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
should be ignorant, and should fall into a critical attitude, and become
weary and very bitter: for we should strive to give a finished work to
God, Who is Infinite Love, and demands from us only infinite desire."
Surely, in this last thought Catherine has attained in a flash to sublime
spiritual insight.
The Saints knew all about telepathy long before Societies of Psychical
Research grew eager over the matter. It might surprise some modern
psychologists to read the tranquil passage in which Catherine, assuming as
a matter of course that any servant of God engaged in intercessory prayer
has a mystical and direct knowledge of the condition of those she prays
for, proceeds to warn Daniella as intelligently as any modern could do,
though in different terms, as to the limitations within which this kind of
knowledge can be trusted.
The little note with which this group closes is not written to a great
recluse, but to a tailor's wife. With the simple, Catherine showed herself
simple; but Monna Agnese is to lead the consecrated life no less than
Sister Daniella. Catherine's plain directions to the one about her daily
living evince the same mental clarity and sobriety as her exhortations to
the other, and discriminate in much the same way between the excitement of
religious practices and true consecration.
TO BROTHER WILLIAM OF ENGLAND
OF THE HERMIT BROTHERS OF ST. AUGUSTINE
In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:
Dearest son in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of the
servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in His precious Blood, with desire
to see you in true light. For without light we shall not be able to walk
in the way of truth, but shall walk in shadows. Two lights are necessary.
First, we must be illumined to know the transitory things of the world,
which all pass like the wind. But these are not rightly known if we do not
know our own frailty, how inclined it is, from the perverse law which is
bound up with our members, to rebel against its Creator. This light is
necessary to every rational creature, in whatever state it may be, if it
wishes to have divine grace, and to share in the blessing of the Blood of
the Spotless Lamb. This is the common light, that everybody in general
ought to have, for whoever has it not is in a state of condemnation. This
is the reason; that, not having light, he is not in a state of grace; for
one who does not know the evil of wrong, nor who is cause of it, cannot
avoid it nor hate the cause. So he who does not know good, and virtue the
cause of good, cannot love nor desire that good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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