The Opening Prayer stated that her contemplation of the Lord’s Passion and her service of the Church set Saint Catherine of Siena was on fire with divine love.
St. Catherine’s life was filled with extraordinary mystical phenomena such as visions and revelations, raptures, mystical marriage. So united to Christ in his Passion was she that she received the holy Stigmata on her hands, feet and heart. Originally, her stigmata were visible, but she prayed that they not be seen by others, and her prayer was answered. However, at her death, the stigmata reappeared.
Listen to her words addressed to God: “You are a mystery as deep as the sea;” she says, “the more I search, the more I find, and the more I find, the more I search for you. But I can never be satisfied; what I receive will ever leave me desiring more. When you fill my soul, I have an even greater hunger, and I grow more famished for your light.”
As a dominican tertiary not only did she believe in the importance of contemplative prayer, but also in charitable service. She nursed the sick and the dying and brought comfort to prisoners by visiting them in jail.
St. Catherine’s incorrupt body is preserved in the beautiful gothic basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome. I visited her a few times in that amazing basilica, and had the honor of attending Mass on, this, her feast day, in a small chapel behind the sacristy of the basilica. She would make a daily pilgrimage from that small chapel to St. Peter’s Basilica to pray for the return of the Pope from Avignon.
This great saint died in Rome in 1380. Even though she barely reached the age of thirty-three her accomplishments place her among the great women of the Middle Ages. She was proclaimed a saint by Pope Pius II in 1461. In 1970, Pope Paul VI declared St. Catherine a Doctor of the Church.
She was so fueled by her Communion with God that she lived for many years only on the Eucharist.
She teaches us and prays for us to find our fulfillment in the service and contemplation of God, to offer him our entire lives, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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