Letters of Catherine Benincasa

by Saint of Siena Catherine

So, reflecting that this was the best way, I said that I desired to see thee a real bride of Christ crucified; and so I beg and command thee that thou try hard to be. I say no more to thee. Remain in the holy and sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.

LETTERS ON THE CONSECRATED LIFE

Catherine is known in history as one of the great ascetics of the Church; these letters show her intimate attitude toward the mortification of the flesh. She was a woman called of God and her natural powers, constantly to assume the dangerous duty of convincing men of their sin; these letters give us her conception of the safeguards needed in the performance of that duty.

Both letters were written to Religious. Father William Flete was an Englishman, who, passing through Italy in his youth, became fascinated with the land, and spent the rest of his life in a hermit's cell in the Forest of Lecceto. The annals of the time throw some entertaining side- lights on his figure. Famous for his austerities and for the sanctity of his life, he was also a very impatient and somewhat intolerant person, given to carping criticism of his brother hermits. Catherine, in writing to him, analyses mercilessly the dangers of the ascetic life; one feels that not much self-righteousness could be left in a man after reading her trenchant phrases. Soon, however, she lifts him with her to the ardent contemplation of the perfect life; it is in words of singular beauty that she describes the attitude of generous loving-kindness, uncritical, humble and glad, with which the true servant of God considers all sorts and conditions of men: "Such a man rejoices in every type that he sees, saying: Thanks be to Thee, Eternal Father, that Thou hast many mansions in Thy house…. He rejoices more in the differences among men than he would in seeing them all walk in the same way; for so he sees more manifest the greatness of the goodness of God. He gets from everything the fragrance of roses."

In the letter to Sister Daniella, Catherine develops these ideas further. Of this "great servant of God" nothing is known except what Catherine's letters to her show. Something may be inferred from the fact that she is one of the few people to whom the greater woman writes as to a spititual equal. She repeats to Daniella the letter to Father William—such warnings, indeed, being needed by all persons leading the consecrated life—and then goes on, in the remainder of the letter as here given, to discuss those farther reaches of perfection in which charity has done its perfect work. Two things she wishes herself and Daniella to observe: the first is abstinence from critical thoughts. Let us not "judge the minds of our fellow-creatures, which are for God alone to judge." It is the key to her own method in her great cure of souls which she here gives us: "When it seems that God shows us the faults of others, keep on the safer side— for it may be that thy judgment is false. On thy lips let silence abide. And any vice which thou mayest ascribe to others, do thou ascribe at once to them and to thyself, in true humility. If that vice really exists in a person, he will correct himself better, seeing himself so gently understood, and will say of his own accord the thing which thou wouldst have said to him."—The other point which Catherine urges on Daniella is the secondary importance of that life of mortification to which she firmly believes that they have both been called. "Good is penance and maceration of the body; but do not present these to me as a rule for every one. If either for ourselves or others, we made penance our foundation … we should be ignorant, and should fall into a critical attitude, and become weary and very bitter: for we should strive to give a finished work to God, Who is Infinite Love, and demands from us only infinite desire." Surely, in this last thought Catherine has attained in a flash to sublime spiritual insight.

The Saints knew all about telepathy long before Societies of Psychical Research grew eager over the matter. It might surprise some modern psychologists to read the tranquil passage in which Catherine, assuming as a matter of course that any servant of God engaged in intercessory prayer has a mystical and direct knowledge of the condition of those she prays for, proceeds to warn Daniella as intelligently as any modern could do, though in different terms, as to the limitations within which this kind of knowledge can be trusted.

The little note with which this group closes is not written to a great recluse, but to a tailor's wife. With the simple, Catherine showed herself simple; but Monna Agnese is to lead the consecrated life no less than Sister Daniella. Catherine's plain directions to the one about her daily living evince the same mental clarity and sobriety as her exhortations to the other, and discriminate in much the same way between the excitement of religious practices and true consecration.

TO BROTHER WILLIAM OF ENGLAND OF THE HERMIT BROTHERS OF ST. AUGUSTINE

In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest son in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in His precious Blood, with desire to see you in true light. For without light we shall not be able to walk in the way of truth, but shall walk in shadows. Two lights are necessary. First, we must be illumined to know the transitory things of the world, which all pass like the wind. But these are not rightly known if we do not know our own frailty, how inclined it is, from the perverse law which is bound up with our members, to rebel against its Creator. This light is necessary to every rational creature, in whatever state it may be, if it wishes to have divine grace, and to share in the blessing of the Blood of the Spotless Lamb. This is the common light, that everybody in general ought to have, for whoever has it not is in a state of condemnation. This is the reason; that, not having light, he is not in a state of grace; for one who does not know the evil of wrong, nor who is cause of it, cannot avoid it nor hate the cause. So he who does not know good, and virtue the cause of good, cannot love nor desire that good.