St. Catherine of Siena

Catherine of Siena was a remarkable Christian woman. She stands out in her historical period as a strong, colorful, passionate and enthusiastic personality. She had tremendous zest for life and put all herself into whatever she was convinced about. She was said to be always ‘at full stretch’ whether responding to her loving God or reaching out compassionately to her needy neighbor.

Catherine’s writings have a style which is spontaneous, energetic and passionate with superb use of imagery. She uses images in her efforts to communicate her inexpressible experience of the most profound realities, and hopes that these images will stimulate the dormant intuition of her readers, opening up for them a deeper meaning of human and divine truths. Her images come from the ordinary things and experiences of her life: a fire eagerly consuming the wood thrown on it, light filtering through a narrow street, a tall tree laden with fruit, a bridge across a river, the mirror in which she sees her own reflection, a vineyard, the vast ocean with its peaceful surface.

The context in which she develops her theology and spirituality is SELF-KNOWLEDGE. Her first question is ‘Who am I?’ In order to know who we are or what the meaning of our lives is, we need to go to the One who made us. No matter how much we understand ourselves by looking at ourselves, we can never arrive at the deepest, richest self-knowledge without seeing ourselves through God’s eyes, without gazing at ourselves in the ‘gentle mirror’ of God. Her God is always gentle. The reason we can see ourselves in our gentle God is that we are made in the divine image.

The process or growing in self-knowledge is compared by Catherine to digging a well. If we want to make or uncover a well we need to dig through much soil, even stones at times, before we reach the running water. Likewise in coming to know ourselves, we come in touch with our own inadequacies, imperfections, failures, limitations. These are what she calls the ‘soil of our poverty’, and she encourages us not to be afraid to go down this well, that is, not to run away in fear or disgust from that part of ourselves which is dark, frail or imperfect.

Rather she encourages us to stay with it, for it reminds us of an important truth about ourselves, namely that as created beings, we have to accept that limitations and inadequacies are built into our human condition. In becoming aware of our limitations and incompleteness, we become aware also of our need for God, the running water at the bottom of our well, and we begin to stretch out and reach down towards this bubbling source of life within us. We are like the deer that yearns for running streams, or like a dry weary, land that longs for water. (Psalms 42 and 65).

“I have no intention of parting you from myself, but rather of making sure to bind you to me all the closer by the bond of your love for your neighbor. Remember that I have laid down two commandments of love: Love of me and love of your neighbor… It is the justice of these two commandments that I want you now to fulfill. On two feet you must walk my way.”

Catherine offers some questions which can help us assess whether our love and service of others is ‘freely-given and without self-seeking’: are we inordinately distressed if our love is not returned? Do we draw back in our service if others do not seem to love us as much as we love them? Does it upset us to see people loving others more than they love us? Even the love we have for our friends needs to be evaluated: it is not as gratuitous as we may think it is if we feel excessive pain either when they are absent or when they seem to prefer the companionship of others to ours.