GENERAL AUDIENCE ON SAINT CATHERINE
Pope Paul VI
"The Church is identified with Christ…"
During
the General Audience on Wednesday April 30th, 1969, the Pope
delivered
the following address to many thousands of faithful:
Beloved Sons and Daughters!
Today, April 30th, is a feast for
us. The feast of St. Catherine of Siena. Pius II, also from Siena, proclaimed
her a Saint (1461: remember the magnificent fresco by Pinturricchio, which
illustrates the event in the Piccolomini Library in Siena). Pius IX declared
her the second Patron Saint of Rome (1866). In 1939, Pius XII made her also the
Patron Saint of Italy, with St. Francis of Assisi. Nor can a Pope forget how
much the Roman Pontificate and the whole Church owe this extraordinary woman,
who can never be studied and celebrated enough. It is a fine thing that a
monument was erected to her, a few years ago, here near St. Peter's, between
Castel S. Angelo and the beginning of Via della Conciliazione, as if running
towards this fateful Vatican. It is a fine thing that so many religious
families and Catholic women's associations should have her as protectress and
teacher. You, too, perhaps, know something of her marvellous life, enough at
least to set the name of St. Catherine of Siena among the sweetest, the most
original, the greatest that history records. As you know, she died very young,
here in Rome. But her thirty-three years of earthly life (1347-1380) were so
rich in inner intensity, so dramatic in exterior activity, so fruitful in
literary expressions, so important in the series of political and
ecclesiastical events of the XIV century, that they oblige the theologian, the
historian, the student of literature, the artist to consider Catherine a unique
phenomenon, and to study in her the teacher of divine things, the inspired
mystic of the stigmata, the woman, bold, simple and skilful at the same time,
who ventured upon diplomatic initiatives as artless as they were wise, the
illiterate writer, who dictated books and carried on a lively and apostolic correspondence
with hosts of people, the virgin ecstatic in prayer and dedicated to helping
the suffering, the fascinating conversationalist who transformed interlocutors
into disciples, into faithful friends. We must always remember that it was she,
Catherine, who convinced the young French Pope (he was forty) Gregory XI, weak
in health and faint-hearted, to leave Avignon, whither the Apostolic See had
moved with Pope Clement V, after the sudden death of Benedict XI, and to return
in 1376 to Italy, still rent by bitter divisions, to Rome, though it was
turbulent and in very bad conditions. And it was Catherine who, immediately
after the death of Gregory XI, supported his successor Urban VI in the first
critical events of the famous "Western schism", which began with the
election of the anti-pope Clement VII.
The history of her life is
extremely complex and there is no lack of documentation. It is much too long to
narrate it in full. Then, too, the historical background in which her life was
set is so characteristic and dramatic that anyone attempting to describe it,
when dealing with this humble and splendid protagonist, is obliged to select or
to summarize.
The
institutional aspect - One aspect especially of
this exceptional life interests us, the one we think is most characteristic:
her love for the Church. And this aspect affects the whole of Catherine's
personality, inside and outside. Biographers and hagiographers cannot help
noting it: Catherine is the Saint whose dominant characteristic lies in her
love for the Church, and for the Papacy particularly. It would be possible to
fill a book with quotations like the following: "Oh, eternal God, receive
the sacrifice of my life in this mystical Body of the holy Church. I have
nothing to give but what You gave me. Pluck out my heart, therefore, and press
it to the face of this Spouse..." (Letter 371). "The Church is
then," Joergensen writes, "from the intellectual and moral point of
view, the centre of existence; it is the solution to the enigma of life and it
is its absolute value, its essential value. In this world of relativity, it
alone is positive..." (p. 511). "The Church is Catherine's greatest
love. No Saint, perhaps, has loved the Church as much as she... In St.
Catherine's soul, the Church is identified with Christ" (Tincani, p. 39).
In these brief references we will
note three points. First: St. Catherine loved the Church in its reality, which,
as we know, has a double aspect. One is mystical, spiritual, invisible, the
essential one, fused with Christ the glorious Redeemer, who does not cease to
pour his blood (who has spoken of Christ's Blood as much as Catherine?) upon
the world through his Church. The other is human, historical, institutional,
concrete, but never separated from the divine aspect. One may wonder if our
modern critics of the institutional aspect of the Church are ever capable of
grasping this simultaneity, or if their grave dissertations, or vivisections of
the mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church (not only heavenly, but
earthly, the Church in time, a body corporate, personified in men composed of
Adam's clay, even if animated by the gifts of the Holy Spirit), would ever give
rise to an expression like the one, so often quoted, that describes the Pope:
"Oh. Papa, Sweet Christ on earth..." (Letter 185). Catherine loves
the Church as it is. (cfr. Taurisano, "Dialogo", quoting Cordovani,
p.IL).
Second point. Catherine does not
love the Church for the human merits of those who belong to it, or represent
it. If we think of the conditions in which the Church was at that time, we can
easily understand that her love had very different motives. And this can be
gathered from the free and frank language in which Catherine denounces the
evils of ecclesiastical organization at that time, and calls for its reform.
St. Catherine does not hide the failings of ecclesiastics, but as she inveighs
against such decadence, she considers it a motive and a need to love all the
more.
Priestly
dignity and sacramental function - And so the real
motive, and this is the third point, is the mission of the Church, its priestly
dignity, its sacramental function; it is "the first and fundamental truth
that the Church preserves and communicates to souls... the reality of God's
love for his creatures" (Tincani, 37). "This greatness—Catherine
writes in the marvellous 110th chapter of her Dialogue—is given in general to
every rational creature (she is alluding perhaps to the "priesthood of the
faithful"); but among the latter (it is God speaking) I have chosen my ministers
for your salvation, in order that the Blood of the humble and immaculate Lamb,
my Only-begotten Son, may be administered to you through them. They have the
privilege of administering the Sun, giving them the light of science, the
warmth of divine charity". The Council does not speak differently (cfr.
Lumen Gentium, n. 24).
This is Catherine's love: the
hierarchical Church is the indispensable ministry for the salvation of the
world. And for this reason her life will become a drama, mystical and physical,
of suffering, prayer, activity. "The cross on my back and the olive-branch
in my hand" (Letter 219) became her spiritual and social mission.
Catherine's definition of herself is famous. "In Thy nature, eternal
Deity, I will know my nature", she says in one of her prayers (24);
"and what is my nature? it is fire!" (cfr. Joergensen, 495).
The
storm-tossed boat - The last mystical episode of
her life is worth remembering. Weak, exhausted by fasting and illness, she came
every day to St. Peter's, the former basilica. In the porch there was a garden,
on the facade a famous mosaic, painted by Giotto for the 1300 jubilee, and
called the barque (now it appears inside the porch of the new basilica). 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, Sexagesima Sunday, and 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. Historically, Catherine's sacrifice
seemed to fail. But who can say that burning love of hers disappeared in vain
if myriads of virgin souls and hosts of priestly spirits and of faithful and
industrious laymen, made it their own; and it still blazes in Catherine's
words: "Sweet Jesus, darling Jesus"?
And may that fire be ours, too,
may it give us the strength to repeat Catherine's words and gift. "I have
given my life for Holy Church" (Raimondo da Capua, Vita, III, 4). With Our
Apostolic Blessing.
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