Novena to St Catherine - Day 1
Often when we think of the canonised Saints we look to the finished work of art and we might be inclined not to pay enough attention to the process, their gradual transformation by
grace throughout their whole lives that eventually culminated in their total self giving to God and to others. So in preparation for her Feast this year I focused on various salient moments, milestones in Catherine’s
journey, as related by her biographer Raymond of Capua that remind us that Catherine struggled at times to do God’s will and when it came to the end died of a broken heart, her prayers by all outward appearances unanswered,
her beloved Church in schism, the Pope in Avignon instead of Rome, and warring factions within her homeland unreconciled. Like each of us she started off in earnest. At the tender age of seven we see Catherine making a vow of virginity articulating her longing to belong wholly to Jesus. She accompanies
this offering with great efforts to pray, to perform acts of virtue, to intercede for the salvation of souls and to discipline her flesh.
Yet as she grows older, she gets caught up in the pleasures and attractions of the world around her. As Raymond puts it “Her fervour seems to cool and the continuity of her state
of recollection was broken.” It takes her sister’s premature death to remind her of the passing nature of things and to reawaken in her, her first fervour. As Raymond puts it “She begins to seek again the
endearments of her Eternal Spouse with warmer affection and keener eagerness than before”. She’s back on track but what happens, her family put this fragile surge of love to the test. They make every effort to
marry her off and when not succeeding they try to deprive her of any time she might have alone with the Lord. Catherine’s new resolve is tested and purified. Catherine resists all the allurements and instead of resenting
the demands made on her, she turns this moment of temptation into a moment of grace by rending her family a “ cheerful and Unfailing service” and by using the trial to extend her union with God to every action
and service she had to perform. Her steadfastness and charity win through. In the end her family relent. In her Father’s own words, “The conclusion stares us in the face that the power that draws you is not mere
youthful thoughtlessness but the love of God.” She is given a little room of her own with the fullest leave to spend her time with God. For three years she lives in “unbroken silence, speaking only to her confessor,
never leaving her beloved cell except to go to Church”, giving herself over loving her Beloved and interceding for souls. But even this needs must be purified. Self love can creep into even our best actions. God wants
Catherine to desire him for himself alone and not for the consolation of his abiding presence that comforts and sustains her.
After the wonderful moment of her espousal to him, she begins to realize that far from continuing, this intimate relationship in the hidden recesses of her cell, God is asking her to
mingle with people again. She understands our Lord to say to her ”My grace in you must now bear fruit in others as well.” Catherine describes just how difficult she found this request. Indeed so downcast and disconsolate
is she at the thought of having to leave her cell that He has to reassure her.God says to her “ I have no intention of parting with you but rather of binding you to me all the closer by the bond of love of your neighbour”.
He also reminds her of how much she desired to “labour for the good of souls” in the beginning and that now she seems sad because He is drawing her to the work that she has longed for since infancy.
Catherine proves that she really does want his will alone by the alacrity of her “fiat”. Even though she does not find this request from Our Lord congenial to say the least,
nevertheless she makes every effort at supreme cost to her own idea of union with God to comply with it and to trust her Beloved Spouse. Although she is willing to do his bidding, it is only in the actual doing of it that
she experiences and really comes to understand that our Lord “is in fact binding her closer to him by the bond of neighbour”. Raymond tells us that this truth only gradually took root in her. At first he says
“to see or hear any other object was irksome to her. So impetuous was her love for God that every hour spent with others dragged by on leaden feet. At the first moment she would return to her cell to find him whom her
soul loved”. But her charity was no less real and sincere for that. During the time she spent with others she gave herself unsparingly to helping her neighbour by all sorts of acts of kindness. As time passes she realises
that the more she practises works of mercy towards her neighbour, the more pleasing she would be to Him. We think of her care of Tecca, Palmerina and Andrea. Raymond describes it so graphically, illustrating the heroic level
Catherine’s charity had reached, “holding on valiantly in the face of calumny most foul and never faulting when confronted with diabolical wickedness of the ones she was befriending”. Not only did she serve
those no one else would touch, seeing in them the wounded Christ but she also kept up prayer day and night, never ceasing until Christ revealed to her that he had granted Palermina mercy, showing her the beauty of Palmerina’s
soul.
This desire for the salvation of other’s becomes a fire burning within her. She tells Raymond “While this fire burns within me it brings so boundless a love for my neighbour
that I would readily undergo death itself with joy and gladness for my neighbour’s sake.”
But she wasn’t asked to undergo death but to forego it for her neighbour’s sake. Our Lord makes yet another demand. He asks her to make a radical change in her way of life.
Now she is not even to have her cell to return to. “Your cell will no longer be your dwelling. For the salvation of souls you will leave even your own city” And so began her new mission.
Again Catherine felt the cost. In her own words she says “ Surely no one need be surprised if I love with a surpassing love all those souls whom God has given me, to give them
guidance and to win them from evil to good. The price I paid for them is no small one. On their account I have become anathema from the Lord.”
Finally, like unto her Master, she handed over her very body. Rent asunder by grief, unable to bear seeing the body of Christ the Church being rent asunder, she asks that” whatever
punishment is due to this people would be carried out on her own body.” Her prayer is granted and on Catherine “ fell the full weight of suffering she asked for”. Her body just could no longer contain the
weight of her grief. From then on “that frame of hers began to undergo a daily agony of suffering beyond anything she had so far been accustomed to, until on the 29th April she passed out of this world.
May she obtain for us the love and courage we need to follow in her steps
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