And in a prayer at Avignon, addressing God the Father, she (St Catherine of Siena) confesses:

I am a foolish and wretched creature while you are supreme goodness. I am death and you are life. I am darkness and you are light. I am ignorance and you are wisdom. You are infinite and I am finite. I am sick and you are the doctor. I am a weak sinner who has never loved you.

An open and honest acknowledgment of past failure was, for Catherine, of fundamental importance in the spiritual life. At no stage, however, did she suggest that we are obliged, with grim repetitiveness, to put our face down into the mud of the memory of our past sin. Accordingly, to a contemplative nun who was
suffering greatly from discouragement, she wrote:

I really want you to see your nothingness and negligence and ignorance-but I don’t want you to see them through the darkness of discouragement but in the light of the infinite goodness of God you find within yourself. Understand that the devil would like nothing better than to have you go over and over the knowledge of your wretchedness without anything else to season it. But that knowledge has to be seasoned with hope in God’s mercy.

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