Catherine of Siena

  Then once again she was warned that the hour of her death was near, and while the demons threw themselves upon her and beat her body, her desire grew as a flame rises upwards, and she cried out to her Bridegroom: “O Eternal God, receive my life as a sacrifice for Your mystical body, the Church. I can give You nothing which You Yourself have not given me. But take my heart and squeeze it out over the face of Your Bride, the Church.” And the Almighty looked mercifully upon her, and did as she asked him.

  Rocked as though on the waves, between a bliss of which she had never dreamed and the fury of the demons, Catherine cried: “Thanks, thanks to the Highest, the Eternal, who has placed us on the field of battle. We have become victors through the power which triumphed over the devil, the lord of mankind. He has been overcome, not by our physical sufferings, and not by the virtues of mankind, but by the power of God. Yes, the devil is conquered and shall be conquered again, not by our struggles and our deeds, but by the fire from the bottomless depths of divine mercy.”

  The letter finishes suddenly here, without the usual ending—without even the words which had become Catherine’s signature: “Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.”

  XXVII

  OBEDIENT TO THE VOICE she had heard in her vision, Catherine got up each morning at dawn and went down to take part in the Mass in the oratory in her house. But when she had received Communion her friends had to carry her upstairs and lay her on her bed. An hour or two later she got up again and went on foot all the way to St. Peter’s. It was as though her fragile body were upheld by supernatural power, and she still walked quickly and lightly. In the old days when she had run about in her own town on her numerous errands of mercy, no one had been so quick and light as Catherine. Now she was sent out on errands which she could not explain to her sons and daughters in words which they would be able to understand. They realised vaguely that their “mamma” had been chosen to carry out the work which is entrusted to the saints. With her physical and spiritual agonies she filled up in her flesh “those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ”, as St. Paul expresses it.

  He had once written to the Corinthians: “You are partakers of the sufferings” of Christ; but, he continues, “so shall you also be of the consolation.” But the mystics who have experienced this have never been able to tell of the dark night of the soul and the radiance of the community of Heaven except in symbols borrowed from our own human life, agreeing sorrowfully that they are inadequate.

  When Catherine came home in the evening she would immediately sink onto her hard bed and lie down, and it looked as though she would never be able to move again. Her children stood round her bed full of consternation, and, broken with grief and sympathy, thought of the day when they would be motherless; for how long could this state of affairs last? It lasted until the third Sunday in Lent. After that she was unable to leave her bed: she could just manage to move her head and hands, but soon her body became paralysed from the waist down.

  With secret horror her family had seen how her body sometimes looked as though it had been beaten by invisible hands. The sick woman told them that these pains were physical, but not natural: “God allows demons to torture me in this way” Tommaso Caffarini writes of her last days: “She bore everything with such a steady courage and cheerfulness that it was as though it was not she herself who suffered these terrible pains. She always spoke so calmly and lovingly that all who heard her were full of admiration. If one tried to describe her patience in words it would seem as though one were trying to disparage her rather than praise her. No one ever heard the smallest moan from her blessed lips. She said that her sufferings were not so great. No one ever heard her say a vain word; she always spoke of God’s glory, of gratitude for the salvation of men, and of the eternal happiness of her neighbour. And although she suffered physically more than words can tell, the expression on her face was always as happy and good as an angel’s.”

  On the Sunday of Holy Week Fra Bartolommeo Dominici, who was now prior of a monastery in Siena, came to Rome. He had some matters to arrange for his monastery, but the first thing he did was to hasten to Catherine’s house. Completely unprepared, he found himself face to face with his mother on her bed of wooden boards. They had fastened a framework of planks round the bed, so that it looked as though she already lay in her coffin. She had shrunk so that she looked like a dried-up corpse: even her face had darkened and become so puckered that not a trace of her beauty was to be seen. He had had no idea that she was ill, except that he naturally knew that her health, with its constant shifting between exhaustion and moments of great activity, and back to exhaustion again, had always been something of a mystery for all who knew her. But this was a dying woman. Sore at heart, Fra Bartolommeo asked her, weeping, “How are you, Mother?” Catherine could not speak, but let him understand by eloquent signs how happy she was to see him. Then he bowed his head so that his ear was beside her mouth, and she whispered: By the grace of God, she was well.

  It was the day before Catherine’s thirty-third birthday, and Bartolommeo said “Mother, to-morrow is Easter Sunday. I would so much like to celebrate the Mass here and give Holy Communion to you and your spiritual children.” Catherine whispered: “Oh, if only our sweet Saviour will allow me to receive Him.”

  On the morning of Easter Sunday Fra Bartolommeo returned to fulfil his promise. Catherine had confessed to him, and as a penance he told her to pray to God that He should allow her to be given strength to receive Him on the great day, as a consolation for herself and them all. The altar stood beside her bed, and Fra Bartolommeo began the Mass while Catherine lay motionless until after the priest had received Communion. Then she suddenly rose, went without help the few steps to the altar, and knelt with closed eyes. She received the Body of the Lord. Afterwards she remained motionless on her knees in deep ecstasy. But when she recovered consciousness her friends had to lift her up into her bed, and she lay as before, unable to move.

  But during Fra Bartolommeo’s stay in Rome Catherine was able to talk to him a little once or twice, and tell him how God had allowed her to suffer for peace in the Church. “So that the Church may be liberated I suffer happily, and would gladly die for it if necessary.”

  When he had completed his commission, Fra Bartolommeo was unwilling to return home—how could he leave her when she was so ill? Catherine said: “Son, you know what a consolation it is for me to have near me the children whom God has given me. I should be so happy if Fra Raimondo could be here too. But it is God’s will that I am to be without you both, and God’s will be done, not mine.”

  She said to him that she knew that Fra Raimondo would soon be chosen as Master General of their order, and Bartolommeo must always help him and be obedient and loyal to him. When he begged her to pray God to make her well again she promised to do so. And the next day when he came to say good-bye, it seemed as though she were a little brighter—she managed to lift her arms and put them round her son’s neck. But it was her last farewell to him.

  It was perhaps Fra Bartolommeo’s account, when he returned to Siena, which at last caused Stefano Maconi to hurry to his mother’s deathbed. But there is a legend that he was kneeling in prayer in the hospital church of La Scala when he learned of her condition in some mystical way. So instead of the sons whom she missed being round her deathbed, she had Stefano back again, the fresh and noble young soul whom she had always loved especially tenderly. Now he was with her again, for ever; he took down the few letters she still managed to dictate, and listened to her when she was able to speak, with the old passionate affection.

  Messer Tommaso Petra, a papal protonotary, had met Catherine in Avignon, and when she came to Rome he renewed his friendship with her. It was apparently one day in April that he came to visit her and found her on her hard bed in the little oratory where Mass was said for her. He said: “Mamma, it seems to me that your heavenly Bridegroom is calling you to Him. Will you not make your last will and testament?” Catherine was obviously astonished: “I? But
I am only a poor girl, I possess nothing. I have nothing to make a testament of.” But Messer Tommaso explained that he meant a spiritual testament with advice for her disciples to follow and live by when she had left this life. She replied that if God gave her grace she would do so willingly.

  It was presumably Messer Tommaso, the old notary, who wrote down this spiritual testament while her family were present. It is a summing-up of all that she had tried to teach her disciples. In her earliest youth it had been given to her to understand how a soul which wishes to give itself completely and absolutely to God and to possess Him entirely, must pluck out of its heart all merely natural love for human creatures and all that is created, in order to love God only and all things in Him. This has to be the way of suffering, for it means that one must let one’s eyes be blinded by the tremendous light of faith which engulfs all temporal and sensual things. But Catherine believes firmly that nothing can befall her or anyone which is not sent from God. The source of everything is His great love for all His creatures—never hate. She had therefore always tried to be obedient to God and to all those to whom He had given authority over her, for she was always sure that what they told her to do was God’s will and necessary if her soul was to be saved and virtue grow in her. But the beginning and end of perfection is prayer—prayer with the lips at the appointed times, and ceaseless interior prayer, which means that we always remember God’s goodness towards us.

  She warns her disciples insistently that they must never condemn others or indulge in vain talk against their neighbours. If we see them doing things which we know are great sins, we must nevertheless leave God to judge them—let us pray for them, humbly and piously, with real and tender sympathy.

  She reminds them of Our Lord’s words which St. John repeats: “Love one another. . . . By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.” She speaks of the reformation of the Church: it is what she has fought and suffered for these last seven years. She thanks God because He has graciously let devils tempt her, as He once allowed Job to be tempted. But now she knew that her Beloved would soon free her soul from this dark prison so that she could return to her Creator. She was not sure of this, and if God still wished her to work on earth for Him, His will be done, but she thought that she would soon die. She asked her dearest children not to sorrow or lose courage, but to be glad if her sufferings ended now and she was taken to rest in the ocean of peace which is the eternal God, and to become one with her Bridegroom.

  “And I promise you that I shall be with you always, and be of much more use to you on the other side than I ever could be here on earth, for then I shall have left the darkness behind me and move in the eternal light.”

  She gave each of her children special advice for the future. Sister Alessia should be the mother and head of her daughters, who were also her sisters in the Mantellata order. Her sons should have Fra Raimondo as their father and leader. One by one she called her disciples to her bed and gave them advice; some she said should go into one of the monastic orders, some be priests, some hermits. She had decided that Stefano Maconi should join the Carthusian order, Francesco Malavolti the Olivetans, and Neri di Landoccio should become a hermit. She advised the notary, Messer Cristofano di Gano Guidini, to enter the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala as a nurse. She asked all her children to forgive her, because she had not been a more perfect example for them, and because she had not prayed for them so ceaselessly as she should. She also asked their pardon for all the pain, bitterness and unpleasantness which she might have caused them. “I did it from ignorance, and I vow before the face of God that I always wished with my whole heart that you might be saved and become perfect.” One by one her weeping disciples came forward and received her blessing in God’s name.

  Catherine continued to live until April 29, the Sunday before Ascension Day. Some hours before dawn it seemed to those who stood round her bed that the death-agony had begun. The rest of her companions were sent for, and when they were all assembled she made signs that she wished to receive the papal absolution in articulo mortis—absolution from guilt and punishment. Fra Giovanni Tantucci gave it to her. Now there was no other sign of life than the feeble breathing. The abbot of Sant’ Artimo, whose cause Catherine had once defended in the city council of Siena, was present. He gave his old friend the last anointing.

  But after a while the unconscious woman began to be restless. She lifted her right arm and let it fall on the blanket again and again, while she repeated: “Peccavi, Domine, miserere mei.” It looked to those who stood around her bed as though she fought with terrible demons: her face darkened, she turned her head from side to side and looked away as though she would escape some awful sight. All the time she murmured: “Deus in adjutorium meum intende”—God come to my help. Suddenly she cried, “with holy recklessness”: “My own honour? Never! But the true glory of Christ Crucified.”

  She had fought and won the last battle. Those who watched over her saw the white, dying face become radiantly happy, her dim eyes suddenly shine like two stars. Greatly moved and happy, her children thought for a moment that God had worked yet another miracle and would let them have their mother back. The virgin smiled: “Praised be our beloved Saviour.”

  Alessia supported her head on her breast. But the restlessness which precedes death had come over Catherine—she made a sign that they should help her to sit. Alessia took the slender figure and sat her on her knee as though she were a little child. Her disciples placed before her her little altar, beautifully decorated with pictures and relics—it had once been given to her by a cardinal. But Catherine fixed her eyes on the crucifix in the middle, and before this picture of her Lord she made her last confession.

  She praised God’s goodness, but accused herself of lukewarmness and ingratitude: “You condescended to choose me as Your bride when I was still a child, but I have not been faithful to You; I did not seek Your glory so diligently as I should. I did not always let the memory of the grace You poured over this miserable being fill my thoughts: I often let my mind be full of other unseemly thoughts.”

  She repeated her self-accusations—she had not fulfilled her duties towards the souls whom God had entrusted to her to lead: “You sent me so many dear daughters and sons and told me to love them with a special love and lead them on life’s way to You. But I was only a mirror for them, a mirror of human weakness, I have not lifted them up before You in persistent prayer, I have not been enough of an example for them.”

  “So the purest dove accused herself”, say Barduccio and Tommaso Caffarini. Then she turned to the priest and asked to receive the absolution once again, for all the sins she had confessed and for those she had forgotten to confess. So she received the papal absolution for the second time.

  Old Lapa, their dear Nonna, sat at her daughter’s side. Humbly and sincerely Catherine asked for her mother’s blessing. Poor Lapa, she tried to find some consolation in her great grief when she asked Catherine to bless her, and to attain a gift for her from God—that Lapa should not sin against God’s will by sorrowing too greatly.

  Catherine continued to pray till the last moment, for the Church, for Pope Urban, for her children. She prayed with such intense love that her disciples thought that not only their hearts, but the very stones must break. “Beloved, You call me, I come. Not through any service of mine, but through Your mercy and the power of Your blood.” She made the sign of the cross and cried, “Blood, blood. . .” Then she bowed her head. “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.” And as she said it, she gave up her spirit. Her face had become as beautiful as an angel’s, radiant with tenderness and happiness.

  It was about the hour of terce on April 29, 1380.

  XXVIII

  AT ABOUT THE HOUR OF TERCE on April 29 Raimondo was in his monastery at Genoa preparing for his journey to the Chapter in Bologna. He was to travel by sea to Pisa with several other monks, but the weather was bad, and he was not completely at ease. He went up the
stairs to the dormitories and into his cell to put his few possessions into a sack. He stopped before the picture of the Holy Virgin in the corridor, bowed his head and repeated the Angelus in a low voice. A voice which he did not hear with his physical ears spoke clearly in his soul and said to him: “Do not be afraid, I am here for your sake, I am in heaven for your sake. I shall take care of you, I shall protect you, I am here for your sake.” Greatly disturbed, he wondered where these promises of security came from. For a moment he thought it must be God’s Mother—and then he thought that it could not be, he was too unworthy. He was afraid that this voice he had heard was a warning that he was in great danger; the schismatic pirates sailed all round the coast, and Raimondo knew how heartily they hated him because he had preached against them. Humbly he prayed that this warning might make him more careful and better prepared to suffer patiently whatever might befall him. “These ideas prevented me from entering into the great and mystical grace of Our Lord when He sent the spirit of His bride to help me against my weakness and despondency which the saint knew so well, but the Lord, her Bridegroom, knew even better. As this event seems to me to put me to shame and nothing to be proud of, I feel that I can safely write it down.”

  At the Chapter in Bologna where Raimondo was elected Master General of the Dominicans he heard that Catherine had died at precisely the same time that he heard the bodiless voice which consoled and encouraged him.