A trouble-making mystic

Catherine of Siena, a Dominican lay woman from the fourteenth century, was a mystic who had a deep sense of the presence of God in her life. In her early life she spent much time in solitude, praying and fasting.

This did not, however, keep her from responding to those in need. After an intense experience of what is described as espousal to Christ, she began to work in a hospital with the sick.

But she did not stop at charity – though this was very important for her. She was asked several times to work to bring about peace including in the midst of a conflict between the papacy and the city of Florence. She also was an advocate of the poor and a champion of peace to others. As she wrote to the King of France:

“Repent! Think of death and its uncertainty. Be a father to the poor, as the steward of what God has entrusted to you. Don’t you consider what great responsibility for evil falls upon you when you refuse to do what lies in your power? What a devilish botch in the eyes of God is this war between brothers. Cut out these stupidities.”

She also attracted many followers who came to listen to her speak of God. But that led her to be a strong advocate for reform in the Church.

She was particularly appalled at the lifestyles of the bishops and priests:

“They ought to be mirrors of freely chosen poverty, humble lambs, giving away the Church’s possession to the poor. Yet here they are, living in worldly luxury and ambition and pretentious vanity a thousand times worse than if they belonged to the world! In fact, many laypersons put them to shame by their good and holy lives.”

She was especially critical of the pope who was living in Avignon, France, a virtual tool of the French throne. She managed to get Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome. In the face of his fear of being poisoned, she told him: “Be not a timorous child, but manly . . .” She was a supporter of his successor, Urban VI, in the face of an anti-pope. But though she considered him the “sweet Christ on earth,” she was not afraid to exhort him also to be courageous and not a coward.

We find in St. Catherine an incredible combination of ways of following Christ – prayer, fasting, asceticism, mysticism, preaching, care of the sick, peacemaking, and advocating for the reform of the church. I wonder how she kept all of them together.

Perhaps it was because she experienced heaven in her life. As Catherine noted in a phrase often quoted by Dorothy Day who also combined many ways of following Christ – and was also a trouble-maker:

“All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, ‘I am the way.’”

Bling bishops and a poor church

There was no needy person among them.
Acts 4:34 

 Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles 4: 32-37 is a challenge to the church that appears beyond our reach. Yet Pope Francis has called for “a poor Church and a Church for the poor.”

Pope Francis has given us an example of how this might be lived out – in his austerity as well as in his tender outreach to the poor and the marginalized.

But the challenge is not just to give to the poor, to live simply, and to tenderly embrace the marginalized. All these are important and essential to live out our calling as disciples of the Jesus.

But there may be more.

Pope Saint John XXIII called for a church of the poor – not only for the poor. I think that means that we should be a church that makes the causes of the poor our causes, not doing things for them, but working with them.

This may mean major changes.

Pope St. John Paul II, in his 1987 encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis – On Social Concern – challenged the church to be really with the poor. In paragraph 31, he wrote

…part of the teaching and most ancient practice of the Church is her conviction that she is obliged by her vocation – she herself, her ministers and each of her members – to relieve the misery of the suffering, both far and near, not only out of her “abundance” but also out of her “necessities.” Faced by cases of need, one cannot ignore them in favor of superfluous church ornaments and costly furnishings for divine worship; on the contrary it could be obligatory to sell these goods in order to provide food, drink, clothing and shelter for those who lack these things. As has been already noted, here we are shown a “hierarchy of values” – in the framework of the right to property – between “having” and “being,” especially when the “having” of a few can be to the detriment of the “being” of many others.

This is not a new concern – but one that finds echo in the lives and words of many saints. Today’s saint, Catherine of Siena, was one of these. A mystic who was called out of her mysticism to care for the poor and then to reform the church, Catherine was scandalized by the luxury of the bling bishops and clergy of her day. As she wrote on the bishops and the clergy of her day:

They ought to be mirrors of freely chosen poverty, humble lambs, giving away the Church’s possessions to the poor. Yet here they are, living in worldly luxury and ambition and pretentious vanity, a thousand times worse than if they belonged to the world! In fact, many laypersons put them to shame by their good and holy lives.

Catherine could say this without hypocrisy for she lived a simple life, in deep communion with Christ. She loved the Church but wanted the Church to be faithful to Christ.

The challenge is not only for the institutional church but for all of us.

It may come back to the reading from the Acts of the Apostles: Do we share our possessions and are there really no poor among us?

 

Holy troublemaker Catherine of Siena

Saint Catherine of Siena died at thirty-three on April 28, 1380. A member of the lay Dominicans, she became a major force in troubled times in the Church. She was a terrible pain in the side of many – especially within the church. But this grew out of her deep love of Christ.

For about three years she enclosed herself in her room in contemplation with the Lord – suffering terrible temptations but also mystical experiences of the presence of Christ.

Something happened on the day before Ash Wednesday in 1367. She described it as a mystical espousal with the Lord who place a ring on her finger, visible only to herself.  But what is even more extraordinary is that this began a second stage of her spiritual life, a life devoted to serving the poor, the sick, prisoners and victims fo the plague. She resisted, wanting Christ for herself. But, as she related in The Dialogue, Christ tells her:

You must love others with the same pure love with which I love you.

She also gathered a group of disciples around her who affectionately called her Mamma.

But this was not the only call she believe she received from the Lord. In 1374, after a near-death experience, she began to speak publicly  and preach about the evils of corruption in the church and poverty. She also was a peacemaker, especially between feuding families in her hometown.

Some church authorities were upset by a lay woman preaching but her holiness won out.

She was especially adamant that the Pope who was residing in Avignon, France, should return to Rome. Her letters are full of strong words, addressing the pope as if he were a naughty boy. “Be a courageous man for me and not a coward,” she wrote.

This, of course, set tongues wagging about this troublesome woman. But she finally persuaded Pope Gregory IX to return to Rome. But after his death there were more troubles when a Pope and an anti-Pope were elected.

Although she supported the very unworthy Pope Urban VI, she also had strong words for him:

Sweetest father, the world cannot bear any more; vices are so abundant, especially among those who were put in the garden of Holy Church to be fragrant flowers, shedding the fragrance of virtue; and we see that they abound in wretched, hateful vices, so that they make the whole world reek! Oh me! where is the purity of heart and perfect charity which should make the incontinent continent by contact with them? It is quite the contrary: many a time the continent and the pure are led by their impurities to try incontinence. Oh me! where is the generosity of charity, and the care of souls, and distribution to the poor and to the good of the Church, and their necessities? You know well that men do quite the contrary. Oh me miserable! With grief I say it –your sons nourish themselves on the wealth they receive by ministering the Blood of Christ, and are not ashamed of being as money-changers, playing with those most sacred anointed hands of yours, you Vicar of Christ: without speaking of the other wretched deeds which they commit.

In light of the current controversies about the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, we should recall the life and preaching of St. Catherine of Siena who was not afraid to speak out in the face of the evils of her time, even those found in the papal household. She, like many religious women I know, saw evil and spoke out, based in her love of Christ and love of His poor.