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Home  Dominican Women St Catherine of Siena Three Cameos of St Catherine
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Three Cameos of St Catherine of Siena |
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Sr Marie Cunningham writes about 3 aspects of St Catherine's life which appeal to her.
(Feast of St Catherine April 29)
Cameo 1: Catherine's Relationship with Christ
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What attracts me most about Catherine's relationship to Christ is her
spontaneous communication with God/Christ to whom she feels she can say anything
she likes. Saying anything you like to another person is a place in a
relationship where there is utter genuineness. This for me is a Catherine
nugget, worth spending time with.
We all love to get gifts and we treasure some more than others, because of
the person who gives them. Jesus is the gift and the treasure God gives us. For
Catherine, Jesus is the one who is able to show us who God is. He is the one who
helps us get some kind of a handle of who God is. In the Dialogue Jesus says to
Catherine, "You cannot see me as I am, that is why I became human". For
Catherine the gift and the giver are one, just as Jesus and the Father are one.
It is impossible to look at Jesus without seeing God the giver.
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Cameo 2: Mercy is 'Proper' to God
It is clear that Catherine lived and taught a gospel of mercy. She knew the
suffering of the world and the deep need the world had for God's mercy. Often in
her prayer as she experienced divine mercy toward herself she would hear God
saying, "I want to show mercy to the World". Catherine's response was to tell
people about God's mercy. "Mercy is proper to God". Catherine in her living
shows us the mercy and compassion of Jesus. There is, for instance, the lovely
story of her giving her cloak to a beggar, who really is Christ in disguise. For
this act of love and mercy, the cloak perpetually protected its wearer from the
cold.
Today, the gospel of mercy is best proclaimed when it is communicated
not only by word but also by the compassion of us the preachers. One of the last
Masters of the Order, Vincent Couesnogle, urged us as Dominicans to preach a
Gospel of Mercy and asks us the question: "Is mercy really a living force within
us?". "Is it a deeply felt unrest"? |
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Catherine's Prayer for Mercy
Eternal God
Restore health to the sick
and
give life to the dead. Give us a voice,
Your own voice,
to cry out to
you
for mercy for the world
and for the reform of holy Church.
And
listen to your own voice
with which we cry out to you.
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Cameo 3: Exchange of Hearts
Catherine's 3 years in seclusion was a period of great
richness. It is from this period that we have the story of the exchange of
hearts. We do not have too much difficulty in knowing and being the hands of
Christ or the feet of Christ and we, like Catherine, are called to have the
heart of Christ. He is the only one to satisfy the heart. In Sir Philip Sidney's
poem, 'True Love' we read:
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My true love hath my heart and I have
his,
by just exchange one for another given
I hold his dear and mine he
cannot miss.
There never was a better bargain driven. |
| In the Dialogue God tells Catherine, "You cannot live without
love because I created you for love" (D 93). "I created you in a fire of love".
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Sr Marie Cunningham, OP
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