Monday, April 29, 2024
Memorial of Saint Catherine of Siena, Virgin and Doctor of the Church
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Story of a saint
Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.
Catherine of Siena believed these words. She refused many opportunities in her life, until her family stopped dunning her about them and let her be. She had cut off her hair, she refused to eat and drink much of the time, and she served the sick and dying at the hospital in Siena. She visited the prison there, and ministered to those in captivity.
Her mother Lapa bore 25 children. Catherine was the 23rd, born just before the Black Death nearly destroyed the populations of Europe. After a vision when she was five, she vowed to give her whole life to God. Because her family opposed this, Catherine took the idea of an imaginary friend a giant step further. As she advised others to do later, she “built a cell inside her mind, from which she could never flee.”
Unlike other anchorites who kept a physical presence in one church or another, she populated her imaginary cell with the members of her family. Her father became Jesus Christ and her mother the Virgin Mary. She imagined her brothers to be the Apostles of the New Testament. Serving them humbly, both within her cell and in the physical family home, became a rich opportunity for practicing forgiveness, gratitude, and generosity.
Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
Her family finally relented and she became a lay Dominican. Devout women taught Catherine to read and write in her teens, and she wrote many letters, often to important political and religious figures. She was friends with more than one pope, and encouraged the pope who had settled in Avignon (Gregory XI) to return to Rome, which he did a few months later.
Gregory’s successor Urban asked Catherine to come to Rome, and she obeyed. Those around her insisted she fast less and eat more, but that became more and more difficult for her. Her body
gradually reduced to a shell and eventually she could no longer eat or drink. Only thirty-three, she suffered a massive stroke and soon died.
I have told you this while I am with you. The Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name will teach your everything and remind you of all that I told you.
Catherine of Siena’s letters are a Tuscan treasure, still read and appreciated. Her service and mysticism, along with the wisdom she shared in those letters, resulted quickly in a scramble for relics, so there are parts of Catherine in several places in Italy. She is the patron saint against fire, for people ridiculed for their piety and for nurses. Along with Francis of Assisi, she is the patron saint of Italy.
Her mother Lapa lived to be 89 years old. After Catherine died, venerators placed her head in a bronze bust. In Siena a procession carried this to the Dominican church, and her mother marched with the others in the processioin behind the bust. Later she helped Catherine’s confessor write her biography, which remains in print today.
May you be blessed by the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Heaven is the heaven of the Lord, but the earth he has given to the children of men.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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