IV. Catherine’s Great Fasts.
1. The assertions of the “Vita.”
And a little later on, again on the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25, 1476),[96] another change took place, a change primarily concerned with her health, but one which brought out also the deep spirituality of her religion. On this day she experienced one of those interior locutions, which are so well authenticated in the lives of so many interior souls; and “her Love said that He wanted her to keep the Forty Days, in His company in the Desert. And then she began to be unable to eat till Easter; on the three Easter Days she was able to eat; and after these she again did not eat, till she had fulfilled as many days as are to be found in Lent.”[97] Similarly with regard to Advent. “Up to Martinmas” (November 12) “she would eat like all the world; and then her fast would begin, and would continue up to Christmas-Day.” Her subsequent Lenten fasts are described as beginning with Quinquagesima Monday and ending on Easter Sunday morning.[98]
2. Substantial accuracy of these accounts. Three facts to be remembered.
I take it that there can be no reasonable doubt as to the substantial accuracy of this account. But the following three facts must be borne in mind as regards the physical aspect of the matter.
The fast, for one thing, is not an absolute one. The account itself declares that she now and then drank a tumblerful of water, vinegar, and pounded rock-salt.[99] And to this must be added both the daily reception of wine—I suppose as much as a wineglassful—which was, according to a Genoese custom of that time, received by her, as a kind of ablution, immediately after her Communion;[100] and such slight amount of solid food as, when in company, she would force herself to take and would sometimes, though rarely, manage to retain.[101]
Again, the fast varies partly, in different years, in the date of its inception; and partly it does not synchronize with the beginning of the ecclesiastical fast. In the first year her Lenten fast begins on Lady-Day, in the following years on Quinquagesima Sunday; her Advent fast begins throughout on Martinmas, November 12.
And finally, the number of such fasts cannot be more than twenty-three Lents and twenty-two Advents. The MS. of 1547 has preserved the right tradition of a difference in the numbers of the Lenten and Advent fasts, but has raised the number of the former to a round, symmetrical one. It gives twenty-five Lents and twenty-two Advents. The printed Vita of 1551 levels the numbers respectively down and up to twenty-three Lents and as many Advents.[102] Some further minor physical points will be considered in a later chapter.
3. Effect of these Fasts, and her attitude towards them.
But two other matters are here of direct spiritual interest: the effect of these fasts on her spiritual efficiency, and her own two-fold attitude towards them. For we are told, again I think quite authentically, that during these fasts she was more active in good works, and felt more bright and strong in health, than usual;[103] answering thus to one of the tests put forward by Pope Benedict XIV, for discriminating supernatural, spiritually valuable fasts from simply natural ones. But with him we can find our surest tests in what is altogether beyond the range of the physical and psychical: in her own moral estimate of all these matters. For one thing, there appears here again that noble shrinking from any singularity of this kind within herself, and from all notice on the part of others. “This inability to eat gave her many a scruple at first, ignorant as she was as to its cause, and ever suspecting some delusion; and she would force herself to eat, considering that nature required it. And though this invariably produced vomiting, yet she would make the attempt again and again.” “She would go to table with the others, and would force herself to eat and drink a little, so as to escape notice and esteem as much as possible.”[104] And again here, as in all matters visible and tangible, she shows an impressive loneliness in the midst of her more carnal-minded disciples. “She would say within herself, in astonishment” at their stopping to wonder at things so much on the surface: “If you but knew another thing, which I feel within myself!” And she would declare: “If we would rightly estimate the operations of God, we should wonder more at interior than at exterior things. This incapacity to eat is indeed an operation of God, but one in which my will has no part; hence I cannot glory in it. Nor is there cause for our wondering at it, since for God this is as though a mere nothing.”[105]