Over and over again this same urgent appeal, now in one form, now in another, is made by Catherine to her contemporaries. Her one overwhelming concern, as the extracts below from her letters indicate, is that all should seize the opportunity afforded by Christ to live free from the oppression of sin and weakness:

Christ frees us from weakness and strengthens the heart of the troubled who with genuine humility and confidence ask for his help.

Oh how sweet is this servitude that frees us from the servitude of sin!

Free yourselves from the bond of pride and bind yourselves to the humble Lamb,

We must, then, very conscientiously free our heart and affection from this tyrant, the world, and set it on God, completely free and sincere, letting nothing come between ourselves and him. We must not be two-faced or love falsely, since he is our dear God, and he keeps his eyes on us, seeing our hidden and inmost heart.

I long, with boundless love, for God in his infinite mercy to free you from all half-heartedness and sentimentality and make you a new man.

We will do, then, what the Canaanite woman did. As we see Christ passing through our soul we will turn to him in true holy desire, with sincere contrition and hatred for sin, and we will say: “Lord,
free my daughter-I mean my soul!”

The actual forms of slavery from which Catherine desires to liberate her contemporaries include such things as slavery to sin, to oppression, to lies and fear, and to the threat of death. But even more than her concern to liberate people from various kinds of oppression, Catherine’s focus, in her writings and in her prayers, is on the positive use and purpose of freedom–what freedom is for. This means in practice the freedom to choose to live a life of virtue in service of the Gospel; the freedom to work not for one’s own immediate aims but for justice and truth; the freedom, in short, to devote oneself wholeheartedly to the love of God and neighbor.

And it means also freedom to open oneself up in contemplation to the love of God in Christ, turning one’s gaze to God with what Catherine calls the eye of faith and understanding. She writes: “If our free will chooses to open this eye and focus it on Christ crucified and his pure, tender, straightforward love for us, we will on seeing his straightforwardness receive him straightforwardly into our affection and will.” What’s more, “With the love we have drawn from the gentle loving Word, we will love our neighbors, love them purely, faithfully seeking their salvation and helping them to the best of our ability with whatever God has given us to administer.” In the end, in Catherine’s understanding, it is only the pure, tender, straightforward love of God revealed in Christ Jesus that can rescue men and women from the slavery of pride and selfishness, and help liberate them to use the freedom they have been given for great and noble aims.

St Catherine of Siena : Mystic of Fire, Preacher of Freedom by Paul Murray OP