All these startling statements are but so many expressions of one of the most characteristic moods and attitudes of her mind and heart. For in her vehemence of love and thirst for unification she would exclaim: “I will have nothing to do with a love that would be for God or in God; this is a love which pure love cannot bear: since pure love is (simply) God Himself”; “I cannot abide to see that word for, and that word in, since they denote to my mind a something that can stand between God and myself.”[234]
All this doctrine would be summed up by her in certain favourite expressions. “She was wont often to pronounce these words: ‘Sweetness of God, Fulness of God, Goodness of God, Purity of God’”; and at a later time “she had continually on her lips the term ‘(clear) Fulness’” (Self-adequation, nettezza).[235]
II. Sin, Purification, Illumination.
1. The soul’s continuous imperfection. Self-love and Pure Love, their contradictory characters. Every man capable of Pure Love.
Catherine’s extreme sensitiveness is no doubt a chief cause of the peculiar form in which she experiences her sinfulness and faults and their actually slow purification, as expressed in those of her sayings which refer to the growth of love and to the continuous imperfections of the soul. “From the time when I began to love Him, that love has never failed me”; “indeed it has continually grown unto its consummation in the depths of my heart.” This growth takes place only step by step; and is in reality never complete, and never without certain imperfections. “The creature is incapable of knowing anything but what God gives it from day to day. If it could know (beforehand) the successive degrees that God intends to give it, it would never be quieted.” “When from time to time I would advert to the matter, it seemed to me that my love was complete; but later, as time went on and as my sight grew clearer, I became aware that I had had many imperfections.… I did not recognize them at first, because God-Love was determined to achieve the whole only little by little, for the sake of preserving my physical life, and so as to keep my behaviour tolerable for those with whom I lived. For otherwise, with such other insight, so many excessive acts would ensue, as to make one insupportable to oneself and to others.” “Every day I feel that the motes are being removed, which this Pure Love casts out (cava fuori). Man cannot see these imperfections; indeed, since, if he saw these motes, he could not bear the sight, God ever lets him see the work he has achieved, as though no imperfections remained in it. But all the time God does not cease from continuing to remove them.” “From time to time, I feel that many instincts are being consumed within me, which before had appeared to be good and perfect; but when once they have been consumed, I understand that they were bad and imperfect.… These things are clearly visible in the mirror of truth, that is of Pure Love, where everything is seen crooked which before appeared straight.”[236]
And yet the slowness of this purification is, in the last resort, caused, if not by the incomplete purity of her love, at least by the deep-rootedness and evasive character of the wrong self-love that has to be extirpated. “This our self-will is so subtle and so deeply rooted within our own selves, and defends itself with so many reasons, that, when we cannot manage to carry it out in one way, we carry it out in another. We do our own wills under many covers (pretexts),—of charity, of necessity, of justice, of perfection.” But pure love sees through all these covers: “I saw this love to have so open and so pure an eye, its sight to be so subtle and its seeing so far-reaching, that I stood astounded.” “True love wills to stand naked, without any kind of cover, in heaven and on earth, since it has not anything shameful to conceal.” And “this naked love ever sees the truth; whilst self-love can neither see it nor believe in it.” “Pure love loves God without any for (any further motive).”[237]
And man, every man, is capable of this pure love and of the truth which such love sees: “I see every one to be capable of my tender Love.” “Truth being, by its very nature, communicable to all, cannot be the exclusive property of any one.”[238]
2. Exactingness of Pure Love.
The next group of sayings deals with the purity of Love, and the severity with which this purity progressively eliminates all selfish motives and attachments, whilst itself becoming increasingly its own exceeding great beatitude. “Pure Love loves God without why or wherefore (perchè)” “Since Love took over the care of everything, I have not taken care of anything, nor have I been able to work with my intellect, memory and will, any more than if I had never had them. Indeed every day I feel myself more occupied in Him, and with greater fire.” “I had given the keys of the house to Love, with ample permission to do all that was necessary, and determined to have no consideration for soul or body, but to see that, of all that the law of pure love required, there should not be wanting the slightest particle (minimo chè). And I stood so occupied in contemplating this work of Love, that if He had cast me, body and soul, into hell, hell itself would have appeared to me all love and consolation.”[239]
Yet the corresponding, increasing constraint of the false self is most real. “I find myself every day more restricted, as if a man were (first) confined within the walls of a city, then in a house with an ample garden, then in a house without a garden, then in a hall, then in a room, then in an ante-room, then in the cellar of the house with but little light, then in a prison without any light at all; and then his hands were tied and his feet were in the stocks, and then his eyes were bandaged, and then he would not be given anything to eat, and then no one would be able to speak to him; and then, to crown all, every hope were taken from him of issuing thence as long as life lasted. Nor would any other comfort remain to such an one, than the knowledge that it was God who was doing all this, through love with great mercy; an insight which would give him great contentment. And yet this contentment does not diminish the pain or the oppression.”[240]