The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Praise be to Jesus and Mary. Now and forever.
Today is the memorial day of St. Catherine of Siena, who was born in that city in 1347.
She was the 24th or 25 siblings, a good argument for large families. If there's a shortage of saints, maybe they just aren't being born.
When she was six years old, she had her first vision, a silent vision, in which Christ appeared to her accompanied by three holy apostles, saints Peter, Paul, and John.
At the age of seven, she made a vow of virginity, but her father opposed her vocation for many years, until one day he spotted her praying with a dove hovering over her head.
Her intense prayer life led her to desire to join the mantelati, a group of Dominican tertiaries, so called because of the mantela or cape that they wore, they wore the Dominican habits cape.
Here, too, she found it difficult to be accepted because the others were widows while she was a teenage virgin.
But she persisted and at 18 finally received their habit.
Unlike the other members of the group, she didn't spend her days in works of charity.
She began to live in solitude and silence in her room, going out only for mass, and remained this way for three years.
When she was 21, Christ mystically espoused himself to her and gave her a wedding ring, which only she could see.
Now the contemplative became active, urged on by charity. She served her family, which had fallen into poverty after the death of her father.
She also served the poor, to whose doors she often brought bread, wine, flour, and eggs at night.
Her family members became convinced soon that her charity was not only blessed by God, but even miraculous.
In Siena, the cask of St. Catherine is still proverbial.
Although the wine that it held could only have lasted for 20 days at the most, the tap continued to supply wine for over six months.
At a time when mortal hatred, plague, leprosy, and cancer were wreaking havoc on souls and bodies, the Saint, equipped with a staff and a lantern, entered the homes of enemies to make peace between them, and into Nazarethos, where the plague-stricken were quarantined, and hospitals to serve, console, convert them, and to help the suffering die well.
In 1371, she was joined by her first disciples, who were mockingly called Catherineate, that is, Catherine.
You can sort of imagine this. What happened to James? Oh, he's been Catherine.
That is, he's fallen under her spell. He's going around following this in 71, so she would be 24, 25 years old, and taking this girl as a spiritual guide. But what does she know?
Well, she knew quite a bit, but that was because her deep relationship with God was really profound.
But she had to suffer a lot of calamities, even from people whom she had especially helped, by patiently bearing it until she converted them, and they confessed that they had lied about her.
After a couple of years, in 1373, she began writing letters to princes, to civil leaders, urging them to respect justice and preserve peace. She also wrote to clergymen, urging them to be exemplary in virtue.
Despite her awareness of the human shortcomings of peace, Saint Catherine always felt a very great reverence for them.
Through the sacraments and the word, they dispensed the saving power of Christ's blood, that blood which was so dear to her.
So this saint always invited the sacred ministers, including the Pope, whom she called Sweet Christ on Earth, to be faithful to their responsibilities, motivated always and only by her profound and constant love of the Church.
How could a young, middle-class woman, who didn't even know how to read, dictate letters to tell civil and religious leaders what to do?
Who did she think she was, and were those visions that she had really from God, or was she just crazy, or maybe possessed?
So the following year, she was called to Florence before the general chapter of the Dominicans, since she was a Dominican tertiary, she was their responsibility.
And after examining her, the superiors of the order recognized her orthodoxy and entrusted her to the direction of Blessed Raymond of Capua, who later wrote the first biography of her.
On April 1st of 1375 in peace, she received a stigmata, which at her request remained invisible throughout her life.
One of the great problems of the Church at that time was that the Pope lived in Avignon and was under the control of the French King.
Saint Bridget had tried to get the Popes to return to Rome, but without any lasting result.
Saint Catherine spent herself for this goal with prayers and letters, and finally a trip in person to Avignon.
She went there also to mediate peace between the Pope and Florence, which had rebelled against him and come to regret it.
God was also working in the heart of Pope Gregory XI to bring him back to Rome.
In fact, he had secretly made a vow to return.
But when he spoke to his court about going back to Rome, they were so against it that he left the vow unfulfilled.
So while Saint Catherine was speaking with him about the peace with Florence and other things, he asked her about this, about what she thought about going back to Rome.
And Saint Catherine said to him, fulfill what you have promised to God.
And he was amazed that she could know of that secret vow that he'd never revealed to anyone and took this as a sign from God that he had to return.
He died not long after he returned to Rome, and his successor was Urban VI.
The new pope had a serious problem controlling his temper, and his severity soon led to a break with the cardinals who had elected him.
They declared his election invalid and elected another pope, who was in fact an anti-pope.
And so began the Great Western Schism, which caused Saint Catherine so much pain.
There were two people who claimed to be pope, and most of Christendom was uncertain which of these two was the real pope.
She died at just 33, saying that in leaving my body, truly I have consumed and given my life in the church and for the Holy Church, which is for me a most unique grace.
There are about 400 of her letters, and in one we read of her love for the crucified Christ.
She writes, Remember Christ crucified, God and man, make your aim the crucified Christ, hide in the wounds of the crucified Christ, and drown in the blood of the crucified Christ.
But her masterpiece is a dialogue of divine providence, in which she speaks of Christ with an unusual image, or God speaks to her of Christ, as a bridge set between heaven and earth, a bridge that consists of three great stairways constituted by the feet, the side, and the mouth of Jesus.
So ascending by these stairways, the soul passes through the three degrees, or the three stages of every path sanctification, first detaching himself from sin, then practicing the virtues, and finally love and peace and sweet loving union with God.
In today's Gospel, many of Christ's disciples left him because of a hard saying that they could not accept.
But what was that hard saying?
Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
And why is that hard? It's not hard because it's really difficult, but because it seems difficult, because they didn't understand how to do it.
In reality, it's very easy and pleasant to receive Holy Communion with St. Catherine's great delight, and the only thing that was hard for her was not being able to receive it as often as she wanted.
But those disciples left because they did not understand how they were to eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood.
They had only to trust Jesus, to trust God, who had born witness to Christ with so many miracles.
They liked the miracles, and they followed Christ to enjoy more of them.
But they did not draw advantage from those miracles.
They did not use those miracles to convince themselves that Christ was really worthy of being trusted.
A man who was certified as the Messiah by God by those miracles.
Other sayings of Christ also seem hard.
He tells us that we must take up our cross and follow him or deny ourselves.
So we hesitate to follow Christ all the way.
We're looking for some way to enjoy life here and still wind up with glory in heaven afterwards.
And we trust our own knowledge, we trust our own life more than him.
And so this is what keeps us from becoming perfect.
This is what keeps us from being profoundly happy in this life.
We have to trust him even when we do not understand.
We have to say with St. Peter, Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life.
His words are words of eternal life.
And so if he said it, we should do it.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.