That
parable from Luke’s gospel has been a favorite of mine ever since I was
a junior in high school and had to write a little essay about it.
And what better place to reflect on that parable than in Siena, the city
of St. Catherine, the woman, the mystic, the saint who refused to take
no for an answer!
In the parable, it was a judge who refused
the woman’s repeated and insistent requests; in the life of St.
Catherine, it was Popes, not judges, who gave her the cold shoulder.
Popes in the plural because at one point there were three who claimed to
be Pope. Catherine was undeterred. She was a woman who wouldn’t
take no for an answer. She was courageous, outspoken, and tireless in
her efforts to sort out that mess!
Catherine was born here in Siena into a
large family (she was a twin, the 23rd child in a family of 24!). The
year was 1347. She lived to be only 33, but she accomplished a
whole lot in those few short years!
Catherine was open to God from the start.
As a young girl of 6 she had a vision of Christ who appeared to her
right over this very church where she spent so much of her time.
She gave her heart to Christ at once and decided not to marry so he
could be her spouse. Her mother wasn’t pleased, to put it mildly.
At one point, much to her mother’s distress, Catherine cut her hair to
make her unattractive to young men. Catherine is often pictured as a
nun but she really remained a lay woman. When she was 16 or 17 she
did become a Third Order Dominican and her mother wasn’t please about
that either. She dismissed her household servants and made
Catherine do their work. She also took her room away from her so
she wouldn’t have a place to pray (how in the world did she ever rate a
room with 24 siblings!). In any case, God told Catherine to turn
inward to the “cell of her own soul” and she would find Him there.
She did. Her father finally came to her rescue, gave her back her
room, and allowed her to pursue the prayer she was so attracted to, and
it was then that she began to have mystical experiences, sometimes
terrifying, sometimes rapturous.
At around age 19, Catherine heard Jesus
calling her to reach out to the sick and the poor. She started
nursing people with the most repulsive diseases. One day, as she
was leaving this very church, she met a beggar who cried out for alms.
She had nothing to give him but she told him if he would go home with
her, she would give him clothes, food, money. But he wanted something
then and there so she tore the little metal cross off her rosary and
gave it to him. He went off blessing her for her kindness. That
night, Jesus appeared to her holding up that cross which was now studded
with jewels. He asked her if she recognized it; she said yes, but
that it didn’t look like that when she gave it away. He replied, “No,
your love has done this to it, and I will give it back to you on
judgment day before the angels and saints to show how you have loved
me.”
Not long after, Catherine heard God calling
her to become active in the affairs of the Church and State. She began
letter-writing campaigns to princes, papal legates, and popes (she
actually couldn’t write but she could dictate!). At the time, the
Pope was in Avignon, under the thumb of the French king, and – against
all odds and despite the opposition of the French king - Catherine
traveled to Avignon and after a great many efforts and many rebuffs,
eventually prevailed upon the Pope, Gregory XI, to return to Rome.
Sometime later when a new Pope was elected - an Italian - the French
cardinals revolted and went back to Avignon where they elected their own
Pope. The new Pope summoned Catherine to Rome where she
spent her last years working strenuously for the unity and the reform of
the Church and serving the destitute and down-and-out.
It would be fair to say that Catherine
sacrificed her life for the unity and the reform of the Church.
All that took its toll on her, of course. She died young but like
that woman in that gospel parable, Catherine never gave up.
The Church honors this scarcely literate
but visionary and profoundly holy woman as a Doctor of the Church, and
Italy rightly honors her, along with St. Francis of Assisi, as one of
the two great patrons of Italy.
Father Michael G. Ryan
|
|
