'THE SAINTS IN A YEAR' - ST CATHERINE OF SIENA AND A PASSIONATE FAITH

Fr Billy Swan

The American theologian and commentator Stanley Hauerwas once said that the problem with Christianity is not that it is socially conservative or politically liberal but that “it is just too damned dull”!

On 29^th April, the Church celebrates the feast day of a saint for whom faith was anything but dull or boring. For St Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), faith was a fire that burned in her soul with a love and passion for God and his kingdom. She is someone whose prayers and example can help us recover a lively faith that is attractive, exciting and yet risky and dangerous.

One of the greatest legacies of St Catherine is the part she played in persuading the Pope to return to Rome from Avignon in France in 1376. Another legacy is her writings on the spiritual life. These writings reveal a soul on fire with a passion that consumed her as she communicated to her audience. She praises God as the “inestimable and sweetest fire of love”. For Catherine, we human beings can only understand ourselves in relation to this fire of God’s passionate charity. For in this fire of God’s charity, we are transformed but not consumed: “If you want to be relieved of your burdens and infirmities, keep your eyes on the slain, consumed lamb, so that the fire of his charity may warm your heart and soul”. With these words, Catherine reminds us that the closer we come to God’s love, the more we are changed by its heat – the cold, damp and selfish parts of our nature are changed when exposed to the heat of God’s passionate love.

Another feature of Catherine’s spirituality is to acknowledge the desire we experience within us as human beings. Rather than suppressing our passions, we ought to see them as lively energies given to love and serve: “Let the fire of holy desire grow in true knowledge and humility”. Elsewhere she asks: “What is my nature. It is fire!” Here Catherine makes a close connection between God’s nature and our nature that was made by Him to resemble it. Since we have been made in God’s image and likeness, we have become partakers of the divine nature through grace (cf. 2 Peter 1:4). And so, if God’s nature is a flame of love, then our nature has similar qualities: "In your nature, eternal Godhead, I shall come to know my nature. And what is my nature, boundless Love? It is fire, because you are nothing but a fire of love. And you have given humankind a share in this nature for by the fire of love, you created us" (Prayer 12).

In contrast to other religions and spiritualities that deny or seek to suppress human desire, Catherine, following on from people like St Augustine, argues that this burning flame of desire within our human nature is from God himself and is given as a mechanism to lead us back to Him. And so, Catherine can say: “Recognise within yourself the extravagant fire of God’s charity. It is there that the dampness of self-love will be dried up once and for all”.

These are just some brief reflections on the insights of a wonderful saint who can help the Church catch the fire of the Holy Spirit for a new time of mission. Her insights into the spiritual life challenge the view that Catholic Christianity is dull and boring. May her witness energise us to speak boldly to the culture today of our faith in the Lord Jesus in a way that causes hearts to burn like those of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Catherine was passionate about her faith in God because she believed Him to be a passionate God. I leave the last word to her with this beautiful prayer she composed:

"O eternal Trinity, You are a deep sea in which the more I seek the more I find, and the more I find, the more I seek to know You. You fill us insatiably, because the soul, before the abyss which You are, is always famished; and hungering for You, O eternal Trinity, it desires to behold truth in Your light”.

St Catherine of Siena, Pray for us!