4. The true self instinctively hungers after God.
The sayings as to the close correspondence between the true self and God lead us on easily to those about the true self’s instinctive recognition of God, and its hunger for the possession, for the interiorization of God. “If I were to see the whole court of heaven all robed in one and the same manner, so that there would be no apparent difference between God and the Angels: even then the love which I have in my heart would recognize God, in the same manner as does a dog his master. Love knows how, without means, to discover its End and ultimate Repose.” “If a consecrated Host were to be given me together with other non-consecrated ones I would, I think, distinguish It by the taste, as wine from water.”—“When she saw the Sacrament upon the Altar in the hand of the priest, she would exclaim within herself (as it were, addressing the priest): ‘O swiftly, swiftly speed It to the heart, since It is the heart’s own food.’”[228]
5. Superiority of interior graces over exterior manifestations. No good within herself apart from divine grace.
Catherine’s hunger for the interiorization of all the external helps of religion, even, indeed specially, of the Holy Eucharist Itself, leads us on to her statements as to the superiority of interior graces and dispositions over all exterior manifestations and sensible consolations, and as to the nature of acts produced by the false self or apart from the grace of God. “If we would esteem the operations of God” as they truly deserve, “we should attend more to things interior than to exterior ones.… The true light makes me see and understand that we must not look to what proceedeth from God to aid us in some special necessity and for His glory, but that we must look solely to the pure love with which He performs His work with regard to us. When the soul perceives how direct and pure are the operations of love, and that this love is not intent upon any benefit that we could confer upon It, then indeed the soul also desires, in its turn, to love with a pure love, and from the motive of the divine love alone.”[229]
“This not-eating of mine is an operation of God, independent of my will, hence I can in nowise glory in it; nor should we marvel at it, for to Him such an operation is as nothing.”—And to her Confessor Don Marabotto she says reprovingly, when he too wanted to smell the strange, strengthening odour which she smelt on his hand: “Such things as God alone can give” (i.e. states and conditions in the production of which the soul does not co-operate) “He does not give to him who seeks them; indeed, He gives them only on occasion of great need, and in order that we may draw great spiritual profit from them.”[230]
“If I do anything that is evil, I do it myself alone, nor can I attribute the blame to the Devil or to any other creature but only to my own self-will, sensuality, and other such malign movements. And if all the Angels were to declare that there was any good in me, I would refuse to believe them, because I clearly recognize how that all good is in God alone, and that in me, without divine grace, there is nothing but deficiency.”—“I would not that, to my separate self, even one single meritorious act should ever be attributed, even though I could at the same time be certified of no more falling from henceforward and of being saved; because such an attribution would be to me as though a Hell.” “Rather would I remain in danger of eternal damnation than be saved by, and see, such an act of the separate self.” “The one sole thing in myself in which I glory is that I see in myself nothing in which I can glory.”
“Yet it is necessary that we should labour and exercise ourselves, since divine grace does not give life nor render pleasing unto God except that which the soul has worked; and without work on our part grace refuses to save.”—“We must never wish anything other than what happens from moment to moment, all the while, however, exercising ourselves in goodness. And to refuse to exercise oneself in goodness, and to insist upon simply awaiting what God might send, would be simply to tempt God.”[231]
6. God is Pure Love, Grace, Peace, and the Soul’s True Self.
The passages concerning the close relations between man’s pure love and instinct for God, and Pure Love, God Himself, easily lead us on to those in which Pure Love, Peace, Grace, the True Self, indeed the Essence of all things are positively identified with God. “Hearing herself called” to any office of her state or of charity, “she would,” even though apparently absorbed in ecstatic prayer, “arise at once, and go without any contention of mind. And she acted thus, because she fled all self-seeking as though it were the devil. And she felt at such times as though she could best express her feelings by means of the glorious Apostle’s words: ‘Who then shall separate me from the love of God?’ and the remainder of the great passage. And she would say: ‘I seem to see how that immovable mind of St. Paul extended much further than he was able to express in words; since Pure Love is God Himself: who then shall be able to separate Him from Himself?’” Elsewhere and on other occasions we find her declaring: “Love is God Himself”; “Pure Love is no other than God”; “the Divine love is the very God, infused by His own immense Goodness into our hearts.”[232]
She also declares that: “Grace is God”; that “Peace is God,”—“wouldest thou that I show thee what thing God is? Peace,—that peace which no man finds, who departs from Him.” And further still: “The proper centre of every one is God Himself”; “my Me is God, nor do I recognize any other Me, except my God Himself;” “my Being is God, not by simple participation but by a true transformation of my Being.” “God is my Being, my Me, my Strength, my Beatitude, my Good, my Delight.” Indeed “the glorious God is the whole essence of things both visible and invisible.”[233]