungary.  She ruled over the liveliest and most splendid court in the peninsula, and eventually sided with the Clementine cause in the schism of 1378.  Urban VI excommunicated her in 1380 and enthroned Charles of Durazzo in her place. (p. 540, The Letters of Catherine of Siena, Vol 1, 2000)

The “T133, etc” are a numbering scheme of Catherine’s letters, and it shows that Catherine sent seven letters in all to Joanna in her life.  We also see that Joanna was a very worldly woman, experienced in court intrigue going back to her childhood.  She came from a long lineage of famous aristocracy, and was a very powerful woman who had to kill off a husband in order to retain power.  She herself would later be murdered as well.  The letter we are going to examine is T143, and despite the numbering sequence, this is the second letter to Joanna.  The first letter was to ask Joanna to contribute to a crusade that Pope Gregory XI was trying to organize. 

There are six paragraphs to the letter after the heading and introduction, and I’ll number them at the beginning for clarity.  The letter was written on the fourth of August in 1375, before Catherine’s trip to Avignon to convince the Pope to move back the papal court to Rome.  Since her first letter, it seems from the language that Joanna has written back to Catherine.  The letter is also taken from Suzanne Noffke’s The Letters of Catherine of Siena, Volume 1.

 

To Giovanna d’Angiò, Queen of Naples

4 August 1375

 

In the name of Jesus Christ Crucified and of gentle Mary

 

Honorable and dearest mother, milady the queen,

 

(1) Your unworthy servant and the slave of Christ’s servants is writing to you in the precious blood of God’s Son.  I long to see you a true daughter and spouse consecrated to our dear God.  You are called daughter by First Truth because we were created by God and came forth from him.  This is what he said: “Let us make humankind in our image and likeness.”  And his creature was made his spouse when God assumed our human nature.  Oh Jesus, gentlest love, as a sign that you had espoused us you gave us the ring of your most holy and tender flesh at the time of your holy circumcision on the eighth day.  You know my reverend mother, that on the eighth just enough flesh was taken from him to make a circlet of a ring.  To give us a sure hope of payment in full he began by paying this pledge.  And we received the full payment on the wood of the most holy cross, when this Bridegroom, the spotless Lamb, poured out his blood freely from every member and with it washed away the filth and sin of humankind his spouse.

We see in the first paragraph Catherine’s humble diminution of herself, “servant” and “slave”and taking on Christ’s mantle by writing in His “precious blood.”  The blood imagery is of paramount importance to Catherine, and we’ll see it in the body of this letter. Now here’s one of the amazing things of this letter.  Catherine was a twenty-eight year old uneducated woman of no title, and yet she tells the queen “I long to see you a true daughter and spouse consecrated to our dear God.”  Who is Catherine to tell the queen she wants to see her in any manner at all?  We will see this sort of chutzpah throughout the letter. 

Now the italic writing is Noffke’s way of showing Catherine’s spontaneous breaking from addressing the letter’s recipient to addressing Christ in prayer.  “Oh Jesus, gentlest love, as a sign that you had espoused us you gave us the ring of your most holy and tender flesh at the time of your holy circumcision on the eighth day.”  Now here we get the second remarkable thing of this letter, Catherine’s imagery of ring when envisioning the snipped off flesh of Christ’s circumcision, when “on the eighth just enough flesh was taken from him to make a circlet of a ring.”  And then she calls this flesh and loss of blood an initial payment for the final payment of blood He will make on the cross.  Isn’t that unbelievably creative, to see that particular piece of flesh as a ring?  Catherine had poet’s eye for imagery and it spills over in all her writing.  Let’s continue with the letter.

 

(2) Notice that the fire of divine charity gave us a ring not of gold but of his own purest flesh.  This gentlest of fathers celebrated his wedding with us in a feast not of animal flesh but of his own precious body.  This food is Lamb, roasted over the fire of charity on a wood of the sweet cross.  So I beg you most courteously in Christ Jesus to lift up your heart and soul with all your affection, energy, and caring, to love and serve so gentle and dear a Father and Spouse as God, high eternal Truth, who tenderly loved us without being loved.

Here she continued with the ring imagery, the wedding imagery, the crucified Christ imagery, and her exhortation for the queen to be holy. 

 

(3) Let no one then, nor any status or grandeur, any power or other human glory (all of which are empty and vanish like the wind) lure us away from this true love, our soul’s life and glory and happiness.  So will we show that we are faithful spouses.  And when we love no one other than our Creator and desire nothing apart from him, then everything we love and everything we do is for him.  Whatever we see to be outside his will—vice and sin, all injustice and every other wrong—we hate so much that, because of the holy hatred we have conceived against sin, we would sooner die than break faith with our eternal Spouse.  Let us, oh let us be faithful, following in the footsteps of Christ crucified, scorning vice and embracing virtue, undertaking and accomplishing for him every great deed!

Now here’s the third remarkable moment in the letter, telling the queen not to seek status, grandeur, power, or glory!  This is Queen Giovanna d’Angiò she is writing to.  Catherine may not know the queen’s full history, but she must know the queen has a reputation of seeking power.  Or perhaps not.  Now here’s another bit of irony, telling this queen they should be “faithful spouses” of Christ.  Giovanna will be married four times and one of her husbands she had killed off.

 

(4) I want you to know, my reverend lady, that my soul is jubilantly happy after receiving your letter.  It gave me great consolation because, it seems to me, you have a holy and wholesome readiness to give both your possessions and your life for the glory of the name of Christ crucified.  You can show no greater sacrifice or love than to be ready to give even your life, if necessary, for him.  Oh what a great joy it will be to see you giving blood for blood!  May I see the fire of holy desire so growing in you at the resemblance of the blood of God’s Son that you may be leader and patroness of this holy crusade just as you bear the title of the queen of Jerusalem.  Thus the holy place will no longer be held by these evil unbelievers but honorably possessed by Christians, and by you as something of your own.

Now in the fourth paragraph Catherine finally gets to the point of the letter.  She is responding with gratitude in what seems the queen’s letter back from Catherine’s request to contribute to the crusade was in the affirmative.  And then Catherine prays that the queen will be the leader of the crusade to take back what she thinks is Joanna’s rightful title of Queen of Jerusalem.  Now she cannot be alluding to Joanna as another Joan of Arc, who was not born for another 37 years.  But it does seem to give imagery of Joanna off to battle in a suit of armor.  I’ll just provide the last two paragraghs:

 

(5) I want you to know that the holy father wants this very badly.  So I would like you to show your good will (which the Holy Spirit has put into your soul) by sending him word of it to even further increase his desire.  I would like you to ask to make this holy crusade—you in particular, and all the other Christians who might want to join you.  For it would stand up and declare your willingness to do this, and if you put your holy resolution into action, you will find Christians very willing to follow you.  I beg you for love of Christ crucified to be zealous about this.  And I, as far as my weakness allows me, shall pray God’s supreme eternal goodness to give you clear guidance in this and all your good works, and to increase in you desire upon desire.

 

(6) Ablaze with the fire of love may you go forward from your reign in this poor fleeting life to that eternal city of Jerusalem, the vision of peace, where divine mercy will make us all kings and queens, lords and ladies.  There he who in his tender love helps us carry every load will himself reward our every effort.

            Keep living in God’s holy love.

            Jesus!  Jesus!  Jesus!

                                                                                    Done on the fourth day of August.

I love the passion of Catherine’s exhortations.  Unlike the queen she has a simple innocence.  The future letter will not have Catherine speaking so reverently to the queen.  In 1378 the Church experienced the Great Western Schism, and Catherine and the Queen fell on opposite sides of the issue.  Indeed, Queen Joanna would be excommunicated for her support of the schismatic pope.  Catherine would not be pleased with the queen.  I wrote about this later interaction when I discussed Catherine's biography.  

I pray that all who read this receive God’s blessing on St. Catherine’s feast day.

Sunday Meditation: Putting My Hand in His Side

There is a lot going on in today’s Gospel passage.

 

On the evening of that first day of the week,

when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,

for fear of the Jews,

Jesus came and stood in their midst

and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,

“Receive the Holy Spirit.

Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,

and whose sins you retain are retained.”

 

Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve,

was not with them when Jesus came.

So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”

But he said to them,

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands

and put my finger into the nailmarks

and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

 

Now a week later his disciples were again inside

and Thomas was with them.

Jesus came, although the doors were locked,

and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,

and bring your hand and put it into my side,

and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”

Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me?

Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”

 

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples

that are not written in this book.

But these are written that you may come to believe

that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,

and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

                - John 20:19-31 

Now you can contemplate Jesus breathing on the disciples, telling them they now have the power to forgive sins, establishing the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Mind you, that seems to be lost in this scene but it is very important.

Or you can contemplate Christ’s physical resurrected body.

Or you can contemplate Thomas coming to believe.

John Michael Talbot puts it all together for you.

 

I posted a wonderful poem by Denise Levertovthe other day of Thomas putting his finger into Christ’s side.  Today I want to follow it up with Caravaggio’s incredible painting (The Incredulity of Saint Thomas) of that very moment.

Faith Filled Friday: “St Thomas Didymus [the Twin]” by Denise Levertov

This coming Sunday—Second Sunday of Easter, “Divine Mercy Sunday”—the Gospel reading is from John 20: 19-31, the passage where St. Thomas the Apostle confronts the risen Jesus and puts his fingers into Jesus’ wounds.  I will probably have a Sunday Meditation post on Sunday for your contemplation.  Here I want to post a poem on the subject by Denise Levertov brought to my attention by my friend Mary Sue.  Denise Levertov was a British born and raised American immigrant who had a religious conversion late in life and ultimately became a Roman Catholic.  She was a poet from almost toddler years and as a child actually corresponded with T. S. Eliot, who had encouraged her.  After her religious experience, she wrote a number of Christian themed poems that I have always admired. 

 

St Thomas Didymus [the Twin]

by Denise Levertov

 

In the hot street at noon I saw him

a small man

gray but vivid, standing forth

beyond the crowd’s buzzing

holding in desperate grip his shaking

teethgnashing son,

 

and thought him my brother.

 

I heard him cry out, weeping and speak

those words,

Lord, I believe, help thou

mine unbelief,

 

and knew him

my twin:

 

a man whose entire being

had knotted itself

into the one tightdrawn question,

Why,

why has this child lost his childhood in suffering,

why is this child who will soon be a man

tormented, torn, twisted?

Why is he cruelly punished

who has done nothing except be born?

 

The twin of my birth

was not so close

as that man I heard

say what my heart

sighed with each beat, my breath silently

cried in and out,

in and out.

 

After the healing,

he, with his wondering

newly peaceful boy, receded;

no one

dwells on the gratitude, the astonished joy,

the swift

acceptance and forgetting.

I did not follow

to see their changed lives.

What I retained

was the flash of kinship.

Despite

all that I witnessed,

his question remained

my question, throbbed like a stealthy cancer,

known

only to doctor and patient. To others

I seemed well enough.

 

So it was

that after Golgotha

my spirit in secret

lurched in the same convulsed writhings

that tore that child

before he was healed.

And after the empty tomb

when they told me that He lived, had spoken to Magdalen,

told me

that though He had passed through the door like a ghost

He had breathed on them

the breath of a living man –

even then

when hope tried with a flutter of wings

to lift me –

still, alone with myself,

my heavy cry was the same: Lord

I believe,

help thou mine unbelief.

 

I needed

blood to tell me the truth,

the touch

of blood. Even

my sight of the dark crust of it

round the nailholes

didn’t thrust its meaning all the way through

to that manifold knot in me

that willed to possess all knowledge,

refusing to loosen

unless that insistence won

the battle I fought with life

 

But when my hand

led by His hand’s firm clasp

entered the unhealed wound,

my fingers encountering

rib-bone and pulsing heat,

what I felt was not

scalding pain, shame for my

obstinate need,

but light, light streaming

into me, over me, filling the room

as I had lived till then

in a cold cave, and now

coming forth for the first time,

the knot that bound me unravelling,

I witnessed

all things quicken to color, to form,

my question

not answered but given

its part

in a vast unfolding design lit

by a risen sun.

 

The poem recreates and marries two moments in the Gospels, the moment where a man asks Jesus to heal his convulsing son and when St. Thomas—the doubting Thomas—puts his finger into Christ’s open side but Levertov’s imaginative leap as to what he finds is wonderful.  Both scenes are from the perspective of Thomas, since as an apostle he would have been present at the curing of the possessed young boy.  When Thomas puts his finger in he feels “but light, light streaming/into me, over me, filling the room/as I had lived till then/in a cold cave.” 

Now I don’t know how much Levertov knew of St. Faustina Kowalska and her image of Christ’s Divine Mercy, but that that light coming out of Christ’s wound has an amazing similarity to St. Faustina’s iconography.  Take a look.

 I wrote about the history of this wonderful painting St. Faustina had commissioned to capture her mystical vision, “The Divine Mercy Painting by Eugeniusz Kazimirowski” just over six years ago.  

There doesn’t seem to be a video of Levertov reading her “St. Thomas” poem, but if you like you can watch her read six poems to get a feel for her style and person.

 

Back to the “St. Thomas” poem.  If you’re wondering why Levertov combines the convulsing boy scene with the Doubting Thomas scene, contemplate first the struggle for the boy’s father to believe (“help my unbelief”) and what I think is the key image in the poem, the metaphorical “knot that bounds” Thomas inside his soul.  The convulsing boy, “twisted,” is a visual knot that Christ unwinds.  The boy’s father’s unbelief “knots” his insides as Thomas’s unbelief does to him.  Christ the healer “unravels” all knots.

Faith Filled Friday: Michelangelo’s Pieta

It’s Good Friday evening, perhaps the most solemn evening of the year.  Here are a couple of videos to meditate on Christ’s crucifixion.  First this lovely rendition of Stabat Mater (At the cross her stations keeping) in Latin. 

 

Unfortunately it doesn’t mention the artist.  The voices are to be adored.

Second video is a talk on Michelangelo's Three Pietas by an art/theology historian Amy Giuliano.  It was put on by what I think is a new Catholic organization that promotes the Catholic arts, The Benedict XVI Institute.  I've watched a discussion on literature and I thought it was OK, but this talk on Michelangelo's Three Pieta sculptures blew me away.  I was left speechless.  It's a mix of art, theology, and the artist's biography.  I had no idea there were three Michelangelo pietas.  I'm only familiar with the famous one, which I have a special devotion to.  I was on the zoom of the discussion when it was live.  They have put it out to the public on YouTube.

Now it's not as long as it looks.  The actual talk ends around 52 minutes and the first five minutes is introduction, an opening prayer, and some chatter.  So it's really around 47 minutes long.  So after the 52 minutes it was open for questions, and I stayed on for about 10-15 minutes but I didn't find that interesting enough and I had other things to do.  I see it lasted over an hour after the presentation.  So start at the five minute mark and don't worry about the Q&A unless you really want to listen.

I hope you find it as interesting as I did.  

Have a blessed Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.  One more video.

Sunday Meditation: Every Knee Will Bend for Our King

It’s a complicated set of readings for today, Palm Sunday, so I am going to go with the Second Reading for meditation.  This is one of my favorite passages from St. Paul’s epistles.  Those of us who pray the Liturgy of the Hours see it come up frequently, at least once per month.

 

Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God,

            did not regard equality with God

            something to be grasped.

Rather, he emptied himself,

            taking the form of a slave,

            coming in human likeness;

            and found human in appearance,

            he humbled himself,

            becoming obedient to the point of death,

            even death on a cross.

Because of this, God greatly exalted him

            and bestowed on him the name

            which is above every name,

            that at the name of Jesus

            every knee should bend,

            of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

            and every tongue confess that

            Jesus Christ is Lord,

            to the glory of God the Father.

                - Phil 2:6-11

 

Very well read by Jonathan Roumie.

 

And this little prayer for His triumphant entry into Jerusalem.    

 

Poetry Analysis: The Wise Men by G.K. Chesterton

In addition to Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi,” which I posted here, we also read and discussed G.K. Chesterton’s poem, “The Wise Men” as part of our discussion of Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s book, The Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men.  You can read the four part blog posts on Longenecker’s book: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.   

 

The Wise Men

By G.K. Chesterton (1913)

 

Step softly, under snow or rain,

   To find the place where men can pray;

The way is all so very plain

   That we may lose the way.

 

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore,

   On tortured puzzles from our youth,

We know all labyrinthine lore,

We are the three Wise Men of yore,

   And we know all things but the truth.

 

We have gone round and round the hill,

   And lost the wood among the trees,

And learnt long names for every ill,

And served the made gods, naming still

   The Furies the Eumenides.

 

The gods of violence took the veil

   Of vision and philosophy,

The Serpent that brought all men bale,

He bites his own accursed tail,

   And calls himself Eternity.

 

Go humbly . . . it has hailed and snowed . . .

   With voices low and lanterns lit;

So very simple is the road,

   That we may stray from it.

 

The world grows terrible and white,

   And blinding white the breaking day;

We walk bewildered in the light,

For something is too large for sight,

   And something much too plain to say.

 

The Child that was ere worlds begun ─

(. . . We need but walk a little way . . .

We need but see a latch undone . . .)

The Child that played with moon and sun

   Is playing with a little hay.

 

The house from which the heavens are fed,

   The old strange house that is our own,

Where tricks of words are never said,

And Mercy is as plain as bread,

   And Honour is as hard as stone.

 

Go humbly; humble are the skies,

   And low and large and fierce the Star,

So very near the Manger lies

That we may travel far.

 

Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes

   To roar to the resounding plain,

And the whole heaven shouts and shakes

   For God Himself is born again

And we are little children walking

   Through the snow and rain.

 

You can hear “The Wise Men” read on YouTube, here:

 

 I can’t say I understand every line, but I think I got the gist, though it took quite a few readings and listening’s.  This is a poem you have to hear.

So I have to say I was a little confused by the different forms of the stanzas.  There are three forms, a quatrain (four lines), a cinquain (five lines), and a sestet (six lines).  The stanzas are all in iambic meter (unstressed/stressed syllable pattern) and are of eight syllables (referred to as four feet) long.  The quatrains and the sestet end with a shortened line of six syllables.  I should also mention that the quatrain and the sestet also have an alternating ABAB (and a concluding AB for the sestet) rhyme scheme while the cinquain has an ABAAB rhyme scheme.

So the eight syllabic line quatrain, including the shortened fourth line, is a classic ballad form.  There are variations on this, but what Chesterton chose might be most common.  They are typically narrative and the form harkens back to the Middle Ages, though they returned to popularity in the 19^th century. 

The cinquain was not as typical but also made a comeback in the 19^th century.  The 19^th century poets strove for musicality, and Chesterton really comes from that tradition.  The great heyday of the cinquain I would say was in the 17^th century.  “Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness” by John Donne is a really fine example.  That fifth line gives a cinquain more of a contemplative feel. 

Finally a sestet echoes the last six lines of an Italian sonnet, which among other things gives a closure to a thought. 

In all there are ten stanzas, arranged in what I would consider a pattern: 4-5-5-5-4-5-5-5-4-6, where four stands for a quatrain, five for a cinquain, and six for the sestet.   There’s no such established form that I could find, so I would say it’s Chesterton’s creation.  And like the Victorian poets whose lineage he comes from (think Tennyson, Poe, Rossetti, even Yeats and others) the musical/sound experience is paramount to his construction.  And as I look at each of the stanzas, I would say they function in their classical sense.  Though not perfectly, the quatrains are narrative, the cinquains are contemplative, and the sestet brings it to a conclusion.  That’s pretty innovative and yet traditional at the same time!

Now what’s the narrative about?  Yes, the Magi traveling to Jesus, but what I can’t distinguish is whether it’s an actual Magi speaking or someone in Chesterton’s present time (the narrator?) taking on the persona of a Magi.  It seems to blur.  What do people think on that?  Is it one or the other or both?  I just can’t make up my mind. 

Now what I would do at this point is identify the central idea of each stanza.  Here’s my best guess.

Stanza 1: Journey to a place to pray, which I take is the Magi kneeling before the manger as in a crèche scene.  I’m also struck by the paradox that way is plain but easy to lose one’s way.

Stanza 2: Describes the studious nature of the Magi with another paradox that despite their learning they don’t know the truth.

Stanza 3: Further describes the Magi learning, but this time characterized as caught in a circular trap serving merciless pagan gods.

Stanza 4: He describes these gods as hiding the truth, bringing evil by linking them to the serpent.  What’s fascinating here is he has another reference to circular, the serpent biting his tail is a circle, and he identifies it as a false eternity.

Now take a break here.  I would say that stanzas one through four are the first chunk of thought.  Let’s call this Part 1.  It concerns the Magi’s fruitless existence prior to encountering Christ.

Stanza 5: The journey continues.  Again Chesterton brings up the paradox about getting lost on a simple road.

Stanza 6: A description of the whirlwind of snow about them, being blinded by a light, and paradoxically (again!) not being able to see something that is “too large for sight.”

Stanza 7: A walking into the stable to find the Christ child.  Best lines in the poem: “The Child that played with moon and sun/Is playing with a little hay.”

Stanza 8: I have to admit, I am baffled by this stanza.  Which house?  The Magi’s home?  The stable?  The house of the narrator?  This feels like the philosophic center of the poem but I can’t get it. 

OK, those last four stanzas can be called Part 2.  The reach the Christ child and are overwhelmed.

Stanza 9: I think they walk up to the manger here, and again another paradox: they are near but yet so far still to go.  I take that as they still have a journey to comprehend the significance. 

Stanza 10: So this concludes with a roaring laughter.  Why?  And another paradox, “God Himself is born again.”  “Again”?  When was He born the first time?  But the concluding couplet is very striking: they have suddenly, I assume metaphorically, become children “walking through snow and rain.”

So what I take from that last stanza is that the joy of meeting the Christ child transforms the narrators (he refers to a “we”) into children playing in snow.  The once drudgery of the journey is a sort of child’s play now.  This, and the plain too that the lion roars on, brings the poem back to the first stanza of snow and rain.  It gives the poem a circular feel. 

This leaves me with some unanswered questions.  So why the circular form and how does that relate to the serpent’s evil circular image in Part 1?  What is stanza 8 all about?  Why the laughter as a concluding image—it seems to come from nowhere?  And what about the narrator?  Is it the wise men of yore or present day speaker? 

Still I became very fond of the poem as I understood it!  That was enjoyable.