In your nature, Eternal God, I shall know my own. And what is my nature? It is fire!
St. Catherine of Siena, whom we celebrate today, gives us an astoundingly compelling example: we can live a rooted life of hope and trust in the promises of God while ceaselessly striving to build the kingdom of God in our own time and place. Catherine was born in 1347 in the Republic of Siena (in present-day Italy), during a tumultuous period in history. In her own family, she was the youngest surviving child of more than twenty siblings. The Black Death was tearing through Europe at the time (killing half the population of Europe by 1350) and devastated Siena when Catherine was only a toddler. The Church too found itself in disarray and crisis, with seven popes in a row living in Avignon rather than Rome and influenced by French politics.
Catherine’s influence on the Church in this turbulent time was a fiery testament to the ardent love of God, expressed through love for her neighbor and love for the Church. A third-order Dominican, she selflessly served Siena’s poor and sick and boldly urged Church and civic leaders to conversion and renewed zeal, reminding them of their vows and duties.
In such a troubled time, Catherine reminded the Church of the call to holiness and directed souls to love God and to forget ourselves–not because we are worthless, but because a life lived with love (whatever the times) in friendship with God and love of neighbor leads to renewal and communion.
To understand Catherine’s life and her role amid the chaos of her time, we can fast-forward to her final mystical vision, using it as a key to unlock the wisdom she offers us today. Pope Paul VI told the story of her vision in his general audience when he declared Catherine a doctor of the Church in 1970:
In the porch [of St. Peter’s Basilica] there was a garden, on the facade a famous mosaic, painted by Giotto for the 1300 jubilee, and called “The Barque [Boat].”... It reproduced the scene of Peter's boat, tossed by the night storm, and it represented the apostle daring to move towards Christ who has appeared walking on the waves; a symbol of life that is always in danger and always miraculously saved by the divine mysterious Master.
One day, it was 29th January 1380, about Vesper time. … it was Catherine's last visit to St. Peter's; it seemed to Catherine, caught up in ecstasy, that Jesus stepped out of the mosaic and came up to her, placing the barque on her weak shoulders; the heavy, storm-tossed barque of the Church; and Catherine, collapsing under the weight, fell to the ground unconscious.
The Barque of St. Peter has been a long- standing metaphor for the Church as an image of the people of God, tossed about in the storms of the world–but not sunk–and finding safe harbor in Christ. In Catherine’s vision (possibly due to her role in persuading the pope to return to Rome from Avignon, or her passionate love for the Church, which called clergy to holiness and urged the faithful to follow the true pope rather than a false claimant), she sees herself overcome by the weight of trying to carry the Church on her back, despite her zeal.
This image can also remind us of the account in the gospels of Jesus calming the storm. The disciples wake Jesus, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And we know the rest–Jesus orders the storm and winds to stop, and his disciples are amazed. They wonder “who is this then, that even the winds and the sea obey him?”
Catherine’s final mystical vision might suggest she failed or took on too much—though we know her contributions were nothing short of revolutionary. After all, Jesus placed the boat of the Church on her shoulders, and she fell to the ground underneath its weight. She could not carry it on her own. But that vision seems unfinished, since Catherine wrote an entire treatise on God’s Providence and she intimately knew and was thoroughly grounded in God’s love. In Dialogues she exhorts her readers to courageously entrust themselves to God: “What have you to do with yourselves? Leave it to Divine Providence. However much afraid you are, Providence still has its eyes on you and is always aiming at your salvation.”*
We do not have to carry the weight of the Church (or the world or our lives) alone on our shoulders. Like Catherine, even if we feel crushed at times, we can abandon ourselves and our efforts into the hands of God with trust that he whom even the winds and sea obey is with us always, desiring that we take up our crosses and follow him.
At home in God, we find who we are meant to be, and learn that we can not only survive life’s stormy seas, but we can set the world ablaze with love like she did.
Hope Zelmer
Hope Zelmer is a writer and a former theology teacher and campus minister at Fenwick High School, a Dominican Catholic preparatory school in Oak Park, Illinois. Hope has written for publications such as FaithND, Church Life Journal, and FemCatholic. She holds a BA and MA in Theology from the University of Notre Dame.