Patiently and bravely she continued to fight against them, and only blamed herself that she received no help from Christ—she believed that this had come upon her as a punishment for her sins. It was the unchastity in her own nature, a secret desire in her own mind, which brought this horror upon her. But she never relaxed in her devotions; she was on the contrary more persevering than ever. And one day a ray of light fell into her tortured soul from above. She remembered how she herself had begged her Saviour for the gift of strength.
But that meant that all these temptations which she had to resist had come to her with His consent, so that she might fight against them and gain strength. Once again her soul was flooded with the old supernatural joy. And when one of the demons, the most horrible and disgusting of them all, shrieked in her ear: “Miserable woman, whatever you may think, your whole life will be filled with these terrible sufferings, you shall never have peace, and we shall not cease to torment you until you bow before our will”, Catherine answered “with holy temerity”, as her biographer expresses it: “I have chosen these temptations as my refuge, and I say that I am happy that I may bear these and all other sufferings, from wherever they may come, out of love for my Saviour and my gentle Bridegroom, and for His honour, as long as He in His eternal goodness wills it.”
It was as though the whole army of devils immediately took flight in wild fear. Before her she saw Christ on the cross, in a great light. He called her by her name, and said, “Catherine, My daughter, see what torments I bore for your sake; you should not think it so hard to suffer for My sake.”
The vision changed—now the Saviour stood before her in the shape she was used to. He spoke in sweet words of the hard struggle she had had, and of her victory.
But Catherine was still so harrowed by the memories of the terrible nights and days of temptation that she murmured as St. Anthony in the wilderness had done: “My beloved Lord, where were You when my heart was filled with such terrible bitterness?”
“I was in your heart”, answered the Lord.
Filled with amazement, Catherine asked how this was possible. He explained, “It was My presence which caused the sorrow and bitterness which I know you felt when the devils raged round you. And My grace guarded your heart so that you did not give in to the temptations of the demons. I would not that you should be spared these struggles as you wished, for I was filled with gladness to see how bravely you fought for your crown of honour. But when you offered so chivalrously to suffer every pain out of love for Me, you were immediately freed from these temptations of hell, because it was My will. And because you have fought like a hero, you have earned and won still more grace, and I will appear to you more often than before and show you greater confidence than before.”
The vision disappeared, but Catherine was left full of indescribable happiness—chiefly because her Lord had called her “Catherine, My daughter” and promised to visit her more frequently than before.
Outwardly her daily life remained the same. Each day after the early Mass she returned to solitude and prayer in the little cell. But her old habit of praying aloud gradually gave way to silent prayer—it took too long for her tumultuous spirit to express in words all that poured into her soul. But she had nevertheless wished for a long time that she could read the breviary—the daily Office—a devotion which members of the third order were not bound to undertake because so many of them were unschooled men and women.
For a time Catherine tried industriously to learn her letters from a friend, presumably Tommaso della Fonte. But this method was too slow for her ardent temperament. And one day she decided to give up. “If my Lord wishes me to praise Him through the daily Office, then one day I shall be able to read. And if not I will content myself with saying ‘Our Father’ and ‘Ave Maria’ as other unschooled women do.”
And then suddenly she could read. Catherine and her friends were convinced that a miracle had occurred—she had learned to read, too, from her heavenly Master. We who live in an age when all children have to learn to read and write find nothing miraculous in this. It is not so unusual for talented children to be able to read before they can manage to spell simple words. A woman with Catherine’s intuitive genius may easily have been able to read fast and confidently from books long before she could manage the more painstaking work of spelling word for word. She was soon able to read any handwriting she saw, and some years later, after she had kept up a wide correspondence and was used to dictating letters to her secretaries, she tried one day to write herself. After her death there were rumours that there were some original manuscripts from her hand in existence. But as these have never been found some of her latest biographers are in doubt about the whole story of Catherine’s ability to write.
The reading of the breviary opened a new treasure-chest of spiritual jewels for her—the Psalms of David, the liturgical prayers of the Church, so full of wisdom and profound poetry, and short sketches of the history of the Church and the lives of the saints. However much she understood by intuition and however deeply she was permitted through her visions to penetrate the essence of faith and the words of Our Lord—an ability which the Church has always considered she was granted by especial and supernatural grace—Catherine did not by any means think that she was above learning the essentials of her religion in the ordinary way. She submitted unconditionally to the teaching of the Church, and, at any rate according to her own opinion, to the advice of her spiritual directors. Filled with joy she repeated again and again the opening words of the breviary: “Deus in adjutorium meum intende; Domine ad adjuvandum me festina—O God come to my help, O Lord make haste to help me.”
It happened sometimes that when Catherine was reading her breviary Our Lord appeared to her and read the responses “as when two monks read the Office together”. And finally she received an answer to her repeated prayers that Christ in His mercy would grant the desire of her heart—to be one with Him in perfect belief and faith. Christ replied, “I shall make you My betrothed in perfect faith.”
It was the last day of carnival. Everyone in Siena—bad and good Christians—prepared for the long and hungry weeks of the fast. The whole town was alive with frivolous young people revelling and rejoicing. At the same time good housewives like Lapa and her daughters-in-law prepared a luxurious meal of meat and cheese and all the good things which they were now to deny themselves for so long, for it would be a great shame if any of the food should rot or be wasted. So they urged everyone to eat, eat, eat, till dishes and plates were as clean as though they had been licked. Raimondo calls the carnival “a festival of the belly”, and he is not usually censorious.
Only Catherine was alone in her cell, and prayed for the revellers—her life was already an uninterrupted fast. She was heavy-hearted, for she knew that during these days when people gave themselves up completely to the lusts of the flesh many of her townsmen would throw off the bonds which daily piety laid upon them and fling themselves headlong into gross sin. She prayed and scourged herself, while she begged her Lord to forgive all those who now offended Him. She received a princely answer: “For My sake you have thrown away the vanity of this world. You have regarded the lusts of the senses as nothing and chosen Me as the only joy of your heart. Therefore now, while all the others here in your house feast and enjoy themselves with good food and drink, I will celebrate the solemn marriage feast with your soul. I shall betroth you to Myself as I have promised.”
Around Christ there now appeared His blessed mother, the apostle St. John the Evangelist and St. Paul, and David the poet-king bearing a harp upon which he played beautiful melodies. As is the custom at betrothals the mother, the Virgin Mary, stepped forward and took Catherine’s right hand. She lifted it up towards her Son, and bade Him bind His bride to Him in faith as He had promised. Jesus put a beautiful ring on her finger; it was adorned with a brilliant diamond surrounded by four large pearls. He spoke the solemn words which the bridegroom says to his bride: “I here betroth you as My bride in perf
ect faith, which for all time shall keep you pure and virgin, until our marriage is celebrated in heaven with great rejoicing. My daughter, from now on you must undertake without protest all the works which I come to demand of you, for armed with the power of faith you shall triumphantly overcome all your opponents.”
The vision disappeared. But afterwards the maiden could always see this engagement ring on her finger, although it was invisible to all others.
Jesus had betrothed her namesake Catherine of Alexandria to prepare her for her death as a martyr. The girl from Siena did not as yet dream of the work for which her Bridegroom had chosen and was training her. When it was revealed to her she drew back at first, weeping with apprehension, even though she obediently and patiently tried to follow her Master and be “obedient unto death”.
V
A LITTLE WHILE AFTER her mystical betrothal Catherine again saw her Lord in a vision. It was at the time of day when the good folk of Siena gathered round the dinner table. Jesus said: “You are to go and seat yourself at the table with your family. Talk to them kindly, and then come back here.”
When Catherine heard these words she began to weep—she was so completely unprepared to leave her cell and her life of contemplation and mix again with people in the world. But Our Lord was firm:
“Go in peace. In this way you shall serve Me and become more perfectly united to Me through love of Me and your neighbour, and then you will be able to rise even more quickly to heaven, as though on wings. Do you remember how the desire to bring souls to salvation burned in you while you were still a little child—and that you dreamed of dressing yourself as a man and entering the order of the Friars Preachers to work for this end?”
Although Catherine was more than willing to obey the will of God she tried to raise objections: “But how can I be of any use in the work of saving souls, I who am merely Your poor servant girl? For I am a woman, and it is not seemly for my sex to try to teach men, or even to speak with them. Besides, they take no notice of what we say”, she sighed.
But Jesus replied as the Archangel Gabriel had once replied:
“All things are possible for God who has created everything from nothing. I know that you say this from humility, but you must know that in these days pride has grown monstrously among men, and chiefly among those who are learned and think they understand everything. It was for this reason that at another period I sent out simple men who had no human learning, but were filled by Me with divine wisdom, and let them preach. To-day I have chosen unschooled women, fearful and weak by nature, but trained by Me in the knowledge of the divine, so that they may put vanity and pride to shame. If men will humbly receive the teachings I send them through the weaker sex I will show them great mercy, but if they despise these women they shall fall into even worse confusion and even greater agony.
“Therefore, my dear daughter, you shall humbly do My will, for I will never fail you; on the contrary, I will come to you as often as before and I will guide and help you in all things.”
Catherine bowed her head, rose and went from her chamber and seated herself at the table with her family. It is a pity that none of Catherine’s biographers has described for us the amazement it must have caused Jacopo and Lapa to see their hermit daughter seated among them—not to speak of the reaction of her brothers and sisters-in-law and their children. But although Catherine had returned in the flesh to the bosom of her family, her thoughts were with her Saviour. And as soon as the Benincasas rose from the table Catherine fled back to her cell, filled with longing to continue her conversation with her Lord. For the young girl who was later to have such experiences as very few women have ever had, and who met these experiences with unyielding courage, this first return to the family circle after having lived outside it for three years must have been a terrible ordeal.
But she soon became accustomed to the new life. As her Bridegroom wished her to move among people, the girl considered that she must try to live among them as humbly and piously as possible, that she might be an example of Christian virtue. But she knew that if she was to achieve this she would need boundless humility, as no pride has such strong roots or is so cunningly hidden, none is so harmful both to one’s own soul and to the souls of all those who come in contact with it, as the pride of “holy” people in their own holiness. The humility of the saints of God can often seem unreasonable to people of our own age, and there are many who do not believe in it and mutter the word “hypocrisy”. For Catherine, with her deep insight into the life of the soul, the fight to achieve perfect humility was one of profound importance. The further her way led her from the first small circle of friends, the more she became renowned as a saint or slandered as an unfeminine trouble-maker continually meddling with what did not concern her. The more she was abused as a hypocrite or feted as a worker of miracles, the harder she fought to despise her own ego and to make herself less than the worst sinner, bowed in the dust before the feet of her Lord. Later, when her spiritual sons and daughters were upset because their adored “mamma” was slandered and persecuted, she said that she considered her human enemies as her true benefactors. It is unlikely that they understood what she meant—perhaps not even those who heard her cry on her deathbed, “Vanity? Never. The true praise and honour of God.” From the day when Christ led the young Sister of Penitence out of her solitary cell and sent her into the restless world where He wished her to serve Him among people of every kind, until her last moment on earth, the fear of becoming self-satisfied must have throbbed like a wound in her inmost soul.
While she was still a girl she had learned to build a cell in her soul, and this became her refuge when she went back to live among her relatives. Soon she was to be dragged into the whirl of people in the streets of Siena, and finally over the roads and seas of the world to wherever her fellow-men had need of her.
Once—it seemed long ago to her now—her mother had made her work like a slave for the family in order to break her obstinate intention of living her own life as the Holy Spirit demanded of her. Now Catherine voluntarily undertook all this work, and even more. She had always been extremely fond of her family, and now that she had learned to sink her natural love for her parents and brothers and sisters into the sea of God’s love, she was happy to be allowed to do all she could for them. Lapa had made sure of giving her intelligent young daughter a thorough training in everything concerning housewifery, and she did not need to waste much time on eating and sleeping; for years she had passed most of the night in prayer and meditation. Now she went round the house at night, collected all the dirty clothes, and washed them while the household slept; scrubbed the stairs and the floors and tidied up generally. In the daytime she prepared the food and baked bread, laid the table and washed up after meals. And although she did the work of an industrious servant, she also took upon herself the work of the other maid when she fell ill, and looked after the patient carefully and affectionately.
But it was at this time that she decided to receive Holy Communion more often than before. She felt that she needed to be united with her eternal Bridegroom not only spiritually but also physically, more often than before, now that she had to pray and meditate while her hands and feet were busy doing St. Martha’s work in her father’s house.
Members of the third order of St. Dominic were not bound to make the three usual monastic vows of eternal chastity, perfect obedience and personal poverty. Many of the brothers and sisters were married, some of them served masters in their work, some had property which they promised to administer like good Christians, while they themselves lived frugally and gave as much as they could to their neighbour. Catherine had made her vow of chastity while she was still a little girl. She had also promised Christ to be completely obedient to her spiritual director and to all others whom He might give authority over her. She maintained that she had never sinned against this vow of obedience. Although she was always ready to accuse herself of all kinds of greater and lesser sins she insisted that she had always be
en completely obedient. This obedience—the obedience of a penitent to her confessor, of an unschooled woman to priests and monks, of a child to her parents—was never meant to be the blind obedience of a deaf, dumb and unthinking object. Catherine obeyed humbly and patiently, but she felt that she had the right to protest whenever she was convinced that the rules her confessor wished her to follow were not right for her, and she felt that she was free to say so, when she realised that his advice would not benefit her soul. An extraordinary relationship grew up between Catherine and her confessors, especially Raimondo of Capua. The blessed Raimondo was many years older than Catherine, a learned theologian and experienced confessor of men and women, but he listened to his penitent and usually had to bow before her deeper insight into the spiritual life, and accept her advice like a son listening to his wise mother. He was her father in Christ, with the priest’s authority over her; she was his spiritual mother, with an authority over him which she had by virtue of her greater understanding of the secrets of the faith—a bride of Christ to whom their beloved Master had entrusted greater knowledge than the average Christian possesses.
It was many years since Catherine had renounced the possession of worldly goods, except what was essential—one or two garments, the few things which furnished her cell, some books and a sewing basket with the necessary sewing materials. But now she had been sent out into the world again—and then as now the poor were part of the world. Beggars stopped her in the street or came to the door of the dyer’s house; and then too there were the poor who tried to hide their misery because they were ashamed to ask for sympathy from their neighbours. For Catherine they were all people who were “sunk in the sea of divine love”. Above them rolled the waves of the sea in which she lived.