6. Experience of December 27, 1554.
“This morning” (December 27), “which is the Feast of the Evangelist John, when I awoke, I suddenly heard the words being spoken within my mind: ‘To-day I am determined to divide thy soul from thy spirit’—and later on, when the Host was being elevated at Mass and I was praying about this matter, I had a sight or Thou didst say unto me—I cannot remember precisely which it was,—enough, it appeared to me that as, when the soul is divided from the body, the soul, in so far as immortal, flies to its destined place, and the entire body remains dead: so also, when the almighty hand of God makes a similar division of the soul from the spirit, the former, the animal part (of man), remains dead, but the spirit, (truly) free (at last), flies to its natural place, which is God, the Living Fountain.”
Here we are at once reminded of Catherine’s experience of “Love once speaking within her mind”; of her sayings which dwell on the separation of the soul from the body, and on the flight of the spirit to its natural place, God; and of her sight of “the living Fountain” of Goodness.[348] But Battista’s psychology is entirely clear and self-consistent, as to the precise extension of, and the precise distinction between, the terms “spirito” and “anima”; whereas, in the authentic sayings of Catherine, “anima” is used sometimes as inclusive of, and sometimes in contradistinction to, “spirito.” We shall see how it is only the later systematizing Dialogo-writer who brings perfect consistency, and a scheme identical with Battista’s, into Catherine’s terminology. Yet in Catherine’s image of the assimilation of bread by man, in illustration of the assimilation of man’s nature by God, we find Battista’s two stages of the divisional process. For there the body is first purified up to the actual level of the soul, and then the soul itself is purified perfectly, its animal part being eliminated or dominated by the spiritual part.[349]
It is interesting, too, to note how Battista cannot decide here whether this interpretation of the short sentence she had heard was mentally seen or interiorly heard by her; indeed, she is sure only that, whilst she was praying to understand the meaning of that sentence, the meaning thus sought appeared to her, by some means or other, to be so and so. It is then abundantly clear from this, that the difference between an interior sight and an interior voice, and again between either of these and the admittedly normal workings of her own mind, was, at times, so delicate, as either not to be clear to her own consciousness, even at the very time of the experience; or, at least, to fade away from her memory before she came to chronicle the experience.
7. Experience of January 6, 1555.
“On the Feast of the Epiphany” (January 6, 1555), “before Communion, I felt ineffable and most tender colloquies, and greatly I rejoiced because of them. For I had caused Masses to be said and prayers to be prayed, by various persons during many days, with the intention that, if these colloquies were not from Thee, I might no more experience them; but that, if they were Thine, they might be produced within me more clearly and more efficaciously. And seeing that I now felt them more than usual, and in a more admirable manner, I had and have a firm hope that they were Thine. Whence it happened that (having, on that same blessed day, to go up to receive Thee in the Sacrament), I felt Thy Majesty more than once calling me within me, ‘Come, since I want to devour thee entirely.’ … It seems to me that ‘entirely’ was one of the words, but I have no firm remembrance of this. But I know well that Thou saidst several times, ‘Come, since I want to devour thee.’ … To me it seemed that I merited rather to go under Lucifer, than into the Infinite Light (Luce).”
We get here a number of interesting parallels and contrasts to Catherine’s teaching and practice. God’s devouring of the soul; God pictured as Light; souls conceived as higher up or lower down in space, according to their degree of goodness or of badness; even the pleasure in a play upon words: all this finds its close counterpart in Catherine.[350] But far more important is the difference in the subject-matter of their scruples and in their respective attitudes towards psychically unusual experiences. In Catherine’s case there is no record of anxieties concerning other things than her degree of detachment and her administrative responsibilities; indeed her whole practice and teaching, continuously bent as they were upon the ethico-spiritual truth and upon the practical application of her unusual experiences, make it morally certain that her anxieties never turned upon these forms and means themselves. She was, as it were, too much occupied with the content of the cup, ever to be actively perplexed as to the cup itself. Battista, on the contrary, seems to have been quite free from scruples of Catherine’s melancholic type; but did not, evidently, always soar as highly as her God-mother above all anxious occupation with the form of her experiences. And, indeed, if, in this instance, it was evidently the form of her experiences which perplexed her, it was also the renewed and heightened experience of this peculiar form which reassured her.—Yet the very fact of such a perplexity, and again the moderation with which, even at the end of it all, she but “hopes that it all comes from God,” shows a healthy reluctance to trust too readily or too much to such tests and indications. It would probably not be unfair to put her attitude towards such things midway between Don Marabotto’s readiness of belief and Catherine’s soaring ethico-spiritual transcendence.
It is noticeable too that, if the inner voice is more distinct than before, Battista’s anxious care for accuracy is also, if possible, more on the alert than ever: witness her remarks as to the word “all.”
8. Experience of the Second Sunday in Lent, 1555.
“On the second Sunday (in Lent), having communicated, I felt Thine ineffable reasonings; but, since I did not write them down at once, I do not any more venture to write them down, having in great part lost the memory of them. But this I remember, that the words were like those which the Bridegroom says to the Bride in the Canticle (of Canticles).”