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Catholic Saints
St. Catherine of Siena
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Join Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. Elizabeth Klein as they celebrate Catherine of Siena: a nurse and mystic with papal influence who became a saint and doctor of the Church.
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Narrator
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live and share their faith.
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Tim Gray
Welcome to form Now. I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augusta Institute, and joining me today is Dr. Elizabeth Klein, who's a professor of theology at the Augusta Institute. And we wish you a Happy Feast of St. Catherine of Siena. So it's her feast day today. She's an amazing, remarkable saint. There's a lot to say about her. She led a remarkable life. And of course, she's one of the few doctors of the Church, so one of the few women who's a doctor of the Church. And we're going to talk about what a doctor of the Church means, but just a few simple facts about St. Catherine of Siena. You know, St. Catherine of Siena was a saint who was born in the year 1347. She lived to be 33 years old, the same length of time as our Lord. And she was very devoted to Jesus. She really saw herself as a spouse to Jesus. And of course, she consecrated herself to serving Jesus Christ and loving him. And she was the 24th child of 25 children. So we should. Why her mother's not canonized, I don't know, but she probably should be. Amazing family of 25 kids. Her father was a middle class merchant who dyed wool and did fairly well for himself and for his family, even supporting that many children. And she lived at a time of a lot of upheaval and chaos politically in Italy at that time. She, of course, was from Siena and she also had to deal with a lot of corruption in the Church and a lot of upheaval in the Church. One of the things that we'll talk about is that Pope Gregory xi, who was the Pope at the time, he didn't, you know, enjoy living in Rome, especially for the summers in Rome, but also because of the political situation. And the King of France welcomed him to Avignon, France, and it was, you know, the wine tasted better there and the climate was better, and so the papacy kind of moved to southern France. And, you know, Catherine will play a pivotal role in bringing the Pope back to, to Rome where he belonged. And we'll talk a little bit about that too. But a remarkable woman, but, you know, doctor of the Church. But also, by the way, before I forget, she was a nurse and she's considered a patron of nurses. And so in this time of the COVID crisis, one of the beautiful things about Saint Catherine of Siena is that as a young woman, she went out and volunteered and helped out in the hospitals, and she helped out when people were. And she was remarkable for her courage with the sick. That's another interesting thing. So there's a lot of connections with Saint Catherine of Siena in our own time right now, and we'll make some of those connections and talk about it. But let's just start with St. Catherine of Siena as a doctor. Dr. Klein, what is the significance of a doctor of the Church? You know, a lot of people hear Doctor of the Church, and it's a great honorific title, but what does it mean?
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Right. So to be a doctor of the Church, you might think immediately our mind goes to medical doctor. But of course, a doctor of the Church. Church is more like a doctor of theology, someone with a doctorate that comes from the Latin for being learned. So someone who teaches. And Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila were only made doctors of the Church more recently because traditionally, doctor of the Church has been associated with someone who really is doctrinal, has a lot of writings, and Catherine does have a lot of beautiful writings. But I think something that the Church sort of grew into is to realize that doctors of the Church don't necessarily just teach doctrine, but they also teach sort of mystical and spiritual theology, which. Which is a little more in the category of Teresa and Catherine. Although, of course, there is a lot of beautiful doctrine and theology in Catherine's writings as well.
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Tim Gray
She is a mystic. And now that we define doctor, why don't we talk a little bit about mystic? Because people hear mystic and it's mysterious to them. There's a lot of questions. What does it mean to be a mystic? And how would we explain that?
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah, well, I mean, to be a mystic can mean a lot of different things. I think there are different approaches to mysticism and mystical theology. But I think one thing that really characterizes mystics is that they write a lot about prayer and how to attain union with God in a spiritual sense. What does it mean to cultivate your interior life? And what does the interior life look like? I think that's something that both Katharine and Teresa of Avila, who was made a doctor at the same time, they both write a lot about that.
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Tim Gray
I like that idea that they're really focused on the interior life. You can get a lot of great writings like St. Thomas Aquinas will talk about the virtues quite a bit, and you get the exterior life, and not that he doesn't talk about the interior life, but the. The idea that these mystics, like Teresa of Avila and St Catherine of Siena were focused on The Interior Life. I was struck reading St. Catherine's dialogues, her major treatise. And she talks about prayer. I think it's paragraph or section 66 of the dialogues. And she talks about prayer and the need for courage to be able to pray. And when I read that, it resonated because I had read Teresa of Avila before. And Teresa of Avila really highlights that it takes courage to pray. And I love that because I found it so striking and fresh in Teresa of Avila. But now I realize she stole it from this previous doctor. That's all right, Catherine of Siena, but she developed it and made it her own for sure. But I love her idea that to really persevere in prayer and to even take up prayer, it takes courage. And you think about courage to maybe for Catherine, I think of her having courage to go be a nurse and to take care of patients who are ill and diseased. That takes courage. But the idea that prayer takes courage, that's a really interesting, striking idea.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah, I really think that those two things are actually very related. Courage and prayer and then courage to go be a nurse. Because one thing that really marks Catherine of Siena is she writes a lot about trust in God. And it takes a lot of courage to have trust in God. And that kind of trust manifests in Catherine's life in very extreme asceticism, which we might not think is obvious. Some of the things you read about that Catherine did, you know that she ate only the Eucharist for many years, that she lived as a hermit in her parents basement for a long time, that she didn't talk to anybody except in confession. That these things she did a little bit earlier on in her life, before her more public ministry as a nurse. It takes a lot of courage to say my life is going to be fulfilled. If I give up all these other things and talk only to God, my life is going to be fulfilling even if I don't get to eat a steak. And so I think it's very connected. And she had a lot of strength from that intimate time she spent with Christ in her younger life, where she gave up a lot of other things to be with Him. But that gave her this courage and gave her this profound relationship, that then when she went out and worked with the poor, she saw that really as an extension of that. That still is prayer. She talks a lot about how everything is prayer. It's not that you pray to fill up and then go out, but if you are able to orient it correctly, serving the poor is also a form of prayer.
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Tim Gray
One of the Stories early on in her life that strikes me as just humorous is that her parents wanted her to get married. And when she was 16, they were really pushing for her to get betrothed and they wanted her to marry. And, you know, one of the things she did to kind of foil her parents attempt was she cut all her hair and she was wearing a hat. And her mother comes in one evening and says, you know, what's going on? And she pops off the hat and all her hair is cut off. And her mother's, ah, you know, all upset because she was supposed to be, you know, she was encouraging her daughter to look pretty and to go out and find a suitor. And, you know, that's a. That's a. She's a bold woman.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
I mean, that takes a lot of courage because it's saying, I'm not going to trust in my good looks. I'm not. I'm not going to do what everyone else expects of me. And even though it's a funny, simple story, I mean, if you actually think about doing that as a young woman, it's scary to do that. And I think that that story is really interesting, especially because I'm a scholar of the early church. And so there's a lot of women in the early church who have a very similar story to Catherine where their parents are trying to get them to marry, and so they cut off all their hair and they refuse, and some of them end up dying for it. And those stories sometimes seem kind of like legendary and distant. But then when you read Catherine's story, and it's so similar, and she faced a lot of resistance even from her own Catholic family, then all of a sudden, those earlier stories start. You start to see, no, that really could have happened. And that really did take a lot of courage to resist societal expectations. And the gospel is still really, really challenging a thousand years later in Catherine's life when she's living in a completely.
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Tim Gray
Christian and Catholic world, it's amazing that she had that strength to stand up to her parents. And of course, you can see how God's preparing her with these little trials. I mean, it was a big trial for her as a teenage girl, but the bigger trials, that she's going to have to stand up to the Pope eventually, right? She's going to have to say to the. To the leader of the church that she's very devoted to, you're doing the wrong thing. You have to come back to Rome. And that's really striking to see how these little trials maybe lead up to Some of these bigger trials. But let's go back to her early life before we talk about her confronting Pope Gregory xi. But her early life where she discerns and she even says, I think actually her biographer was one of her spiritual directors and Father Raymond, who ends up becoming the head of the Dominican order and is a very well educated and known for his character and holiness. And he's her spiritual director in the latter half of her life. And Father Raymond talks in his biography that she had kind of her early mystical vision of Jesus when she was 6 or 7 and that she dedicated, she wanted to consecrate herself to serving Jesus and not be married. And of course she fulfills that and is faithful to that promise when she's 16 and her parents wanted to marry. And then she kind of lives a very closed life. You mentioned, you refer to this, you know, she kind of hides out in her parents home, doesn't go out much, but really dedicates herself to prayer and to study the faith. But she's influenced by the Dominicans a great deal. The Dominicans will have a great influence. And that's the church that she and her family goes to is a Dominican church. There's a major Dominican priory there, that and school that is going to influence her. And she's going to go there quite a bit. And then she becomes really devoted to the Eucharist and going to daily Mass at a key time. And that devotion to the Eucharist will become a very powerful thing for her. And at one point in her dialogues she refers to something about the Eucharist and it's this really powerful moment where she uses this very like Teresa of Avila. One of the things I find compelling about Teresa of Avila is when she writes she's very down to earth using metaphors and just kind of very grounded and very humble style. And you get that with Catherine too, a bit. Catherine uses the style of the Eucharist and she's trying to reflect on the Eucharist that she can receive God in her. And God, who the whole universe can't encompass, is within her. And she's in this dialogue with God the Father. And the Father says to her, look, it's like this, how can God be in you? It's more like the fish is in the ocean, but the ocean is also in the fish because the fish takes in the water of the ocean. So the ocean is contained in the fish, but the fish is more properly said to be in the ocean. And I thought that was just a beautiful meditation about God's presence in the soul. And how can this God, who encompasses everything, be in the soul, and yet the soul is in God? So it's a beautiful.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
That's really interesting. Therese of Louisieux, who's another doctor of the church, who's a woman, has a very similar image of the ocean as being in the ocean when you're receiving the Lord. So that's interesting. I didn't know about that crossover yet. That image that she uses, or just that attempt to contemplate the God of the universe, how it can be within her, seems related to a lot of the things you'll find in Catherine's theology, which often is about trust, absolute trust in God. And one of these things that God says to her when she's trying to contemplate this is that I am and you are not. And that sort of resonates with her whole life and how she tries to live it, trying to live into the truth that God is the source of all existence and I'm not, and God gives everything to me. And I think, again, that's related to these very extreme acts of deprivation that she undertakes, because she feels that's an important part of training her to understand that she needs to be completely dependent on God. And this is especially an issue with food for her, apparently. And she comes, as I said, to rely completely on. On feeding, on the Eucharist and that we might think that's sort of a frivolous thing, but that's exactly what we do in Lent. We try to deprive ourselves and fast from specific kinds of food. And part of that reason is, well, when we're going to turn to something for comfort, instead of turning to chocolate or burgers or beer or whatever we give up for Lent, we hopefully turn to God. And so it's part of training us through a physical act to rely on God spiritually. And I think Katharine really embodies that full trust. And you find that in her theology a lot.
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Tim Gray
And she speaks about that in terms of desire, especially in the dialogues, the idea that in her dialogue with God. And the dialogue is really a dialogue of the soul, which is Catherine. But it's the idea of the soul, the human soul, dialoguing with God. And she talks about how this idea of desiring God, and the more we desire God, the less you desire other things. And of course, we'll see this taken up in an extraordinary way by another doctor of the church and a doctor of prayer, which is St. John of the Cross, who talks a lot about desire and the idea of giving up desire, as you mentioned, Dr. Klein, is this idea of penance and renunciation is, or as St. John of the Cross would call it, the nada in Spanish. This nothing is not this idea that Christians are just negative or down about the world. It's about creating space in one's heart and one's desiring for God. And that if I, like you said, if I desire food and I desire good music and I desire entertainment to just constantly satisfy me, those are never going to do that. But what I'm doing is I'm filling myself with things that are, you know, we could use the analogy of junk food rather than filling myself with God looking to God for consolation. You know, I think of St. Thomas Aquinas says that man cannot live without joy, right? Man cannot live without joy, but without that joy of God, then we turn to carnal pleasures to fill that void.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
That's interesting because apparently Catherine's nickname when she was little was that she was like the joyful, joyful one. And that's sort of a hallmark of what's to come. But I think something that's interesting about this dynamic of fasting while recognizing that the things in the world are good. Catherine's not saying burgers are evil is almost like Catherine's life is sort of like Lent and Easter in miniatur. She has this period where she fasts and cultivates this desire and longing for God. And then she has this period where she's able to take that inner strength and go out into the world and then serve her neighbor. And though. But those reserves of love have come from this time that she spent with God. And so there's a kind of liturgical pattern, you might say, to the way that she lives her life. And that's really common to a lot of saints. A lot of saints have a period where they go and live in a cave. She doesn't literally live in a cave, even though there's a story about her when she was a little girl that she went out and lived in a cave for a day, but she lives in her parents basement. But St. Benedict, for example, literally did live in a cave for a period of time and then emerged to found his monastery. Or St. Anthony of the Desert, literally buried himself up in a cave for a period of time and then emerged ready to provide spiritual fruit to others.
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Tim Gray
Just like our Lord, who had the silent years, the 30 years of silence before his public ministry, or King David, who spends those years in the wilderness on the run from Saul. So there's a Beautiful biblical pattern, a pattern to the life of Christ that she's living that you highlight with just such a pattern of so many of the saints. Well, you know, when she's 21, she's going to really enter into. She doesn't enter into an official comma. She becomes a tertiary, which a lot of people might think, well, a Dominican tertiary. And so people refer to her as a lay person. She later on, towards the end of her life, founds a very strict convent. And, you know, we don't know why, but maybe there wasn't a convent that was strict enough. So she joins this third order Dominicans, and it's typically, she kind of broke the mold for them because this third order Dominicans were widows who dedicated themselves to the work of God and doing acts of charity, helping out in the hospitals and feeding the poor and things like that. And so she wants to do that. She's compelled after this quiet phase, after this period of silence and withdrawal, to go out and do works of charity. So you kind of see, Dr. Gladys, you were mentioning, this deep welling up of love in her interior life now overflows in this desire to go do good deeds, to go serve people in charity. So she goes to the hospital and she starts taking care of and working as a nurse, but she does so as a Dominican tertiary. And of course, they'd never had somebody who was a young woman, who was a virgin dedicate themselves to this. It was always women who were later in life and who were widowed and then would dedicate to the poor. And so it kind of caused a bit of a controversy that she joined that. And again, you see this something about Catherine. She doesn't simply follow the mold of what's ahead of her. Even when she joined this third order of Dominicans, she saw what they did and she liked the freedom they had and the service of charity that they had. And she's like, I'm going to do that. And they're like. A lot of them are like, no, you can't do that. You're not married and widowed. And she's like, that doesn't matter. And I like that boldness she had.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah. And it's interesting, there's a kind of tension because she has this boldness, but that boldness comes from, as she sees it, radical obedience to Christ. And so she really feels from an early age that she's consecrated herself to the Lord, that the Lord has called her in a special way, and that gives her that obedience to the call of God. That's what gives her the courage to cut off her hair in a shoe marriage that her parents want. Similarly, she has a vision of St. Dominic that makes her feel very called to the Dominicans. And so in that obedience to the call from God, she is able to sort of resist what we might call norms of her own time.
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Tim Gray
I like that you mentioned her vision of St. Dominic. She was a real daughter of Dominic. The Dominicans have a love of learning, but it's not just learning for learning's sake. I mean, for St. Dominic and the charism of the Dominicans. The idea is that the Dominicans would have the leisure to study theology, to reflect and pray on the word of God. And then they were to take the fruits of their contemplation and share it with others. And Catherine is definitely in that mold of St. Dominic. She wants to share that fruit. So not only is she working in the hospitals, doing deeds of charity, but she's talking to people. And she's an attractive, engaging young woman. And she quickly becomes a magnet for many people. She ends up having disciples, both men and women, and she kind of becomes a spiritual director and a mentor to a lot of people that she encounters. And I just want to highlight this idea of her being a daughter of St Dominic, the very opening of her dialogue. I wanted to just read this, these opening lines, because she's going to talk about something here that will be a theme throughout her writings. And that is if you could boil Catherine's teaching and writing into two key themes, it would be truth and love. And they're deeply related for Catherine. And so here's what she says at the beginning, the prologue to the dialogue. She says, a soul rises up with tremendous desire for God's honor and the salvation of souls. You can almost see that that is what impels her to go out to do these works of charity and to be out in the world and active after her deep contemplative time. She has for some time exercised herself in virtue and has become accustomed to dwelling in the cell of self knowledge in order to know better. God's goodness toward her. Sense upon knowledge follows love and loving. She seeks to pursue truth and clothe herself in it. So I love this idea that the knowledge leads to love and that is what impels her to go out into the world. And she'll talk about that here in the dialogues that knowledge leads to love and love, you know, leads to these works of charity. It really flows into her life.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Well, yeah, as a theologian, Catherine is very helpful because, you know, you think about mystical theology and Traditional theology as being sort of separate. But Catherine was highly influenced by St. Dominic and highly influenced by Thomas Aquinas. And Thomas Aquinas, you might think, is sort of the paradigm of the stuffy scholastic who just writes all these books. Of course, that's not actually true of St. Thomas either, but I think St. Catherine really shows that fourth, because she's very famous for this deep, deep love of Christ, of these mystical experiences as being the bride of Christ. And yet at the same time, that's very much clothed and expressed in the language of the Dominicans and of scholastic theology.
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Tim Gray
One of the great encounters she has, and she mentions this in the dialogues, and as God is speaking to the soul and God the Father speaks and talks about the two main ways the devil ensnares us and leads us down. The first way the devil does is by making us kind of despairing or discouraged. So the devil tries to discourage us. You're sinful, you're not worthy of God's love. You shouldn't try to pray. Who are you to be in God's presence, to call upon God to be a daughter of God, a child of God. And so that's the first way God does that. And God the Father in this dialogue says, when the devil approached you that way, you then said, you then fell upon my mercy. And so what Catherine's answer to the devil is, yes, but God is so merciful. And so the Father says, as the devil tried to push you down, you were exalted on my mercy and love. And then when the devil said, yes, but look how later on came back to her and said, look how virtuous you are. Look how righteous you are. You have made the way. You don't need to do these self examinations. You don't need to go to confession anymore. You're a saint. And then Catherine's response to that was, I'm a wretch, I'm no good. St. John the Baptist was purified in his mother's womb, and yet he did a life of penance. How much more should I. And you know, so you noted her life of penance. But then the Father says, then you lowered yourself in humility. And so the devil realized he couldn't take you down in discouragement because you would be exalted in my mercy. And he couldn't raise you up in pride because you would be cast down in humility. It's a beautiful dialogue there on prayer. It's in the dialogues. It's really a wonderful idea of how she dealt with the devil. In that twofold way, what strikes you the most about her encounter with. She's famous for kind of calling on the Pope during this time of chaos and corruption and decadency and the papacy and the Vatican and worldliness.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
I think one thing that strikes me about her letters of correspondence, whether they're to the wife of a tailor or to the Pope, is that they're really from a heart of charity and that the dual love of God and neighbor really drives everything that she writes about. And so part of what compels her to write to the Pope and to even enter into the corruption of the Church, which, you know, if you're a hermit, may not look all that great to even go there, you just want to check out, is because she has this deep love for the body of Christ, she feels that she's the spouse of Christ. And so to see the Church divided is so grievous to her because she's so close to the heart of Jesus. And so I think, again, what allows her to speak in this way and be heard is because it comes from a very authentic place of having close relationship with Christ. And I think there's just a very basic lesson for us, which is if we don't have that relationship with Christ, if we don't haven't cultivated a kind of prayer life, if we don't see ourselves in that light, it doesn't matter how busy we are in the church and doesn't matter how much work we do, it's not going to come from the right place, and it's not going to have the kind of success that Catherine had.
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Tim Gray
No, I think that's so well said that her effectiveness came from her interior life. And that's what later on Dom Chitar would talk about as the soul of the apostolate. Right. It's the interior life again, that feeds the exterior life. And the exterior life is nothing. As our Lord says in John 15, you know, you are the vine, I'm the vine, you are the branches. And if the branches get separated from the vine, they can't bear life. They shrivel up and die. One of the images she loves to use, and I think you're so correct in highlighting she saw herself as the bride of Christ. That was really central to her identity, and her zeal for love of Jesus and everything she did flowed out of that. One of the images that's really striking when you read the dialogues is that she talks often about the blood of Jesus. The blood, the blood. And it strikes me, I'm used to hearing Baptists speak about the blood of Jesus. Have you been washed in the blood of Jesus? And I had a dear priest friend of mine who grew up in Louisiana and in New Orleans area, and he talked about being at a gas station and a Baptist woman came up and said, father, have you been washed in the blood of Jesus? And he said, madam, not only have I been washed in the blood of Jesus, but I drink it every day. She was like, wah. But really, Catherine, she speaks about that. I mean, she speaks about taking the Eucharist that she's washed, and she talks about being washed in the blood of Jesus and receiving the blood, the body and blood of Jesus all the time. It's really a stark image throughout and it's a powerful image that she uses for Jesus. This blood.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah, she often in her letters will say that it's from the blood of Jesus or in the name of the blood of Jesus or things like this. But also she has this striking image of being clothed in the blood of Jesus. She gives her under tunic to a beggar and then has a vision that Christ sort of gives her a garment made from his side that was pierced on the cross. And that's a very. There's a lot of. In her mystical imagery, there's a lot of really striking, really striking images. But if we think about being clothed in the blood of Jesus, that also helps to explain her life of penance and suffering. That if she shares in the suffering of Christ, that serves as a kind of clothing, protection, robing, beautifying her whole life. And that's not something I think we're necessarily always comfortable with or that we think about or talk about that much.
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Tim Gray
And that's her mysticism. Right. I mean, she has a deeply spiritual vision. And that union with Christ which is so central to St. Catherine, you know, St. Catherine is a very special saint. I can't believe that this time has gone by so fast, Dr. Klein. I mean, this is. She's a remarkable person. You know, you can take up her dialogues, the Dialogue with Divine Providence is a beautiful spiritual writing of Saint Catherine, her letters, you know, if you're looking for something for spiritual reading, you know, she's somebody you should think about taking up. And of course, today let's pray to St. Catherine, especially for those who are working in the healthcare profession, those who are nurses and doctors. You know what, St. Catherine of Siena was remarkable in her courage that we've spoken about before, but her courage to face those who are ill. She would take and embrace lepers and those who are dying of disease. And now we have this great COVID pandemic. And let's pray for health workers, you know, that they may have the courage to care for the sick like St. Catherine. Let's pray to St. Catherine today that this plague may end. You know, when she was born, the year she was born, the Black Death, the Black Plague hit, and it came probably from China and hit Italy hard. And today we have a plague that's come from China. So let's pray to St. Catherine that this pandemic may end and that those, all of us, but especially those taking care of the sick, may have the courage to love in spite of the risks. Right? We want that kind of courage. St. Catherine can give it to us. We also want the courage to pray. So I encourage you, if you've kind of have wimped out or, you know, not been persevering in prayer, ask St. Catherine today to give you the courage to pray that the blood of Christ may wash you in that prayer time, in that interior life, and you can grow in that union that God wants you to have. Don't let the devil deceive you. Don't let him discourage you. Pray and draw closer to Christ. Thank you for joining us, and may the Lord bless and keep you. God bless.
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Narrator
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