Faith Filled Friday: St. Catherine of Siena on Suffering for the Salvation of Souls

This is posted on early morning Saturday, in the wee hours and in the in-between of Friday, which is our faithful remembrance of the Lord’s suffering, and of Saturday, which is April 29^th, the feast day of my beloved patroness, and the patroness of this blog, St. Catherine of Siena.  

Painting above is titled, Saint Catherine of Siena and the Beggar by Giovanni di Paolo. You can read about the painting here.  

In the past to commemorate St. Catherine’s feast day I have posted an excerpt from one of her many letters or perhaps a poem prayer she wrote.  But I have never posted an excerpt from her single great book titled, The Dialogue.  The book was initially dictated while Catherine was in a state of mystical ecstasy, but she did attempt to edit herself the writing.  The dialogue is between herself and God the Father, a conversation mostly on truth and love.  The book is the most complex expression of Catherine’s thought, touching on all aspects of Christian faith, from commonplace morality to mystical exchange with the divine.  Indeed, the difficulties I think that some find with the book is that Catherine at times reaches for language to describe a transcendent experience that cannot really be described. 

I excerpt chapter 5, a short two paragraph chapter where the voice is of God the Father responding to Catherine’s wish to take on suffering for the salvation of others.  The salvation of souls was always a deep concern for Catherine.  She felt real horror and pity thinking that some, even though evil, would be damned to hell.  Here is God’s response.

 

The willing desire to suffer every pain and hardship even to the point of death for the salvation of souls is very pleasing to me.  The more you bear, the more you show your love for me.  In loving me you come to know more of my truth, and the more you know, the more intolerable pain and sorrow you will feel when I am offended.

 

You asked for suffering, and you asked me to punish you for the sins of others.  What you were not aware of was that you were, in effect, asking for love and light and knowledge of the truth.  For I have already told you that suffering and sorrow increase in proportion to love: When love grows, so does sorrow.  So I say to you: Ask and it shall be given to you.  I will not say no to anyone who asks in truth.  Consider that the soul’s love in divine charity is so joined with perfect patience that the one cannot leave without the other.  The soul, therefore, who chooses to love me must also choose to suffer for me anything at all that I give her.  Patience is not proved except in suffering, and patience is one with charity, as has been said.  Endure courageously, then.  Otherwise you will not show yourself to be—nor will you be—faithful spouses and children of my Truth, nor will you show that your delight is in my honor and in the salvation of souls.  (p. 33)

There are parts of this that I do not fully understand.  For instance, I don’t quite know in a full way how “divine charity is joined with perfect patience.”  I don’t think I really know what perfect patience is.  But I do understand how the desire and request to take on suffering leads to an enlightenment, and in that desire is love of God and neighbor.  With love comes suffering, even with love of God.  I pray for the salvation of all souls. 

I quote from The Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue edition, translated and with an Introduction by Suzanne Noffke, O.P. copyright 1980 by Paulist Press, Inc.  If you have a desire to read it, do not get any other translation but the Noffke translation.  The others you will find are poorly translated and poorly abridged.  It took the Noffke translation to make Catherine’s book readable and coherent in English. 

Faith Filled Friday: The Way up the Ladder by St. Catherine of Siena

April 29^th is the feast of the patron saint of this blog, St. Catherine of Siena, and this little passage from one of her letters outlines one of her most profound theological ideas, Christ crucified as a ladder to holiness, a ladder to God.  She would go on to develop this further in her great work, The Dialogue, which was a mystically inspired conversation between God and her.  Since the 29^th falls on a Sunday this year, I think technically the feast day is shifted to Monday.  Enjoy this little passage.  It’s filled with her incredible brilliance.

And if you ask, “What is the way?” I will tell you it is the way Christ chose, the way of disgrace, suffering, torment, and scourging.  “And how?”  Through genuine humility and blazing charity, an indescribable love by which we renounce all worldly riches and ambition.  And from humility we progress to obedience, as I have said.  Upon such obedience follows peace, since obedience frees us from all suffering and gives us every joy—for the selfish will, the source of suffering, has been done away with.

To make it possible to climb to this perfection, Christ actually made for us a staircase of his body.

If you look at his feet, you see that they are nailed fast to the cross to form the first stair.  This is because we have first to rid ourselves of all selfish will.  For just as the feet carry the body, desire carries the soul.  Reflect that we can never have any virtue at all if we don’t climb this first stair.  Once you have climbed it, you arrive at deep and genuine humility.

Climb the next stair without delay and you come to the open side of God’s Son.  There you find the fiery abyss of divine charity.  At this second stair, his open side, you find a storehouse filled with fragrant spices.  There you find the God-Man.  There your soul is so sated and drunk that you lose all self-consciousness, just like a drunkard intoxicated with wine; you see nothing but his blood, shed with such blazing love. 

Then, aflame with desire, you get up and climb to the next stair, his mouth.  There you find rest in quiet calm; there you taste the peace of obedience.  A person who is really completely drunk, good and full, falls asleep, and in that sleep feels neither pleasure nor pain.  So too the spouse of Christ, sated with love, falls asleep in the peace of her Bridegroom.  Her feelings too are asleep so that, even if all sorts of troubles befall her, they don’t disturb her at all.  If she is materially well off she feels no disproportionate pleasure, because she has already stripped herself of all that is at the first stair.  This, then, is where she finds herself conformed with Christ crucified, united with him.

            From The Letters of St. Catherine of Siena, Vol. II translated by Suzanne Noffke; quoted from Magnificat, March 2018.

Notice the three steps of the bridge, the feet, the wounded side, and the mouth.  One climbs the first stair by shedding one’s will through humility.  One reaches the second stair as one reaches charity, or true love.  And finally at the third stair you are in complete harmony with God whiole achieving a state of peace.