St. Catherine of Siena
“St. Catherine was born in Siena on the feast
of the Annunciation 1347.”1 Her parents were Giacomo di Benincasa
and Lapa Piagenti. They had a total of 25 children, with Catherine being the
penultimate. From her father, she inherited kindness of heart and charity
towards the poor, and from her mother a great love for work and good energy to
undertake arduous tasks and overcome difficulties. As a child, she began to
have an intimate relationship with Jesus and a great devotion to the Queen of
Siena; she was often heard praying the Hail Mary at her house. At the age of 6,
“she had her first vision.”2 She was walking through the streets of
Siena with her brother, she raised her eyes and suddenly saw Jesus on the of a
Church, who looked at her with tenderness solemnly blessed her, making the sign
of the Cross on her three times.
The following year, before an image of Our Lady,
she offered herself to the Lord who had blessed her. At this crucial moment,
she prayed to the Blessed Mother and asked her not to look at her weakness, but
to give her the grace to have as husband the one she loved with all her soul,
her Most Holy Son, Jesus Christ. “When Catherine was twelve, her mother in
mind, began to urge her to pay more attention to her appearance.”3
However, after consulting with a priest about her vow of chastity, she decided
to cut her hair, as a sign of having "died" to the world. Her parents
did everything possible to prevent her from spending all her time in prayer and
solitude, but she never gave up. Despite the rejection by her family, Catherine
used to act as if she were in the house of Nazareth, taking as her only mother,
the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Catherine's
parents, defeated by Catherine’s patience, eventually understood that their
daughter's life was to be with Jesus. Catherine, finally, joined the Third
Order of Saint Dominic and continued there as a layperson.4 She
dedicated her time to the orphans, the needy and the sick whom she cared for
during the catastrophic epidemic of the plague. For example, in the terrible
Black Plague, known in history as "the Great Death," where more than
a third of the population of all of Europe perished.5 Later, at the
age of twenty-five, she began her public life, as conciliator of peace among
the sovereigns and advising the princes. She, even, confronted the Pope, whom
she used to call: "Sweet Christ on earth," and invited him to leave
Avignon and return to Rome. “At twenty-eight she received the stigmata, which
also remained invisible to others until after her death.”6
Although uneducated, like many of the women and
many men of her era, she dictated a wonderful book entitled Dialogue of Divine Providence, which is
a collection of the mystical experiences lived by her and where the ways to
find salvation are taught. Her three hundred and seventy-five letters are
considered a classic work, of great theological thoughts with vigorous and
original images. She is considered one of the most illustrious women of the
middle ages, a teacher also in the use of the Italian language. St. Catherine
of Siena, who died as a result of a stroke, at the young age of thirty-three,
on April 29, 1380, was the great mystic of the fourteenth century. Pope Pius II
canonized her in 1461.7 Her remains rest in the Church of Santa
Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome, where she is venerated as the patroness of the
city; she is also the patron of Italy and Europe and protector of the pontificate. Pope
Paul VI, in 1970, proclaimed her doctor of the Church. She, St. Theresa of
Avila, Therese of Lisieux, and most recently in 2012, St. Hildegard of Bingen,
are the only women who hold this title.8
Endnotes
1 Butler, Alban, Herbert Thurston, and Donald
Attwater. Butler's Lives of the Saints. Allen, Tex: Christian Classics, 1996. Pg. 192.
2 Kalberer, Augustine. Lives of the Saints: Daily Readings. Quincy, Ill: Franciscan Press, 1995. Pg. 148.
3
Vann, Joseph, and Thomas
Bernard Plassmann. Lives of Saints,
with Excerpts from Their Writings: Selected and Illustrated. New York: John J. Crawley & Co, 1954. Pg. 289.
4 Kalberer. Lives of the Saints: Franciscan Press,
1995. Pg. 148.
5 Vann and Plassmann. Lives
of Saints: New York: John J. Crawley & Co, 1954. Pg. 296.
6 Kalberer. Lives of the Saints: Franciscan Press,
1995. Pg. 149.
7 Butler, Thurston, and Attwater. Butler’s: Allen, Tex: Christian Classics, 1996. Pg. 197.
8 Butler, Thurston, and Attwater. Butler’s: Allen, Tex: Christian Classics, 1996. Pg. 197.
