Novena to St Catherine - Day 4
St. Catherine of Siena; a disciple’s tongue.
For me, this quite humorous incident totally encapsulates the person of St. Catherine. Being a true spiritual daughter of our holy father St. Dominic, one could say like Dominic himself;
she spoke either with God in prayer or about God.
On reflection, I realised how I, at the best of times, lack this resemblance to our two great Dominican saints in my day to day speech and conversations. Of course I do not wish to render
my unfortunate listener to a state of unconsciousness, nevertheless, does my speech serve to edify and praise God or does my speech just warp into a useless prattle, completely void of God? Instead of praising God, a subtle
praise of the self saturates my speech. Certainly, one “is capable of talking about the world without any explicit reference to God, in such a way that his statement gives greater glory to God and arouses a greater love
of God” (Merton, New seeds of contemplation). However, I do find it significant that in the only known piece of writing that we have of St. Dominic, whom Catherine
had a great devotion towards, is a letter to the nuns of Madrid in which he encourages his daughters not “to chatter or waste your time gossiping” (Letter from our father Dominic to the nuns of Madrid).
To conclude, there is an array of admirable (albeit quite singular) qualities of St. Catherine yet the trait that stands out the most for me is the fact that she used, as in the prophet
Isaiah, her disciple’s tongue to know how to give a word of comfort to the weary (Is 50,4) and of course to praise God. Yes, the good and merciful God has given me a similar “disciple’s tongue” and
I pray I will not squander this precious gift.
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