Thursday, October 26 : Saint Catherine of Siena

I remember, very sweet father of a servant of God [Saint Catherine] to whom was revealed how his labor’s or the Church please God, and I tell you so that you are encouraged to suffer for her . I know that once, among others, this servant of God ardently wanted to give her blood, destroy and consume everything that was in her for the spouse of Christ, for the Holy Church; She applied her intelligence to understand her nothingness and the goodness of God towards her; She saw that God, out of love, had given her being, and all the graces, all the gifts he had added to it. By seeing and tasting this love, this abyss of charity, she saw no other way to thank God than to love Him; But as she could not be useful to Him, she could not prove her love to Him, and then she sought to love for him something that allowed her to show her love. She saw that God loves with an infinite love creatures, and this love, she found in Him towards all men, because we are all loved by God: she therefore had a way to see if she loved God or not, since it could thus be useful to it. So she gave up with ardor to charity towards her neighbor, and she felt such a love for their salvation, which she would have given with joy her life to obtain. (…) Then this soul, seeing so much greatness and depth in the goodness of God, and what it had to do to please it more, increased more and more the ardor of its desire; It seemed to her that if she could have given her life a thousand times a day until the last judgment, it would have been less than a drop of wine in the sea; And it’s also the truth.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team