Letters of Catherine BenincasaCatherine, of Siena, Saint
Religion
Letters of Catherine Benincasa
Catherine, of Siena, Saint
Catherine, of Siena, Saint, 1347-1380 -- Correspondence; Christian women saints -- Italy -- Siena -- Correspondence
There is this difference between him who loves the truth and him who hates
it. He who hates the truth, lies in the darkness of mortal sin. He hates
what God loves, and loves what God hates. God hates sin, and the
inordinate joys and luxuries of the world, and such a man loves it all,
fattening himself on the world's wretched trifles, and corrupting himself
in every rank. If he has an office in which he ought to minister in some
way to his neighbour, he serves him only so far as he can get some good
for himself out of it, and no farther, and becomes a lover of himself.
Christ the Blessed gave His life for us, and such a man will not give one
word to serve his neighbour unless he sees it paid, and overpaid. If the
neighbour happens to be a poor man who cannot pay, he makes him wait
before telling him the truth, and often does not tell it to him at all,
but makes fun of him; and where he ought to be pitiful and a father of the
poor, he becomes cruel to his own soul because he wrongs the poor. But the
wretched man does not see that the Highest Judge will return to him
nothing else than what he receives from him, since every sin is justly
punished and every good rewarded. Christ embraced voluntary poverty and
was a lover of continence; the wretched man who has made himself a
follower and lover of falsehood does just the contrary; not only does he
fail to be content with what he has, or to refrain through love of virtue,
but he robs other people. Nor does he remain content in the state of
marriage, in which, if it is observed as it should be, a man can stay with
a good conscience; but he plunges into every wretchedness, like a brute
beast, without moderation, and as the pig rolls in filth, so does he in
the filth of impurity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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