Saint Catherine

“ Saint Catherine could not refuse a sword to the damsel, whom she loved so dearly that every day and every hour she came down from Paradise to see and talk with her on earth,—a maiden who in return had shown her devotion by travelling to Fierbois to do the Saint reverence. For we must not omit to state that Saint Catherine in company with Saint Margaret had never ceased to appear to Jeanne both at Chinon and at Tours. ”

“ It is never the sins of the world that most torture Catherine: always, as here, the sins of the Church. She does not pause till she comes to the terrible climax: "I see the Christian religion lying like a dead man, and I neither mourn nor weep over him." It is the very light of most holy faith that has confused the vision of men. And again we hear the familiar refrain, "I believe that my iniquities are the cause of it." ”

“ Catherine had learned a hard lesson. She saw in human beings not their achievements, but their possibilities. Therefore she quickened repentance by a positive method, not by morbid analysis of evil, not by lurid pictures of the consequences of sin, but by filling the soul with glowing visions of that holiness which to see is to long for. She never despaired of quickening in even the most degraded that flame of "holy desire" which is the earnest of true holiness to be. ”

“ Above all it can teach us, I think, with a rare completeness, wherein lies the secret of a persuasive holiness. For Catherine lets us see, with unusual clearness, how this winningness lies in the pathetically dramatic spectacle and appeal presented by a life engaged in an ever-increasing ethical and spiritual energizing,—whether in a slow shifting and pushing of its actual centre, down and in from the circumference of the soul to its true centre, and from this true centre enlarging and reorganizing its whole ever-expanding being again and again ”

“ Dear reader, observe the wonderful virtue of Catherine. Admire that inspiration of charity which inclines her to perform an act so repugnant to nature: consider the zeal which influences her, notwithstanding the revolt of her senses; remark that amazing courage that cannot be intimidated by the shocking calumny and odious ingratitude of the sick woman; contemplate, in fine, that soul which derives its strength from God, which praise cannot render haughty, and which gains over the flesh a last triumph, by drinking what it shuddered with horror merely to see! ”

“ Catherine was, therefore at once satisfied and fasting; deprived of all exteriorly, but abundantly nourished in the interior; thirsty in her body, but inundated in her soul, by torrents of living waters, and always when necessary strong and joyous. But the old and tortuous serpent could not endure such a great favor from Heaven, without seeking to empoison it with the venom of envy. He excited against the servant of God, on the occasion of her extraordinary fast, all those who knew her, whether laymen or Religious. ”

“ Catherine arose from the place in which she was praying, and advancing to meet him, graciously and respectfully saluted him. The aged knight said to her with a profound inclination: " Madame, I have done what you prescribed to me; I confessed all my sins to Friar Thomas, who assigned me a penance, and I am resolved to accomplish it, such as it is imposed on me." Catherine responded: " You have acted wisely for the salvation of your soul, now avoid all your former practices and combat as valiantly for Jesus Christ, as you have done for the world." ”

“ The soul of Catherine became daily more enriched with the grace of the Saviour. She flew rather than walked in the paths of virtue, and she conceived the holy desire of arriving at so perfect a degree of faith, that nothing would henceforth be capable of separating her from her divine Spouse, whom her heart aspired alone to please. She therefore besought God to augment her faith, and render it sufficiently strong to resist any and every enemy. Our Blessed Lord answered her, "I will espouse thee in faith." And each time Catherine renewed her prayer, Jesus Christ repeated the same answer. ”

“ Follow therefore courageously, the inspiration which will enlighten thee; for I shall draw, by thy aid, numerous souls from the gulf of hell, and I will conduct them, with the help of my grace, to the Kingdom of Heaven." Catherine heard these words several times, and when our Lord repeated to her: "Fear nothing, be not troubled," she answered: "you are my God, and I am but thy little handmaid: may thy will ever be accomplished, but remember me and incline unto my aid, according to the greatness of thy mercy. ”

“ We thus get something of which the interesting cases of “doubleness of personality,” so much studied of late years, are, as it were, purely psychical, definitely maladif caricatures; the great difference consisting in Catherine herself possessing, at all times, the consciousness and memory of both sides, of both “selves,” and of each as both actual and potential, within the range of her one great personality. Indeed it is this very multiplicity thus englobed and utilized by that higher unity, which gives depth to her sanity and sanctity. ”

“ In the beginning of her visions, Catherine related to her Confessors, that our Lord appeared to her, while she was meditating and said to her: " Know, my daughter, what you are and what I am; if you learn these two things, you shalt be truly blest: you are what is not, and I am the great I Am; if thy soul is deeply penetrated with this truth, the enemy cannot deceive you and you will avoid all his snares; you will never consent to do any thing against my commandments, and you will acquire without difficulty, grace, truth and peace." ”

“ It is evident that Catherine possessed the spirit of prophecy, for she knew at a distance of twenty-four miles, a mental prayer addressed to her, and was capable of granting so promptly and perfectly the help implored.
How advantageous is it to be in the friendship of persons who see like the angelic spirits, and who being clothed with power divine may aid us in every danger; and if Catherine's prayers were so powerful while she was yet in this terrestrial vale, what must be her influence now in Heaven. ”

“ Catherine’s whole convert life is one long series of the most striking examples of an heroic delicacy in self-knowledge and self-fighting in this matter: a delicacy which, as to the degree of its possibility and desirableness in any particular soul, is, however, peculiarly dependent upon that soul’s special circumstances, temperament, attrait, and degree of perfection reached and to be reached. ”

“ Catherine is then saved from any touch of Pharisaism by her remarkable identification of herself with the person to whom she writes. But to understand her attitude we must go further. For she never pauses in reprobation of evil. Full of conviction that the soul needs only to recognise its sin to hate and escape it for ever, she passes swiftly on to impassioned appeal. Her words breathe a confidence in men that never fails even when she is writing to the most hardened. ”

“ Catherine’s fundamental conversion-experience and all her later teachings attach her Reconciliation to the entire act of ceaseless Divine “ecstasy,” self-humiliation, and redemptive immanence in Man, of which the whole earthly life and death of Christ are the centre and culmination; but though the human soul’s corresponding action is conceived as continuous, once it has begun, she loves to dwell upon this whole action as itself the gift of God and the consequence of His prevenient act. ”

“ But I know well that Thou saidst several times, ‘Come, since I want to devour thee.’ ... To me it seemed that I merited rather to go under Lucifer, than into the Infinite Light (Luce) .”
We get here a number of interesting parallels and contrasts to Catherine’s teaching and practice. God’s devouring of the soul; God pictured as Light; souls conceived as higher up or lower down in space, according to their degree of goodness or of badness; even the pleasure in a play upon words: all this finds its close counterpart in Catherine. ”

“ Do not intercede for him; it is just that he burn in eternal flames; he merits death a thousand times."
Catherine prostrated herself at the feet of her divine Spouse, and bathed them with her tears — and prayed in aspirations like these: "Didst thou not, loving Jesus I bear this man's sins with ours on thy venerable shoulders ? Am I here to dispute thy justice, or to invoke thy mercy ? Remember Lord thou didst promise to aid me in saving souls; I have no other consolation but that of seeing them return to thee; it is the only circumstance that renders me capable of enduring thy absence. ”

“ This abiding parable of the contrast between ideal and actual was perhaps never more painful to the devout soul than in Catherine's time, and perhaps we are safe in saying that no one ever suffered from it more than she. Her whole life was an Act of Faith: faith the more heroic because maintained against the recurrent attacks of spiritual doubt and despair. ”

“ And since Catherine’s special characteristic consists precisely in the richness and variety of her life at any one moment, and in the successive, ever-accelerated enrichment which it achieves almost up to the end, any obliteration of this successive growth, or any one-sided attention to any one aspect of her life during any one of its chief periods, will readily take all life-likeness out of her portrait. ”

“ Catherine therefore repaired to the bedside of her cherished parent, and found him wholly disposed to quit the world without regret, and she thanked God with all the fervor of her heart.
But her filial affection was not yet satisfied: she endeavored to obtain from the Source of all grace not only that her father's faults might be pardoned, but also that at the hour of death his soul might be borne to heaven without passing through the flames of purgatory. It was answered her that justice could not lose its rights, and that the soul must be perfectly pure to enjoy the splendors of glory. ”

“ There is nothing here, at least in the Ettore’s case, that the most intolerantly robust, or even the most hysterically would-be strong, mind could suspect of sickliness. And yet, if undoubtedly much of all this fruitful virility in Catherine’s closest friend, and in Catherine’s God-daughter, proceeds from Catherine herself, it nevertheless springs up and grows within them, not as an avowed, nor probably, for the most part, even as conscious, imitation or reminiscence. ”

“ Catherine exhibits well this double relation, of true contradiction, and of contrast, both based upon a certain genuine affinity between the human soul and God. On one side of herself she is indeed a veritable fish out of water ”

“ Catherine's first impulse is to bid the friends at home rejoice with her in news great in itself, and greater because it may clear the way for the realization of wider hopes. It is noteworthy that the instant the end for which she has long been straining is achieved, her loyal and aspiring spirit reverts to her old dreams, and summons her companions to resume prayer for a Crusade. ”