Saint Catherine of Sienna

Feast day : 29 April

“All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, "I am the way.”  

Early life:
Saint Catherine of Sienna was the 23rd child born on March 25, 1347 to Giacomo Benincasa and Lapa Benincasa. When she was six years old, she had a vision of Our Lord where he was clothed in pontifical ornaments, a tiara upon His head and He was seated on a throne around which stood St. Peter, St. Paul and St. John the Evangelist. Smiling upon Catherine, Jesus blessed her in the usual manner of a priest. This vision had a great impact on her life and from thereon she felt a great desire to give herself to Jesus. At the age of seven, she promised herself to Him through Mother Mary by giving herself over to a life of chastity.

In her early teens under the influence of her mother and sister Bonaventura she indulged for a short period in worldly ways but this brief period ended with the death of her sister. Later she repented for her indulgence in worldly ways. She refused the marriage proposed by her family and cut off her beautiful golden hair in protest. Her parents, wanting to change her inclination for solitude loaded her with distractions that employed her time in doing the household chores. But the hardest labour, humiliations, contempt and insults were all the more pleasing to her. Eventually, after seeing a dove hovering over her head as she prayed, her father approved of her devotion and pious desires. She was given a room in the family house where she lived the life of a hermit for the next three years, keeping silence, eating alone and very little and going out only to church. In 1365, she received the habit of the third order of St. Dominic.

Mystical life:
After three years of solitary life in her home, Jesus through a revelation made it known to her that he wanted her to lead a more active life. She continued her mortification and penances though not in a solitary way. She began visiting hospitals and tending to the sick. She was blessed with extraordinary supernatural gifts but also experienced unusual torments and temptations from the evil spirits throughout her life. She laboured for the conversion of sinners and through her severe penances, prayers, fasts and other austerities she converted many sinners. She was known to have delivered many from diabolical possession, miraculously healed the sick and was known to levitate frequently during prayer. She raised her mother Lapa from the dead after pleading with Jesus for her life as she had died without confessing her sins. After 1370, St. Catherine lived for longer periods without nourishment except the Holy Communion.

Among all the graces that she received from Jesus, the most precious was the special grace to enjoy an extraordinary intimacy with Our Lord Jesus and His Mother Mary and to have experienced the mystical espousal in which Our Lord, in a vision, gave her a ring. The ring was visible only to Catherine. On April 1, 1375 she received the stigmata on her body after receiving Holy Communion in the Church of St. Christina at Pisa and at her request the Lord made the marks visible only to herself. After her death, they became more pronounced. About 15 months before she died, she also received the crown of thorns from Our Lord.

She is known to have laboured tirelessly for the interests of the Church and Apostolic See. She is credited with having persuaded Pope Gregory XI to return the Papacy from Avignon to Rome. She corresponded with kings and queens for the causes of the Church and prayed and pleaded for Church unity. Following Pope Gregory's death in March 1378 riots, the revolts of the Ciompi, broke out in Florence on 18 June, and in the ensuing violence she was nearly assassinated. Eventually, in July 1378, peace was agreed between Florence and Rome and Catherine returned quietly to Florence. In late November 1378, with the outbreak of the Western Schism, the new Pope, Urban VI, summoned her to Rome. She stayed at Pope Urban VI's court and tried to convince nobles and cardinals of his legitimacy, both meeting with individuals at court and writing letters to persuade others.

St. Catherine saw that many devils were inciting the people of Rome to kill the true Pope. She knew that this would call for God’s wrath and punishment on Christians and the Church and when she understood by an inner locution that God’s justice demands this punishment on the people she offered herself instead praying “Let the punishment of this people fall on my body!” This prayer was answered and Catherine entered into the final four months of her life that was to be of intense suffering. Catherine died in Rome, on 29 April 1380, at the age of thirty-three, having eight days earlier suffered a massive stroke which paralyzed her from the waist down. Her last words were, "Father, into Your Hands I commend my soul and my spirit."

Saint Catherine ranks among the greatest mystics and spiritual writers the Church has produced, and she has been the inspiration and model for many of the Saints who followed her. Her major treatise is The Dialogue of Divine Providence which includes a set of treatises she may have dictated during her ecstasies. Venerated as a Saint even during her lifetime, she was solemnly canonized by Pope Pius II in 1461, and in 1939, Pope Pius XII gave to Italy, as its chief patrons Saints, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena. The importance of her writings and spiritual doctrine was officially recognised by the Apostolic See during the solemn ceremonies conducted by Pope Paul VI on October 4, 1970, during which she was declared a Doctor of the Church. Her body remains in Rome, but three years after her death, the head was detached and taken back to Siena where it is still venerated.