Friday, April 29 : Saint John-Paul II

When Catherine was born in Siena in 1347, the situation in Italy and Europe had become very difficult. The Black Death, which would sow devastation, was already making itself known; society was disturbed by the Hundred Years war and the invasions of mercenaries; the popes had found it necessary to abandon Rome for Avignon; schism in the West would continue until 1417. The daughter of a dyer, Catherine would very quickly become aware of the needs of the world around her. Drawn by the apostolic style of life of the Dominicans, she asked to be attached to the Third Order (these pious women were called “Mantellate”). These were not religious strictly speaking and did not live a common life, but they wore the white habit and black cloak of the Friars Preachers. (…) Catherine was surrounded by a motley crowd of disciples, or every class and origin. She drew them to her by the purity of her faith and the freedom of her acceptance of the word of God, without modification or compromise. (…) She attained the summit of her interior progress with spiritual marriage (…); one would have thought, therefore, that her life flowed peacefully in solitude and contemplation. But God, to the contrary, had united her to him so that she might be joined to the work of his Kingdom. (…) Christ’s intention was to bind her closely to him by “love of neighbor,” as much through the sweetness of bonds of the soul as by exterior works; it was what people called “social mysticism”. (…) After applying herself to the conversion of individual sinners, she went on to the reconciliation of persons or families opposed to each other by bad quarrels, then to the pacification of towns or States. (…) The interior prompting of the divine Master opened up to her, so to speak, an increased humanity. Thus it was that this humble workman’s daughter, illiterate, practically without schooling and culture, had knowledge of the needs of her time to the point of going beyond the limits of her city and reaching, by her action, a universal dimension.
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team