St. Catherine of Siena by John Gerlach

St. Catherine of Siena

On the feast of Catherine, a Dominican woman par excellence from Siena, Italy, we celebrate in a Dominican tradition of praising, of blessing, and of preaching the good news of the gospel. From the words of Catherine we pray: Truth eternal, cloth me in yourself.

If the truth is in our heart, it will be expressed in our words and demonstrated in our actions. Catherine preached the truth and detested the wickedness of those seeking self-interest. She was called to nourish relationships and develop bonds of unity among diverse groups. She labored and struggled declaring that whatever her own needs, the love of the other had greater claim on her.

Catherine’s birth in Siena in 1347 brought the number of children in the Benincasa household to twenty-five. From her childhood Catherine showed signs of her desire to belong entirely to God, and by the time she was sixteen, she was experiencing a life of deep prayer. Catherine’s relationship with God manifested a quality of great simplicity.

We are told she was spontaneous, fiery and fearless. History records the fourteenth century in which Catherine lived as a period of great insecurity and disturbance. There was much turmoil and confusion. Often conflicts were settled on the battlefield rather than at the table of peace. Any reading of the life of Catherine brings to its pages, stories of violent conflicts and civil wars causing unrest and division.

With one glance into the fourteenth century of Catherine’s time and then into the twenty first century of our time, we surely can see a reflection of similar upheavals, insecurities and fears. We too know wars and hostilities between nations and ethnic groups. Countless people suffer from famine, homelessness, poverty and oppression. Political corruption, economic greed, a cruel recession, rampant materialism and manipulation of the truth rear their ugly heads with increasing frequency. As well, the church of today is undergoing its own trials and difficulties, and has consequently lost its credibility for many people.

Catherine walked firmly and joyfully on the two feet of love of God and love of neighbor, of contemplation and action. She clearly demonstrates the active person whose life was rooted in prayer, and the measure of her prayer was found in the fruits of her actions and relationships.

One author describes Catherine as a frontier person. Who of us today would be summoned to Rome to give counsel to the Pope? She was always on the watch for new places to preach God’s message of love and mercy and truth. Her Dominican sense of mission continually pushed and drove her to fresh frontiers where the gospel’s transforming power needed to be preached.

We dare to keep our ears and hearts open for the truth, and when responding, always seek the glory of the One who created us.

Catherine's Letters

Sometime around 1370 Catherine began to use letter-writing as one of her favored means of reaching out, advising, and influencing others in favor of her causes — possibly in a conscious modeling of herself upon Paul the Apostle, who was particularly dear to her.

Approximately 385 of these letters (most of them spread from 1374 until her death in 1380) have been discovered and published to date, addressed to a remarkably wide variety of her contemporaries — popes, cardinals and bishops, royalty and public officials, family and friends and disciples, and an assortment of others, including allies and opponents, a mercenary captain, a prostitute, a homosexual, and political prisoners. Her purpose, however, was always deeper than the merely social or informational; she was interested primarily in the eternal dimension of personal lives and societal affairs. The letters bear a particular added interest because her activity extended so far beyond the normal feminine bounds of her time and her status in church and society.

Suzanne Noffke, OP, has published all of Catherine’s letters in four volumes, all of which can be purchased directly from the publisher (Tempe: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 2000, 2001, 2007, 2008), either from its Web site at http://www.asu.edu/clas/acmrs/publications/mrts/italy.html or

by mail through:
Cornell University Press Services
PO Box 6525
Ithaca, NY 14851
Phone: 1-800-666-2211; 1-607-277-2211
Fax: 1-800-688-2877 (U.S. Only)
Email: orderbook@cupserv.org

The Letters can also be obtained through other major book sources or purchased in the bookstore of the Siena Retreat Center.

The Dialogue

The Dialogue, Catherine's crowning work, represents her bequest of all her teaching to her followers. She called it simply "the book," and in it she endeavored to share with her disciples and others her vision of life with God in Christ, composed in the form of a conversation between herself and God the Father.

The Dialogue of Catherine of Siena, (New York: Paulist, 1980) can be ordered from Paulist Press in several convenient ways:
Phone: 1-800-218-1903
Fax: 1-800-836-3161
Mail: Paulist Press, 997 Macarthur Blvd.,
Mahwah, NJ 07430

The Dialogue can also be obtained through other major book sources or purchased in the bookstore of the Siena Retreat Center.

* It is important to note that a nineteenth-century translation by Algar Thorold is also available, but that translation is much abridged and often inaccurate. It is often simply advertised as The Dialogue, with no note as to its origins.

Prayers of St. Catherine of Siena

A collection of 26 of Catherine's spontaneous prayers, all from the last four years of her life and most from her final 17 months, were preserved by her scribes. They, along with her letters of that same period, express Catherine's spirituality at its most mature. Suzanne Noffke, OP, has set her translation of these prayers in sense lines, thus making them more accessible to meditative reading.

The latest edition of The Prayers of Catherine of Siena (San Jose: iUniverse.com, 2001) can be purchased at the bookstore of the Siena Retreat Center.