“Sometimes I allow the world to show them what it is, so that, feeling its diverse and various passions, they may know how little stability it has, and may come to lift their desire beyond it, and seek their native country, which is the Eternal Life. And so I draw them by these, and by many other ways, for the eye cannot see, nor the tongue relate, nor the heart think, how many are the roads and ways which I use, through love alone, to lead them back to grace, so that My truth may be fulfilled in them. I am constrained to do so by that inestimable love of Mine, by which I created them, and by the love, desire, and grief of My servants, since I am no despiser of their tears, and sweat, and humble prayers; rather I accept them, inasmuch as I am He who gives them this love for the good of souls and grief for their loss.
“It is necessary for you to have two lights derived from this primary light, and to these two I will also add a third. The first lightens you all to know the transitory nature of the things of the world, all of which pass like the wind. But this you cannot know thoroughly, unless you first recognize your own fragility, how strong is your inclination, through the law of perversity with which your members are bound, to rebel against Me, your Creator (not that by this law any man can be constrained to commit any, even the smallest sin, against his will, but that this law of perversity fights lustily against the spirit). I did not impose this law upon you, in order that My rational creature should be conquered by it, but in order that he should prove and increase the virtue of his soul, because virtue cannot be proved, except by its contrary. Sensuality is contrary to the spirit, and yet, by means of sensuality, the soul is able to prove the love which she has for Me, her Creator. How does she prove it? When, with anger and displeasure, she rises against herself. This law has also been imposed in order to preserve the soul in true humility. Wherefore thou seest that, while I created the soul to Mine own image and likeness, placing her in such dignity and beauty, I caused her to be accompanied by the vilest of all things, imposing on her the law of perversity, imprisoning her in a body, formed of the vilest substance of the earth, so that, seeing in what her true beauty consisted, she should not raise her head in pride against Me.
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
Freedom to think and freedom to act: these are the two forms of freedom that, in Catherine’s opinion, mark our dignity as human beings. Needless to say, then, any loss of that dignity is for Catherine an unspeakable tragedy. Nothing distresses her more than the sight of free men and women reduced by the pressure of their own weakness, or by the pressure of the society in which they live, to a debilitating moral servitude. Almost every page of her writing is, as a result, an impassioned manifesto of freedom. Wherever she finds herself, whatever she is doing or saying or thinking, her attention is focused-with great intensity-on the wretched state of her contemporaries.
Often, we are inclined to think of mystics as people whose contemplation focuses entirely on God and the nature of God. But, to a degree almost unique among the Christian saints and mystics, Catherine was contemplative also of human nature, of both its misery and its grandeur. In particular, she understood an aspect of our human condition and of our human psychology that, over the last two hundred years, has begun to receive increasing attention from both psychologists and philosophers-namely, the psychology of fear.
…..”Oh, how dangerous such fear is!” she (St Catherine of Siena) writes. “It cuts off the arms of holy desire. It binds us and keeps us from knowing the truth.” (Letter to Pierre d’Estaing, ‘Letters’)
‘St Catherine of Siena: Mystic of Fire Preacher of Freedom’ written by Father Paul Murray
He raised his head, thought a minute, and began with enthusiasm:
“Wild and fearful in his cavern Hid the naked troglodyte, And the homeless nomad wandered Laying waste the fertile plain. Menacing with spear and arrow In the woods the hunter strayed…. Woe to all poor wretches stranded On those cruel and hostile shores!
“From the peak of high Olympus Came the mother Ceres down, Seeking in those savage regions Her lost daughter Proserpine. But the Goddess found no refuge, Found no kindly welcome there, And no temple bearing witness To the worship of the gods. “From the fields and from the vineyards Came no fruits to deck the feasts, Only flesh of bloodstained victims Smoldered on the altar‐fires, And where’er the grieving goddess Turns her melancholy gaze, Sunk in vilest degradation Man his loathsomeness displays.”
Mitya broke into sobs and seized Alyosha’s hand.
“My dear, my dear, in degradation, in degradation now, too. There’s a terrible amount of suffering for man on earth, a terrible lot of trouble. Don’t think I’m only a brute in an officer’s uniform, wallowing in dirt and drink. I hardly think of anything but of that degraded man—if only I’m not lying. I pray God I’m not lying and showing off. I think about that man because I am that man myself.
Would he purge his soul from vileness And attain to light and worth, He must turn and cling for ever To his ancient Mother Earth.
But the difficulty is how am I to cling for ever to Mother Earth. I don’t kiss her. I don’t cleave to her bosom. Am I to become a peasant or a shepherd? I go on and I don’t know whether I’m going to shame or to light and joy. That’s the trouble, for everything in the world is a riddle! And whenever I’ve happened to sink into the vilest degradation (and it’s always been happening) I always read that poem about Ceres and man. Has it reformed me? Never! For I’m a Karamazov. For when I do leap into the pit, I go headlong with my heels up, and am pleased to be falling in that degrading attitude, and pride myself upon it. And in the very depths of that degradation I begin a hymn of praise. Let me be accursed. Let me be vile and base, only let me kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is shrouded. Though I may be following the devil, I am Thy son, O Lord, and I love Thee, and I feel the joy without which the world cannot stand.
Joy everlasting fostereth The soul of all creation, It is her secret ferment fires The cup of life with flame. ’Tis at her beck the grass hath turned Each blade towards the light And solar systems have evolved From chaos and dark night, Filling the realms of boundless space Beyond the sage’s sight. At bounteous Nature’s kindly breast, All things that breathe drink Joy, And birds and beasts and creeping things All follow where She leads. Her gifts to man are friends in need, The wreath, the foaming must, To angels—vision of God’s throne, To insects—sensual lust.
But enough poetry! I am in tears; let me cry……
The Brothers Karamazov. Dimitri, the eldest son, a sensualist like his father, speaking with his younger brother Alyosha, a pure religious aspirant–sons to the drunken buffoon Fyodor. Written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
A Contemplator by Ivan Kramskoy (1876)
The heart produces tears that are better connected to God as the individual becomes better connected to the love of the divine and the love of others:
And so the eye, that wishes to satisfy the heart, weeps into my love and that of its neighbor, with love of the heart, pained only for the offense done to me and the injury done to the neighbor, not for its own pain or individual injury. (Dialogo)
The love of the heart (amore cordiale) does not look within for injury, but rather looks to others. The phrase “geme nella mia carità” [weeps into my love] is notable for the suggestion that one may weep into God’s love and into the love of others. The connectedness of these tears is emphasized in the very language. It is important to note the emphasis on neighbors and on community. Compassion has been transferred from the self to the neighbor. Love is focused on a community in God, rather than on the individual.
By means of this path, the individual finds sustenance. As the intellect begins to see, understand, and know the truth that is God:
The intellect pulls the affections with it, the affections that taste my eternal divinity and in this know and see the divine nature united with humanity. And so the affections rest in me, the peaceful sea. The heart is united by the affection of love to me… in the sentiment of me, eternal God, the eye begins to pour tears of sweetness, that are a milk that directly nourishes the soul of true patience. These tears are a scented unguent that gives off a smell of great sweetness. (Dialogo)
These tears are likened to milk, to nourishment, to a divine food. The 14th-century physician, Mondino de’ Liuzzi (c. 1270-1326), explains that milk is made in the breasts from well-heated and refined blood, and it is for this reason that the breasts are located near the heart, he says, so that they may profit from the heat of this area. Here it is the eyes themselves that pour out a kind of milk, nourishing the soul. When the heart is connected to God, tears of milk emerge from it to nourish the soul that inhabits that same heart. This kind of circulation that turns back to nourish the self is justified through the heart’s unity with God. When God is present within the heart, tears do not belong to the individual alone but are rather a product of the love between that individual and God. Just as breast milk can only be produced by a female body that has been inhabited by another being, so these tears of milk can only emerge from a heart that rests within the sea that is God and is filled with the presence of the divine: and
Oh, my most adored daughter, how glorious is that soul that has managed to truly pass from the tempestuous sea to me, the peaceful sea, has filled the vessel of the heart in the sea that I am, highest and eternal God. Thus the eye, that is like a conduit that comes from the heart, seeks to satisfy it and thus pours out tears. (Dialogo)
‘A Companion to Catherine of Siena’ (Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition). The chapter written by Heather Webb titled: ‘Lacrime Cordiali: Catherine of Seina on the Value of Tears’
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
In a letter to Frate Tommaseo dalla Fonte, Catherine likens the inner core of the self to a well of deep, clear water. In order for us to attain to that depth-that wondrous source-we must first of all confront and acknowledge the earth, the muddied soil of our human misery. Catherine writes: As we discover the earth we get to the living water, the very core of the knowledge of God’s true and gentle will which desires nothing else but that we be made holy. So let us enter into the depths of this well. For if we dwell there, we will necessarily come to know both ourselves and God’s goodness. In recognizing that we are nothing we humble ourselves. And in humbling ourselves we enter that flaming, consumed heart, opened up like a window without shutters, never to be closed.
The Full Circle
In the Dialogue, God the Father says to Catherine: “This knowledge of yourself, and of me within yourself, is grounded in the soil of true humility.” It is a union, he explains, that forms a “circle” that should never be broken: Imagine a circle traced on the ground and, at the center of the circle, a tree with an off-shoot grafted into its side. The tree finds its nourishment in the earth within the expanse of the circle. But, were it ever uprooted from the earth, it would die, yielding no fruit…. It is necessary, therefore, that the root of this tree, that is the affection of the soul, should grow in and issue from the circle of true self-knowledge, knowledge that is joined to me, who, like the circle itself, have neither beginning nor end. Our most fundamental task, therefore, is to move from knowledge of God to knowledge of self and then back to knowledge of God. But should it happen, the Father warns, that knowledge of self becomes disconnected from knowledge of God, “there would be no full circle at all,” and everything “would end in confusion.” In a more positive vein, however, the Father adds that this “circle,” although clearly grounded in the plain earth of self-knowledge-the humble soil of truth-is of infinite expanse, and has “neither beginning nor end.” Accordingly, by surrendering ourselves to the movement of the circle, we are able to flourish greatly, and grow like trees “made for love and living only by love.”
‘St Catherine of Siena: Mystic of Fire, Preacher of Freedom’ written by Paul Murray Order of Preachers (OP)—Dominican friar. A Word on Fire book
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