This group of experiences straightway enforces some important spiritual laws. For one thing, this scintilla-experience, since her Conversion the deepest of her life, is clearly also the richest and most complex,—witness the numerous, mutually supplementary or critical, attempts at analysis furnished by even her immediate companions. And this experience is only simple in the sense in which white light, which combines all the prismatic colours, or a living healthy human body, composed of numberless constituents, is simple.
And next, nothing indicates that this experience was of a character essentially different from that of her older contemplations; and everything appears to show that it was, substantially, a grace addressed to, and an act performed by, her spiritual nature,—her intelligence and free will, God’s Spirit stimulating and sustaining hers in a quite exceptional degree, and hence less than ever weakening or supplanting this her spirit’s action. It was as much a gift of herself by herself to God, as if it had not been a pure grace from Him; and yet her very power and wish and determination to give herself, were rendered possible and became actual through that pure prevenient, accompanying and subsequent gift of God.
Again, it is certain that either there was no clear mental scheme, reasoning, or picture during the experience, or that, if there was, it consisted of a spacial simultaneity rather than of a temporal succession, and that it showed her, if her own soul at all, then that soul in its most universally human, typical aspects and relations. In no case was there anything historical or prophetical, strictly biographical about it.
And then we have, even though she could give no kind of definite account of it, the most solid reasons for accepting this experience as genuine, wholesome, and valuable. For she evidently fully believed in it herself; and we shall see how clearly and readily she continued, even after this experience, to distinguish between wholesome and mental, and maladif and simply psychic, states of abstraction. Again it became the occasion and material of most deep and fruitful spiritual doctrine; whereas nothing is more empty and unsuggestive than are the bare, brute “facts” of all merely nervous or hysterical hallucinations. It also demonstrably strengthened her will for the last deep sufferings and sacrifices yet to be gone through, and no doubt added a fresh stimulus to her already profound influence over Vernazza, and pricked him onwards on his career of the most solid, heroic philanthropy and self-sacrifice. And yet we can see that her psycho-physical organism is now functionally weak and ill. For great physical exhaustion now follows upon an experience substantially the same as those which used to strengthen her so markedly even in physical respects.
As to the scene with the picture, we again get a case not unlike the odour of Marabotto’s hand, in so much as here too the experience hovers between the mental and physical, and there is a sensible impression as from a physical substance with reference to a Person,—this taste of a “divine water” moving here on to Christ, to God, the Living Water, as that smell of sweetness moves on to the “Living Bread,” Christ, and God. It is, unfortunately, impossible to identify that picture, which may well have been a fresco-painting in some building or passage of the Hospital, since destroyed, or on some extant wall, white-washed since those days. The vivid picturings of the soul in mid-air, and of the soul in the purgatory of its body, will be considered in connection with her psycho-physical states and her doctrine.
But before leaving this November experience, we must give two significant conversations held by her with Vernazza at the time, and which have been no doubt handed down to us by himself. “One day, speaking of this” (the scintilla-) “event with a spiritual person (Religioso) she called it ‘a giddiness’ (vertigine). But that person said to her: ‘Mother, I beg of you that you will yourself select a person who may happen to suit your mind (soddisfaccia alla mente vestra), and will narrate to this person the graces which God has granted to you, so that, when you come to die, these graces may not remain hidden and unknown, and an opportunity for God’s praise and glory may not thus be lost.’ And she then answered that she was entirely willing (ben contenta), if this be pleasing to her tender Love; and that, in that case, she would not choose another person than himself, although she was convinced that it was impossible to describe even a small fragment of such interior experiences as occurred between God and her soul; and that as to exterior things, few or none had taken place in her case.” Here again we have evidence as to her habit of making light of and transcending all psycho-physical phenomena, however striking and mysterious; and we get a positive authorization conferred by herself upon Vernazza, such as is claimed by no other contributor to the Vita.
And “speaking with him some days later, she said: ‘Son, I have had a certain prick of conscience, of which I will tell you. The other day, when you told me that I might possibly remain dead some day during one of those giddinesses, there seemed to arise in me, at that moment, a feeling of joy, a profound aspiration which said: ”O, if that hour would but come!“ And then this feeling suddenly ceased. Now I declare to you, that I do not wish that in this matter there should be any glimpse (scintilla) of a desire of my own for earth or heaven, or for any other created thing; but that I wish to leave all things to the disposition of God.’ Then this person answered, that there was no occasion for her to have a prick of conscience, because, although joy had awaked in her mind, and a sudden exclamation had occurred there, at the mention of the word ‘death,’ yet that nothing of this had proceeded from the will, nor had it been endorsed by the reason; but that it had proceeded solely from the instinct of the pleasure-loving soul (anima), which ever, according to its nature, tends to such an end. And how the proof that this was a correct account, lay in this, that her prick of conscience had not really penetrated to the depths of her heart, but had remained on the surface, at the same slight depth at which the movement of joy had remained. And she confessed that the matter really stood thus, and remained satisfied.”[174]
Here three points are of interest. I take her impulse of deep longing to die in one of those trances, to have arisen, not simply from joy at the thought of dying, but from joy at the prospect of dying of joy,—of dying with the joy fixed in that moment in the soul for ever. For heaven itself appears here not as a synonym for God, but as a creature, as the summing up of infinite and endless consolation of all right kinds, spiritual and psycho-physical. And it is this that makes her scruple thoroughly understandable, and but one more instance of her virile fight with all direct attachment to the consequences and concomitants of devotedness.—And next we should note her deep trust in the spiritual experience and wisdom of Vernazza, the layman and lawyer, some twenty-five years her junior; and her asking his advice on a matter which we would readily suppose her to reserve for Don Marabotto, who by now had been her Confessor and Spiritual Adviser for many years.—And lastly, the depth and delicacy of Vernazza’s analysis are most striking, with their clear perception of the various levels and degrees of true selfhood and volition within the human soul: she had really had neither a full will, nor a deliberate wish, nor indeed any penetrating, spontaneous reproach of conscience; she had, in fact, been suffering from a scruple, and he was required, and was able, to make her see that this had been the case.
5. Catherine’s sense of intense cold, and her attitude towards Don Marabotto.
And in December 1509 and January 1510 we come across a group of experiences and actions, in some respects different from, and supplementary of, the set just concluded. For “in the month of December she suffered from great cold,”—I take this cold to have been, at least partially, special to her state, and not to have proceeded primarily from the winter temperature,—“but she paid no attention to it.” “And behold one night there came so great an attack (assalto) upon her, that she could not conceal it. There was a great heaving of the body, much bile was evacuated, and the nose bled. And she then sent for her Confessor, and said to him: ‘Father, it seems to me that I must die, because of the many weakenings of various sorts (accidenti) that have happened to me.’” “And this attack (assalto) lasted for about three hours,” “her body trembling like a leaf.” “And then her body became quiet again, but was now so broken and weak that it was necessary to give her minced chicken to revive her; and a good many days had to pass before she returned to her (latter-day) vigour.”[175]