Monday, December 24, 2012
Christmas Eve
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XXIII
So, we reach the end of Advent. Not the end of the book, which I will finish without writing a daily reflection, but there is an ending in this chapter.
Catherine goes to Rome, happy to be near her friend Raimondo and close enough to serve Pope Urban VI who seems so excessively fond of her and to trust her absolutely. However, Raimondo gets sent to a foreign court in an attempt to reconcile the schismatics with the Church. Catherine knows she will die before Raimondo returns.
Undset handles the schism somewhat oddly, talking about the political ramifications as if only one side is trading meaningful spiritual blows, but that's a topic for another time.
What really moved me in this chapter was the discussion of why Raimondo was so special a relationship for Catherine. Undset makes a point of saying that Catherine loved all of her spiritual sons equally in their own way, "melancholy Neri, the joyous Stefano..." Somewhat peevishly, I wish there was more discussion in this book of her female friendships since we keep seeing bare hints of them, but I can imagine in that world most men left a greater mark than most women so Undset knows more to tell us more.
Undset describes quite beautifully what was different about Raimondo. He could come close to being her spiritual equal. He was a "grown up son" with whom she could truly share her experiences on a deeper level. What a wonderful gift. How lonely it must be to exist in a world the rest of us rarely are blessed enough even to glimpse. So much especially of her early life is the story of Catherine doing apparently strange and inexplicable things to the consternation, scorn, or just befuddlement of those around her. How lonely it must be, after awhile, when even your supporters and followers cannot truly understand.
Their goodbye and the longest conversation they ever had that preceded it speak of what a comfort he was to her, how much she needed him. Or at least how greatly she appreciated the chance to enjoy the (hard-won, remember their early relationship) equal friendship with the man who could understand some of the fire which drove her and the spiritual experiences which shaped her.
What a wonderful gift God gave to Catherine, who reading this book has made me feel again and again must have been one of his favorite children. Of course, like Catherine and her spiritual sons, I know that God loves us all the most in our different ways, but there must still be a special place for someone like Catherine - who can understand a little more than the rest of us the reality of God.
Monday, 24 December 2012
Chapter XXII: The Dialogue
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Christmas Eve Eve
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XXII
As this chapter covers, in broad strokes, the Dialogue transcribed by Catherine in her final days when all that she had learned from God was condensed and reviewed so that she might leave her family with guidance, there is much I could reflect upon. So much of it was beautiful and moving and bears further thought.
What really caught my conscience, however, was a comment in the midst of the discussion of corrupt priests and Church leaders. Because God and Catherine instruct us to obey them anyway - to do as they say instead of what they do.
This struck me so forcefully because hypocrisy these days is a universal excuse to dismiss what a person is saying. Failing to practice what you preach allows us to dismiss with impunity any wisdom or instruction you set forth.
We are judging, in this way, the message by the messenger. Now, that's not entirely unfair. I'm not saying that examining people's motives is useless or that it is not much more compelling to be instructed by someone who is strong and wise themselves.
However, I think in our world we are too quick to dismiss pieces of wisdom because they come to us in imperfect packaging. Why should a priest's opinion on one matter invalidate all of his potential wisdom? Why do I shy away from learning the wisdom of God from those who feel strongly in the opposite way that I do about gay marriage? Because of my own pride, of course, but I know that particularly with this issue I do it again and again. I dismiss everything I might have learned from spiritual mentors because I am hurt or simply violently disagree on this one issue.
I am robbing myself of messengers from God. Do I think I am incapable of judging the good from the bad so I dismiss entirely? Or am I so eager to dismiss that I look for a reason to dismiss in aggregate rather than having to examine each new piece of potential wisdom on its own? Is it laziness or pride that keeps me from being willing to listen with an open heart if there is one thing I cannot stomach?
Or both? And how do I combat it? Besides just knowing this sin for what it is. Perhaps that is the most we can do on a number of sins - see it for what it is: arrogance, pride, and a willful cheapening of our souls. Bankrupting ourselves and shouting over a message from God because of the wrapping.
Rejecting a gift because of the giver.
Christmas Eve Eve
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XXII
As this chapter covers, in broad strokes, the Dialogue transcribed by Catherine in her final days when all that she had learned from God was condensed and reviewed so that she might leave her family with guidance, there is much I could reflect upon. So much of it was beautiful and moving and bears further thought.
What really caught my conscience, however, was a comment in the midst of the discussion of corrupt priests and Church leaders. Because God and Catherine instruct us to obey them anyway - to do as they say instead of what they do.
This struck me so forcefully because hypocrisy these days is a universal excuse to dismiss what a person is saying. Failing to practice what you preach allows us to dismiss with impunity any wisdom or instruction you set forth.
We are judging, in this way, the message by the messenger. Now, that's not entirely unfair. I'm not saying that examining people's motives is useless or that it is not much more compelling to be instructed by someone who is strong and wise themselves.
However, I think in our world we are too quick to dismiss pieces of wisdom because they come to us in imperfect packaging. Why should a priest's opinion on one matter invalidate all of his potential wisdom? Why do I shy away from learning the wisdom of God from those who feel strongly in the opposite way that I do about gay marriage? Because of my own pride, of course, but I know that particularly with this issue I do it again and again. I dismiss everything I might have learned from spiritual mentors because I am hurt or simply violently disagree on this one issue.
I am robbing myself of messengers from God. Do I think I am incapable of judging the good from the bad so I dismiss entirely? Or am I so eager to dismiss that I look for a reason to dismiss in aggregate rather than having to examine each new piece of potential wisdom on its own? Is it laziness or pride that keeps me from being willing to listen with an open heart if there is one thing I cannot stomach?
Or both? And how do I combat it? Besides just knowing this sin for what it is. Perhaps that is the most we can do on a number of sins - see it for what it is: arrogance, pride, and a willful cheapening of our souls. Bankrupting ourselves and shouting over a message from God because of the wrapping.
Rejecting a gift because of the giver.
Sunday, 23 December 2012
Chapter XXI: Two Popes
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XXI
Most of this chapter discusses the politics that led to the election of Urban VI with all of Rome threatening to murder the college of cardinals if they did not choose a Roman and of the election of Clement VII in anger at Urban's reforms and harsh tone.
What is striking that we see from Catherine is the change in the tone of her letters. Perhaps it is simply that I know, like her, that her end is drawing nigh, but her letters begin to sound like she is saying farewell. Rather than in-the-moment almost desperate plea sounding advice - for the good of the Church - Catherine's tone seems more like final words of advice before she leaves.
Undset says Catherine started writing even more furiously - as if to finish her work on Earth all the sooner or because she knew that soon she would joyfully join God and be unable to directly affect its concerns.
Was her work done? Italy seems to be still in something of a mess. The Great Schism is happening all around her. Would not this be an excellent time for the saintly woman of Siena?
But then, wouldn't now be a great time for someone like Catherine to take the Church leaders to task? Remind them to reform as she did so constantly in her letters, remind them to keep spiritual goals in sight, and for heaven's sake just take them to task on concentrating on what's really important. Every time could use someone like Catherine. Only rarely do we get them, and we can't expect them to stick around forever.
That is a comforting and a difficult thing about being a tool of the Spirit - you don't fix everything, you don't solve everything. You do your task, and the work and the world goes on without you when it is your time to go. It's not like the inspirational movies where you accomplish a great goal and then things are definitely better. Catherine brought Gregory XI back from Avignon to Rome, she made peace with Florence, she saved many. The Great Schism happened, and many of her children backslid.
She still had to leave. She had to trust the Holy Spirit to find others to continue her work - or rather, to continue God's work. It was not hers to see brought to a pretty conclusion. She had only to do the work God asked of her. She didn't get the big payoff of everything settling down once the battle was won. She didn't see the end of the Schism.
She had to trust the Spirit to win without her. She never seemed to struggle with pride, but that would be quite a blow to it, if she had. When you are chosen for a special role, is it not natural to think you will be needed until the end? But we have faith in God - and we must joyfully leave our work for others to complete when He calls us home.
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XXI
Most of this chapter discusses the politics that led to the election of Urban VI with all of Rome threatening to murder the college of cardinals if they did not choose a Roman and of the election of Clement VII in anger at Urban's reforms and harsh tone.
What is striking that we see from Catherine is the change in the tone of her letters. Perhaps it is simply that I know, like her, that her end is drawing nigh, but her letters begin to sound like she is saying farewell. Rather than in-the-moment almost desperate plea sounding advice - for the good of the Church - Catherine's tone seems more like final words of advice before she leaves.
Undset says Catherine started writing even more furiously - as if to finish her work on Earth all the sooner or because she knew that soon she would joyfully join God and be unable to directly affect its concerns.
Was her work done? Italy seems to be still in something of a mess. The Great Schism is happening all around her. Would not this be an excellent time for the saintly woman of Siena?
But then, wouldn't now be a great time for someone like Catherine to take the Church leaders to task? Remind them to reform as she did so constantly in her letters, remind them to keep spiritual goals in sight, and for heaven's sake just take them to task on concentrating on what's really important. Every time could use someone like Catherine. Only rarely do we get them, and we can't expect them to stick around forever.
That is a comforting and a difficult thing about being a tool of the Spirit - you don't fix everything, you don't solve everything. You do your task, and the work and the world goes on without you when it is your time to go. It's not like the inspirational movies where you accomplish a great goal and then things are definitely better. Catherine brought Gregory XI back from Avignon to Rome, she made peace with Florence, she saved many. The Great Schism happened, and many of her children backslid.
She still had to leave. She had to trust the Holy Spirit to find others to continue her work - or rather, to continue God's work. It was not hers to see brought to a pretty conclusion. She had only to do the work God asked of her. She didn't get the big payoff of everything settling down once the battle was won. She didn't see the end of the Schism.
She had to trust the Spirit to win without her. She never seemed to struggle with pride, but that would be quite a blow to it, if she had. When you are chosen for a special role, is it not natural to think you will be needed until the end? But we have faith in God - and we must joyfully leave our work for others to complete when He calls us home.
Friday, 21 December 2012
Chapter XX: Florence and the New Pope
Friday, December 21, 2012
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XX
Pope Gregory XI was the one who sent Catherine to Florence, where her faithful confessor Fra Raimondo was so fearful to have her set foot he begged to be sent in her place. Indeed, the people of Florence seem to have largely resented Catherine's presence - although they were exiling and killing their own leading citizens at such a fantastic rate one could not take too much offense.
Here Undset really spoke about the central problem of Catherine during her own time: she was a woman. She was a woman of holy but ordinary people of no political importance who dared to speak on behalf of the Pope of Rome (even with his express instruction to do so). When she wrote to urge the Pope to create a college of cardinals regardless of rank or birth who would purge the Church of vices, how different that must have looked to a man of noble birth raising the same point. Or any man raising the same point.
I think one of Undset's most insightful descriptions is the "tamer" of Catherine's detractors - those who do not condemn her as a witch or a hypocrite but merely believe that a pious virgin consecrated to God should pray quietly in her home cell and not bother anybody. It seems like so many of the "moderates" these days, yes? It's not that I think the other side/X cause/victims crying out for justice are EVIL, I just wish they would quietly go about their business away from the spotlight.
I also like how Undset sets up the conflict. Everyone agrees that Catherine is learned and deeply spiritual and a powerful presence. What they disagree on is merely her motivation in the world and the seemliness of her being such. No one doubts that Catherine has become a figure of power in Italy and beyond, recalled the Pope from Avignon and made peace in other towns. She is a woman with real temporal influence. Thus, in 1378, a hideous, fearful thing.
Of course, God protects Catherine from harm in the multiple civil wars that race through Florence during her time there. Of course, eventually peace is made with Pope Urban VI - for this is where Catherine is when a new pope takes over.
It is perhaps all the more remarkable that the first letter of Catherine's to the new pope, unusually full of the message of love as Undset describes, should come from Florence. Catherine must have felt the need for it all the more keenly then in relatively peaceful Siena. How the poor saintly woman faired in a town under Interdict without the benefit of Holy Communion or other solemn rituals of the Church also moves me.
There is also an odd turn in her letters to Fra Raimondo in which she seems to hope that the riots of Florence will offer her the opportunity to be a martyr. I wonder at this desire. I know multiple saints have had it - I have heard it referred to as a childish wish of many who eventually became contemplative saints to live far less adventurous lives than they eventually did. However, Catherine was an aspiring contemplative who went on to lead a more adventurous and political life than she would have asked for.
Undset has written before of Catherine's desire to cut the strings of this life and return to God - to be with Him not in stolen moments in her ecstasies but constantly. It was hard, how God asked her to return constantly to Earth and its roiling problems and its harsh people. I suppose I can imagine why the appeal of God asking for her death had such a hold on her.
There is something deeply troubling about it - or at least deeply foreign to human thought. One of the things that set saints so very apart from the rest of us.
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XX
Pope Gregory XI was the one who sent Catherine to Florence, where her faithful confessor Fra Raimondo was so fearful to have her set foot he begged to be sent in her place. Indeed, the people of Florence seem to have largely resented Catherine's presence - although they were exiling and killing their own leading citizens at such a fantastic rate one could not take too much offense.
Here Undset really spoke about the central problem of Catherine during her own time: she was a woman. She was a woman of holy but ordinary people of no political importance who dared to speak on behalf of the Pope of Rome (even with his express instruction to do so). When she wrote to urge the Pope to create a college of cardinals regardless of rank or birth who would purge the Church of vices, how different that must have looked to a man of noble birth raising the same point. Or any man raising the same point.
I think one of Undset's most insightful descriptions is the "tamer" of Catherine's detractors - those who do not condemn her as a witch or a hypocrite but merely believe that a pious virgin consecrated to God should pray quietly in her home cell and not bother anybody. It seems like so many of the "moderates" these days, yes? It's not that I think the other side/X cause/victims crying out for justice are EVIL, I just wish they would quietly go about their business away from the spotlight.
I also like how Undset sets up the conflict. Everyone agrees that Catherine is learned and deeply spiritual and a powerful presence. What they disagree on is merely her motivation in the world and the seemliness of her being such. No one doubts that Catherine has become a figure of power in Italy and beyond, recalled the Pope from Avignon and made peace in other towns. She is a woman with real temporal influence. Thus, in 1378, a hideous, fearful thing.
Of course, God protects Catherine from harm in the multiple civil wars that race through Florence during her time there. Of course, eventually peace is made with Pope Urban VI - for this is where Catherine is when a new pope takes over.
It is perhaps all the more remarkable that the first letter of Catherine's to the new pope, unusually full of the message of love as Undset describes, should come from Florence. Catherine must have felt the need for it all the more keenly then in relatively peaceful Siena. How the poor saintly woman faired in a town under Interdict without the benefit of Holy Communion or other solemn rituals of the Church also moves me.
There is also an odd turn in her letters to Fra Raimondo in which she seems to hope that the riots of Florence will offer her the opportunity to be a martyr. I wonder at this desire. I know multiple saints have had it - I have heard it referred to as a childish wish of many who eventually became contemplative saints to live far less adventurous lives than they eventually did. However, Catherine was an aspiring contemplative who went on to lead a more adventurous and political life than she would have asked for.
Undset has written before of Catherine's desire to cut the strings of this life and return to God - to be with Him not in stolen moments in her ecstasies but constantly. It was hard, how God asked her to return constantly to Earth and its roiling problems and its harsh people. I suppose I can imagine why the appeal of God asking for her death had such a hold on her.
There is something deeply troubling about it - or at least deeply foreign to human thought. One of the things that set saints so very apart from the rest of us.
Thursday, 20 December 2012
Chapter XIX: Catherine Under Siege
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XIX
My little chapter title makes the chapter sound more exciting (or at least eventful and coherent) than it actually was, but if I wanted to pull all of the sections of the chapter together into one idea, that would be it.
Catherine goes to the manor of the Salimbeni family officially to make peace between some of its members at the request of the matriarch (as far as I can tell) of the family. Once there, however, it becomes clear that the woman also wanted Catherine to cure a servant girl of her possession, which Catherine does. When she does, despite her fear of such things, it becomes a regular occurrence of bringing Catherine the mad and the possessed to heal.
I wrote before about what it could mean that Catherine still feared and recoiled from the possessed, from wrestling with demons. Perhaps she felt she taxed God's strength and gifts so much that demanding more assistance from Him to deal with yet more temptation and torment seemed unsuitable to her. Perhaps she had grown so used to the temporal problems she could so easily dismiss that spiritual woes felt beyond her capabilities. Perhaps we always have human fears and weaknesses to fall back on.
Pope Gregory XI and the town of Siena both complained bitterly that Catherine lingered with the Salimbeni's, as well as the mother of one of her ardent followers who had originally asked Catherine to affect the boy's conversion. Pope Gregory had become dependent on Catherine and needed her in Florence to help him make the necessary truce there - a truce that Undset suggests his very ambivalence caused him to want to draw a firm line. The Pope rejected all terms that 'would allow both sides to make peace with honor.'
And then a monk fell in lust with her. Undset makes a point of saying that the flower of her youth was now gone - after all, 30 in the thirteenth century is not the 30 of today, especially when you keep the kind of diet and regimen as Catherine - but still a man fell passionately for her and despaired to the point of first attempted homicide then eventual suicide when he could not have her.
Catherine never wrote of this, so we do not have a record of what she must have felt. Catherine, who was always so willing to take responsibility for everything that befell in the entire world, must have been devastated.
Personally, I have limited patience with such things. I think that for Catherine to take the blame robs the boy of his responsibility. I believe that it is always, no matter what else happens, your responsibility to be a good person. [I could have stood to remember that today in CVS, incidentally.] I believe that circumstances can make following God harder but they cannot force you to stray.
Catherine saw any steadfastness as a gift from God. She's probably more right than I am.
But there's something about that that bothers me, honestly. Because if it is all a gift from God, then why does anyone fail? It's the same reason I can't believe that you must be a Christian to be saved. Why then would God suffer other religions? Why would He create a world that would damn good people for the sin of not being born into the correct religion?
I suppose the doctrine of free will means so much more to me than Catherine, just as this world means so much more to me than Catherine. Perhaps she did not need to demand an explanation for it, as most of the rest of us do. Because she knew that it was as nothing to the true world of God's love.
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XIX
My little chapter title makes the chapter sound more exciting (or at least eventful and coherent) than it actually was, but if I wanted to pull all of the sections of the chapter together into one idea, that would be it.
Catherine goes to the manor of the Salimbeni family officially to make peace between some of its members at the request of the matriarch (as far as I can tell) of the family. Once there, however, it becomes clear that the woman also wanted Catherine to cure a servant girl of her possession, which Catherine does. When she does, despite her fear of such things, it becomes a regular occurrence of bringing Catherine the mad and the possessed to heal.
I wrote before about what it could mean that Catherine still feared and recoiled from the possessed, from wrestling with demons. Perhaps she felt she taxed God's strength and gifts so much that demanding more assistance from Him to deal with yet more temptation and torment seemed unsuitable to her. Perhaps she had grown so used to the temporal problems she could so easily dismiss that spiritual woes felt beyond her capabilities. Perhaps we always have human fears and weaknesses to fall back on.
Pope Gregory XI and the town of Siena both complained bitterly that Catherine lingered with the Salimbeni's, as well as the mother of one of her ardent followers who had originally asked Catherine to affect the boy's conversion. Pope Gregory had become dependent on Catherine and needed her in Florence to help him make the necessary truce there - a truce that Undset suggests his very ambivalence caused him to want to draw a firm line. The Pope rejected all terms that 'would allow both sides to make peace with honor.'
And then a monk fell in lust with her. Undset makes a point of saying that the flower of her youth was now gone - after all, 30 in the thirteenth century is not the 30 of today, especially when you keep the kind of diet and regimen as Catherine - but still a man fell passionately for her and despaired to the point of first attempted homicide then eventual suicide when he could not have her.
Catherine never wrote of this, so we do not have a record of what she must have felt. Catherine, who was always so willing to take responsibility for everything that befell in the entire world, must have been devastated.
Personally, I have limited patience with such things. I think that for Catherine to take the blame robs the boy of his responsibility. I believe that it is always, no matter what else happens, your responsibility to be a good person. [I could have stood to remember that today in CVS, incidentally.] I believe that circumstances can make following God harder but they cannot force you to stray.
Catherine saw any steadfastness as a gift from God. She's probably more right than I am.
But there's something about that that bothers me, honestly. Because if it is all a gift from God, then why does anyone fail? It's the same reason I can't believe that you must be a Christian to be saved. Why then would God suffer other religions? Why would He create a world that would damn good people for the sin of not being born into the correct religion?
I suppose the doctrine of free will means so much more to me than Catherine, just as this world means so much more to me than Catherine. Perhaps she did not need to demand an explanation for it, as most of the rest of us do. Because she knew that it was as nothing to the true world of God's love.
Wednesday, 19 December 2012
Chapter XVIII: Catherine and Niccolo
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XVIII
After the usual bit of meandering that Undset does, this chapter turned to the story of a determinedly unrepentant young man sentenced to death for a crime he felt trifling - speaking poorly of the citizenry during the recent political unrest is what my illness-addled mind got out of it.
Like many earlier stories, Catherine devoted herself to saving the soul, to bringing him to repentance, and he became dependent on her in his conversion. Niccolo seems to have understood most acutely how much she strengthened him for resolve and to have begged her not to leave him and said that he would die happy and strong if she stayed with him. And she did. In fact, she cleared away the hair from his neck and knelt beside him at the block and caught his head when the executioner's axe severed it from his body.
That image, of the saint kneeling to catch the fallen head of the sinner/traitor/young man who sought comfort of a very different kind in her breast. I cannot put into words all of the things that it evokes. It makes me want to stage it to do it justice.
Catherine writes of God's enduring love to have become man, then died, then breathed His Spirit into us all that we may live in her letter describing the even to Fra Raimondo, still in Rome while she has at last returned to the unruly Siena.
What glorious transformations God can make of our sordid human actions. How many executions have a young woman screaming and crying at the death of a young man whom she has gathered to her breast to attempt to comfort, for whom she has pleaded and with whom she has pleaded, all ending in a terrible, bloody spectacle of human suffering. Now, we have a calm and beautiful saint to make a man stand strong with God in his final moments, calmly catching his head in her hands and able to make them both glad that the soul will fly all the sooner to their heavenly Father.
I do not have words for everything the image evokes. There are not enough or the right kind of words for everything the image evokes.
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XVIII
After the usual bit of meandering that Undset does, this chapter turned to the story of a determinedly unrepentant young man sentenced to death for a crime he felt trifling - speaking poorly of the citizenry during the recent political unrest is what my illness-addled mind got out of it.
Like many earlier stories, Catherine devoted herself to saving the soul, to bringing him to repentance, and he became dependent on her in his conversion. Niccolo seems to have understood most acutely how much she strengthened him for resolve and to have begged her not to leave him and said that he would die happy and strong if she stayed with him. And she did. In fact, she cleared away the hair from his neck and knelt beside him at the block and caught his head when the executioner's axe severed it from his body.
That image, of the saint kneeling to catch the fallen head of the sinner/traitor/young man who sought comfort of a very different kind in her breast. I cannot put into words all of the things that it evokes. It makes me want to stage it to do it justice.
Catherine writes of God's enduring love to have become man, then died, then breathed His Spirit into us all that we may live in her letter describing the even to Fra Raimondo, still in Rome while she has at last returned to the unruly Siena.
What glorious transformations God can make of our sordid human actions. How many executions have a young woman screaming and crying at the death of a young man whom she has gathered to her breast to attempt to comfort, for whom she has pleaded and with whom she has pleaded, all ending in a terrible, bloody spectacle of human suffering. Now, we have a calm and beautiful saint to make a man stand strong with God in his final moments, calmly catching his head in her hands and able to make them both glad that the soul will fly all the sooner to their heavenly Father.
I do not have words for everything the image evokes. There are not enough or the right kind of words for everything the image evokes.
Tuesday, 18 December 2012
Chapter XVII: Catherine and the Mothers
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
One week til Christmas!
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XVII
Catherine, on her way home, is delayed in Genoa. There is a great deal of sickness amongst the rest of her train. It is unclear if other matters keep her here, but I find it interesting that the moment one follower is healed another falls ill. Most of her secretaries languish at some point, and Undset talks about the very public life the saint now has.
A healthy section of the chapter is also the complaining not only of Catherine's mother Lapa that she is not yet home but the mother's of her younger followers, particularly Stefano Maconi. Catherine writes them with the common theme of patience and an exhortation to love their children's souls more than their body and physical proximity.
I feel like this is a subject sitcom mothers are constantly facing in our day - I think of True Blood's Maxine who would vastly prefer that her son Hoyt fail and fall back into a childish state of dependence on her than stand up and be his own man and move out. Maxine, of course, is the thoroughly upsetting, gross version of this (although she is to be pitied in turn for how her hate swallows her). But it's a very human thing - to want those we love near us even more than we want them to be great.
It is a very hard thing to love someone's soul more than their body - more than their worldly manifestation. To want salvation and love of God and spiritual blessedness or even just good works and for them to do great works in this world more than we love their company, their presence, their proximity, the active shows of their love of us.
Undset even mentions the idea of serving God but also tending to those in the world whom you love.
But at the end of the chapter we learn why Catherine and the boys with her could not have given in to their mothers. Gregory XI needed her again. His cardinals and natural circumstances had conspired to convince him to return to Avignon, but he knew that little Catherine Benincasa was in town. So he dressed in the robes of a simple priest and snuck out to see her, put the fate of the Church in her hands, and kept heading to Rome.
Saying such a thing to Lapa - if she even knew that was the reason God did not yet call her to continue her journey home - would have sounded ridiculous. Following the Spirit in these circumstances requires either God to arrange an elaborate conspiracy or for a saint to be willing to follow the Spirit's urgings against the protests of common sense, practical matters, and even calls of the heart. This is a ferociously hard thing to do.
Catherine's iron will shows it self to me above all in things like this. I have no doubt that God told her to stay where she was despite her longing to return home, her letters from her mother, her weariness with her fame and the politics in Genoa, etc. ad nauseam. But she stayed, with probably little explanation. That takes a greater will than facing down a pope.
One week til Christmas!
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XVII
Catherine, on her way home, is delayed in Genoa. There is a great deal of sickness amongst the rest of her train. It is unclear if other matters keep her here, but I find it interesting that the moment one follower is healed another falls ill. Most of her secretaries languish at some point, and Undset talks about the very public life the saint now has.
A healthy section of the chapter is also the complaining not only of Catherine's mother Lapa that she is not yet home but the mother's of her younger followers, particularly Stefano Maconi. Catherine writes them with the common theme of patience and an exhortation to love their children's souls more than their body and physical proximity.
I feel like this is a subject sitcom mothers are constantly facing in our day - I think of True Blood's Maxine who would vastly prefer that her son Hoyt fail and fall back into a childish state of dependence on her than stand up and be his own man and move out. Maxine, of course, is the thoroughly upsetting, gross version of this (although she is to be pitied in turn for how her hate swallows her). But it's a very human thing - to want those we love near us even more than we want them to be great.
It is a very hard thing to love someone's soul more than their body - more than their worldly manifestation. To want salvation and love of God and spiritual blessedness or even just good works and for them to do great works in this world more than we love their company, their presence, their proximity, the active shows of their love of us.
Undset even mentions the idea of serving God but also tending to those in the world whom you love.
But at the end of the chapter we learn why Catherine and the boys with her could not have given in to their mothers. Gregory XI needed her again. His cardinals and natural circumstances had conspired to convince him to return to Avignon, but he knew that little Catherine Benincasa was in town. So he dressed in the robes of a simple priest and snuck out to see her, put the fate of the Church in her hands, and kept heading to Rome.
Saying such a thing to Lapa - if she even knew that was the reason God did not yet call her to continue her journey home - would have sounded ridiculous. Following the Spirit in these circumstances requires either God to arrange an elaborate conspiracy or for a saint to be willing to follow the Spirit's urgings against the protests of common sense, practical matters, and even calls of the heart. This is a ferociously hard thing to do.
Catherine's iron will shows it self to me above all in things like this. I have no doubt that God told her to stay where she was despite her longing to return home, her letters from her mother, her weariness with her fame and the politics in Genoa, etc. ad nauseam. But she stayed, with probably little explanation. That takes a greater will than facing down a pope.
Monday, 17 December 2012
Chapter XVI: Catherine in Avignon
Monday, December 17, 2012
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XVI
This is the story of the great work of Catherine's life - in a matter of weeks, convincing Gregory XI to return the papacy to Rome. She helped bulwark him against all the pressures and familial ties keeping him in Avignon, reminded him of a promise he had made that he never told a living soul, and convinced him that she spoke on behalf of God. She even convinced him to leave suddenly to help with his indecisive nature and gave him the strength to march straight past his father kneeling at the gates as he walked by.
There is much here (although less detail than I had hoped from Undset), but what really strikes me is this compelling reason for Pope Gregory XI lingering in Avignon: his family. Undset has often mentioned the trouble his nepotism caused. But I can feel for the fact that Gregory's home was France, and his family seems to have been very present in his life and presumably loving if he relies on and clings to them.
This is the kind of thing that makes what Jesus said about denying thy father and thy mother seem not so out of step. This is the kind of thing that can get in the way of the best of men. Because not only is this an undeniable call of our hearts, but who knows us better than our family? Who will be a more passionate advocate to keep us with them even when we must be elsewhere? Who do we trust more implicitly than the ones who raised us or were raised beside us? Who knows how we think, what we want?
Who is more able to save or to lead us astray? Whose arguments will feel more compelling than our family's? With everything that nature, nurture, and history can bring to bear, they can compel us against our better judgments. They do so constantly. Usually to much less damaging effect than Gregory's.
What we need in such times is someone such as Catherine - a pure soul, a spiritual guide, a dramatic and compelling reminder of God's grace and His justice. A pure soul who led a pure life, in strict accordance with the rules of God. Someone to remind us of the spiritual joys and the spiritual toil that is part of our mantel as Christians.
If nothing else, someone else to understand that it is hard to leave our family. Someone who understands, moreover, that it kills you slowly to pretend you do not know what you must do, that you must leave them. Someone who understand the power of the call and how it can consume you - someone who will not talk you out of it but verify it, assure you it comes from God - not from within yourself or from any demons.
I think this is part of the work that Catherine did in Avignon - just be another person who has followed God's call at the cost of her family in many ways. Catherine, like all of us, are sometimes called to convince and plead with our entire lives - not just the words we say.
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XVI
This is the story of the great work of Catherine's life - in a matter of weeks, convincing Gregory XI to return the papacy to Rome. She helped bulwark him against all the pressures and familial ties keeping him in Avignon, reminded him of a promise he had made that he never told a living soul, and convinced him that she spoke on behalf of God. She even convinced him to leave suddenly to help with his indecisive nature and gave him the strength to march straight past his father kneeling at the gates as he walked by.
There is much here (although less detail than I had hoped from Undset), but what really strikes me is this compelling reason for Pope Gregory XI lingering in Avignon: his family. Undset has often mentioned the trouble his nepotism caused. But I can feel for the fact that Gregory's home was France, and his family seems to have been very present in his life and presumably loving if he relies on and clings to them.
This is the kind of thing that makes what Jesus said about denying thy father and thy mother seem not so out of step. This is the kind of thing that can get in the way of the best of men. Because not only is this an undeniable call of our hearts, but who knows us better than our family? Who will be a more passionate advocate to keep us with them even when we must be elsewhere? Who do we trust more implicitly than the ones who raised us or were raised beside us? Who knows how we think, what we want?
Who is more able to save or to lead us astray? Whose arguments will feel more compelling than our family's? With everything that nature, nurture, and history can bring to bear, they can compel us against our better judgments. They do so constantly. Usually to much less damaging effect than Gregory's.
What we need in such times is someone such as Catherine - a pure soul, a spiritual guide, a dramatic and compelling reminder of God's grace and His justice. A pure soul who led a pure life, in strict accordance with the rules of God. Someone to remind us of the spiritual joys and the spiritual toil that is part of our mantel as Christians.
If nothing else, someone else to understand that it is hard to leave our family. Someone who understands, moreover, that it kills you slowly to pretend you do not know what you must do, that you must leave them. Someone who understand the power of the call and how it can consume you - someone who will not talk you out of it but verify it, assure you it comes from God - not from within yourself or from any demons.
I think this is part of the work that Catherine did in Avignon - just be another person who has followed God's call at the cost of her family in many ways. Catherine, like all of us, are sometimes called to convince and plead with our entire lives - not just the words we say.
Chapter XV: Florence Under an Interdict
Sunday, December 16, 2012
[Monday, December 17, 2012 due to complications of illness]
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XV
Another point I was unclear about from Dr. Carole Levin - Catherine set out to the Pope in Avignon as the delegate and only hope of Florence with full authority to settle the future of that city. Yes, the daughter of a dyer from Siena. I know. So much cooler, really, than just picking up and going there. Hard to say which is more audacious, but it shows just how much influence Catherine had. She came as a figure of power, greatly respected, and already comfortable taking the Pope to task in her letters - the indecisive Gregory XI.
In this chapter, the Pope, after much back and forth in the war-ish-thing with Florence, issues and Interdict on the city - cutting it off from the Church and thus declaring its citizens across the world as completely fair game.
Catherine urges a return to the true purpose of the Church - amassing spiritual treasures rather the worldly concerns. This call is particularly important considering the amount of temporal protection the Church wielded and the callous way it would remove that protection.
Here Catherine and I are completely in agreement. This is one of the many scary sides of the Church having temporal, worldly power. I see in this chapter the pedophilia scandals of the current Church. I realize that's not quite right, but it's the ugly world of earthly politics getting all mixed up in an institution with a holy responsibility.
People make up the Church, there is no getting around that nor should there be, but the Church should attract the very best. The Church should be setting the standard for responsible, loving, peaceful government throughout the world. The Church should be able to do better with the significant advantage of knowing that all this world is dust and its concerns passing.
I will have to watch Catherine closely in the days to come to see how she manages to help matters. Along the way, unfortunately, to the Great Schism. Perhaps we struggle on and on, hoping for a few moments when our better natures prevail and the Spirit shines in us. And then if we mess it up again, we have to just keep struggling.
Anyway, that's how a sick and very medicated person reads Catherine's struggles and their aftermaths, such as I remember of them.
[Monday, December 17, 2012 due to complications of illness]
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XV
Another point I was unclear about from Dr. Carole Levin - Catherine set out to the Pope in Avignon as the delegate and only hope of Florence with full authority to settle the future of that city. Yes, the daughter of a dyer from Siena. I know. So much cooler, really, than just picking up and going there. Hard to say which is more audacious, but it shows just how much influence Catherine had. She came as a figure of power, greatly respected, and already comfortable taking the Pope to task in her letters - the indecisive Gregory XI.
In this chapter, the Pope, after much back and forth in the war-ish-thing with Florence, issues and Interdict on the city - cutting it off from the Church and thus declaring its citizens across the world as completely fair game.
Catherine urges a return to the true purpose of the Church - amassing spiritual treasures rather the worldly concerns. This call is particularly important considering the amount of temporal protection the Church wielded and the callous way it would remove that protection.
Here Catherine and I are completely in agreement. This is one of the many scary sides of the Church having temporal, worldly power. I see in this chapter the pedophilia scandals of the current Church. I realize that's not quite right, but it's the ugly world of earthly politics getting all mixed up in an institution with a holy responsibility.
People make up the Church, there is no getting around that nor should there be, but the Church should attract the very best. The Church should be setting the standard for responsible, loving, peaceful government throughout the world. The Church should be able to do better with the significant advantage of knowing that all this world is dust and its concerns passing.
I will have to watch Catherine closely in the days to come to see how she manages to help matters. Along the way, unfortunately, to the Great Schism. Perhaps we struggle on and on, hoping for a few moments when our better natures prevail and the Spirit shines in us. And then if we mess it up again, we have to just keep struggling.
Anyway, that's how a sick and very medicated person reads Catherine's struggles and their aftermaths, such as I remember of them.
Saturday, 15 December 2012
Chapter XIV: Catherine in Politics
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XIV
This was a very long chapter detailing many great political feats of Catherine (turning away an army with a letter - all the more impressive as it was a mercenary army, convincing cities to hold to Papal Authority, changing minds and winning souls and besting each new adversary, correcting the Pope in her letters). The two details that captured my imagination, however, were smaller.
The first Undset herself bemoans the fact that we know little about. Mona Lapa at some point joined the Sisters of Penitence and became part of Catherine's followers when the saint travelled to Pisa. Undset lists reasons of worldly love that she imagines driving Lapa to this change in her life, and I cannot help but imagining the bittersweet pang it must have given mother and daughter to have a daily iteration of Christ turning away his mother and brothers to attend to the crowds. We don't know much, but the imagination runs wild.
The second was a piece of the advice we receive in this chapter: two things are required - courage and longing for the salvation of the souls of others.
How perfect, really. She goes on to say that we cannot have this longing in our own barren trees unless we graft ourselves to God. Only through our love for God do we get this holy love of our fellow men's souls. From there, we need only the courage to act on it.
Somewhat unfairly, considering I do not like aggressive evangelization, I have always felt that, if you believe as many denominations do that the only way to Christ is conversion along the lines of the salvation prayer, the only moral position is aggressive evangelization - doing whatever it takes. I cannot fathom holding that believe and not shouting all the time for people to turn to God. I went through a period in my teenage years that...well, part of my dislike of aggressive evangelization is a certain amount of self-scorn about my own behavior however well meant.
But it is a hard thing that requires great courage. It is a separate thing you need - to actively crusade for the salvation of other souls. It requires deeper courage for not being acknowledged as the same kind of heroism that yield earthly rewards and often yield resentments and anger and accusations of hypocrisy. I wonder if it is the rarer virtue.
Another thing I want to note in this blog post is the discussion of the way the Tuscan language Catherine spoke conceived of virtue as an active, living, vibrant connection to life rather than a cold aestheticism we think of today and the way that sweetness also implied strength.
We could use a taste of that awareness today - the strength it takes to greet the world with a sweetness it often scorns for the love of others' souls and a hunger for their salvation.
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XIV
This was a very long chapter detailing many great political feats of Catherine (turning away an army with a letter - all the more impressive as it was a mercenary army, convincing cities to hold to Papal Authority, changing minds and winning souls and besting each new adversary, correcting the Pope in her letters). The two details that captured my imagination, however, were smaller.
The first Undset herself bemoans the fact that we know little about. Mona Lapa at some point joined the Sisters of Penitence and became part of Catherine's followers when the saint travelled to Pisa. Undset lists reasons of worldly love that she imagines driving Lapa to this change in her life, and I cannot help but imagining the bittersweet pang it must have given mother and daughter to have a daily iteration of Christ turning away his mother and brothers to attend to the crowds. We don't know much, but the imagination runs wild.
The second was a piece of the advice we receive in this chapter: two things are required - courage and longing for the salvation of the souls of others.
How perfect, really. She goes on to say that we cannot have this longing in our own barren trees unless we graft ourselves to God. Only through our love for God do we get this holy love of our fellow men's souls. From there, we need only the courage to act on it.
Somewhat unfairly, considering I do not like aggressive evangelization, I have always felt that, if you believe as many denominations do that the only way to Christ is conversion along the lines of the salvation prayer, the only moral position is aggressive evangelization - doing whatever it takes. I cannot fathom holding that believe and not shouting all the time for people to turn to God. I went through a period in my teenage years that...well, part of my dislike of aggressive evangelization is a certain amount of self-scorn about my own behavior however well meant.
But it is a hard thing that requires great courage. It is a separate thing you need - to actively crusade for the salvation of other souls. It requires deeper courage for not being acknowledged as the same kind of heroism that yield earthly rewards and often yield resentments and anger and accusations of hypocrisy. I wonder if it is the rarer virtue.
Another thing I want to note in this blog post is the discussion of the way the Tuscan language Catherine spoke conceived of virtue as an active, living, vibrant connection to life rather than a cold aestheticism we think of today and the way that sweetness also implied strength.
We could use a taste of that awareness today - the strength it takes to greet the world with a sweetness it often scorns for the love of others' souls and a hunger for their salvation.
Friday, 14 December 2012
Chapter XIII: Raimondo of Capua
Friday, December 14, 2012
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XIII
Here we finally properly meet Raimondo of Capua, the most noted of Catherine's spiritual directors who eventually wrote her biography.
He also apparently knew St. Agnes (then still Blessed Agnes), another holy virgin. I'm not entirely sure that it is THE St. Agnes, the one I went through a period of admiring a long time ago. It would be a lovely bit of symmetry - the girl named for Catherine Benincasa having a relationship with St. Agnes, who lived her foot for Catherine to kiss despite having been dead for some time (incorruptible).
There are two very interesting stories in this chapter (well, there are more, but these are the things that struck me). Especially since they seem a touch contradictory.
The first is, while both Raimondo and Catherine worked tirelessly (or nearly, for they both fell ill) to help plague victims in Siena, Fra Matteo, a mutual friend, nearly fell victim to it. Raimondo admonished Catherine not to let him die, and she replied that she is not God to grant life and death. Raimondo in turn admonished her not to play that game with him, her spiritual confessor, who knew that God would never deny her what she asked for. And so Matteo lived.
At the end of the chapter, Raimondo confessed to her that he sometimes wondered if some of her visions were not flights of fancy. He asked her to secure a bull for him - a blessing to feel the full weight of his sins and also God's mercy. He did. The next day he went to her, penitent but still confessing he was not fully convinced. Then Jesus shown through her for Raimondo to see, and he never doubted her again.
But perhaps these stories do fit. Raimondo believed in her sincerity, but it is quite another thing to believe in her power and authority. Dr. Carole Levin, who at long last introduced me to Catherine properly, pointed out that the great female mystics were frequently protected by their supportive confessors and spiritual directors. Raimondo seems to have been a tireless and powerful (he was political, aristocratically, and by own holy reputation a powerful figure) protector and supporter of her - God's help sent for her.
Because it is one thing to believe in a holy virgin. After all, all holy men were suppose to tell young nuns to aspire to be like them. But to see a young, unschooled girl with real power and - what's more - a direct pipeline to God...
It is not easy thing, for all Raimondo blamed himself for still doubting after all the time they spent together and all the wonders he had seen. I can understand why it took so much - why it took a few miracles on command and a vision of Jesus Himself.
I have dealt with Anti-Stratfordians who can't even bear the thought of the uncollege-educated Shakespeare being merely the greatest poet of his age (and the ones since, in my humble opinion). Much less a figure like Catherine of power and insight and holy fire? And a woman too.
I understand. It reveals something nasty in us - classist and jealous and frightened of our own responsibility to move mountains in His Name. Raimondo was right to repent it. But I understand it all too well.
Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful. Because with great power comes great responsibility.
It makes sense that we try to hide the image of those who are extraordinary or lift them up as spider-bitten super heroes with abilities or resources beyond our own. It is fearful to think that we could also be so faithful and so holy and so close to God.
And not only because we aren't already.
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XIII
Here we finally properly meet Raimondo of Capua, the most noted of Catherine's spiritual directors who eventually wrote her biography.
He also apparently knew St. Agnes (then still Blessed Agnes), another holy virgin. I'm not entirely sure that it is THE St. Agnes, the one I went through a period of admiring a long time ago. It would be a lovely bit of symmetry - the girl named for Catherine Benincasa having a relationship with St. Agnes, who lived her foot for Catherine to kiss despite having been dead for some time (incorruptible).
There are two very interesting stories in this chapter (well, there are more, but these are the things that struck me). Especially since they seem a touch contradictory.
The first is, while both Raimondo and Catherine worked tirelessly (or nearly, for they both fell ill) to help plague victims in Siena, Fra Matteo, a mutual friend, nearly fell victim to it. Raimondo admonished Catherine not to let him die, and she replied that she is not God to grant life and death. Raimondo in turn admonished her not to play that game with him, her spiritual confessor, who knew that God would never deny her what she asked for. And so Matteo lived.
At the end of the chapter, Raimondo confessed to her that he sometimes wondered if some of her visions were not flights of fancy. He asked her to secure a bull for him - a blessing to feel the full weight of his sins and also God's mercy. He did. The next day he went to her, penitent but still confessing he was not fully convinced. Then Jesus shown through her for Raimondo to see, and he never doubted her again.
But perhaps these stories do fit. Raimondo believed in her sincerity, but it is quite another thing to believe in her power and authority. Dr. Carole Levin, who at long last introduced me to Catherine properly, pointed out that the great female mystics were frequently protected by their supportive confessors and spiritual directors. Raimondo seems to have been a tireless and powerful (he was political, aristocratically, and by own holy reputation a powerful figure) protector and supporter of her - God's help sent for her.
Because it is one thing to believe in a holy virgin. After all, all holy men were suppose to tell young nuns to aspire to be like them. But to see a young, unschooled girl with real power and - what's more - a direct pipeline to God...
It is not easy thing, for all Raimondo blamed himself for still doubting after all the time they spent together and all the wonders he had seen. I can understand why it took so much - why it took a few miracles on command and a vision of Jesus Himself.
I have dealt with Anti-Stratfordians who can't even bear the thought of the uncollege-educated Shakespeare being merely the greatest poet of his age (and the ones since, in my humble opinion). Much less a figure like Catherine of power and insight and holy fire? And a woman too.
I understand. It reveals something nasty in us - classist and jealous and frightened of our own responsibility to move mountains in His Name. Raimondo was right to repent it. But I understand it all too well.
Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful. Because with great power comes great responsibility.
It makes sense that we try to hide the image of those who are extraordinary or lift them up as spider-bitten super heroes with abilities or resources beyond our own. It is fearful to think that we could also be so faithful and so holy and so close to God.
And not only because we aren't already.
Thursday, 13 December 2012
Chapter XII: Letters of Love in War
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XII
I am feeling rather obtuse today, which is a shame, because this is the longest passage of Catherine's own words (at least in translation) in the book so far. This chapter recounts the letters that Catherine wrote to all sides in a civil war between a corrupt, excommunicated ruler in Italy and the warlike cardinals who were members of the Pope's family and, reportedly, promoted so high for little other reason.
Undset also spends some amount of time defending - or perhaps simply explaining - Catherine's support for the Crusades. I admit, I had hoped she could shed some light on the subject. She does well in pointing out barbarism and invasion happening on both sides - and I can see, as she suggests, a person thinking that if men must make war, they should do it on the enemies far away rather than on their neighbors and fellow Italians.
I can't quite see Catherine thinking that, however. She is all about not making excuses for human nature. She believes in the conquering love of God to save every soul and correct every flaw in human nature. Or perhaps I misunderstand her. She does seem sympathetic that not everyone is called to her form of life, but does she really make a place for the soldier in her storm of rhetoric calling for love of God over war? Does she see a way for the overpowering love she describes to exist in a profession of killing?
Our own culture certainly tries to do so with love of country and service and support of our troops all tied up in a bloody job.
But really, this is the chapter that makes me realize that not only my willpower, my commitment, my soul are not like Catherine but that, in fact, I believe very differently than she did. I am so much more tied to the world, yes, but I also believe that Christianity is not the only path that God has given His children, that Jesus is not the only face He has offered us. I do believe that Christianity is the true religion. I wouldn't be a Catholic if I didn't believe that strongly. But I cannot believe that God would condemn His children because the path to peace most natural to their soul follows another religion's path. I cannot believe that my loving God would do that.
Perhaps He can. He is unfathomable to such as me, but for my money, barely two cents though it may be, I cannot see the God who sent His Only Son condemning most of the world for praying to the wrong god - especially when I see evidence that it leads so many to greater spiritual peace and more good deeds and love of fellow man. Surely, all such love comes from God.
So it is BECAUSE I believe that my God is true that I believe it is not only through the Church that men find salvation.
If that makes any sense.
But another reason it is hard to look at Catherine too closely: she is so much closer to God than I. She is undeniably stronger in her faith, wiser in the ways of faith, closer to God and therefore the truth than I will ever be. How can I hold on to my beliefs when they differ radically from hers? Can I chock it up to the time that has elapsed? What can I do?
This project has compelled me to reexamine things that I have left untouched and stagnant for a very long time - concerns that I have pushed down, sloth that I have left unaddressed. But this I cannot escape at all - or even thinking what will come of it. This is the challenge of my Advent - to look upon the faithful servant of Catherine Benincasa and be forced to question the comfortableness that has grown around my practice of my own faith.
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XII
I am feeling rather obtuse today, which is a shame, because this is the longest passage of Catherine's own words (at least in translation) in the book so far. This chapter recounts the letters that Catherine wrote to all sides in a civil war between a corrupt, excommunicated ruler in Italy and the warlike cardinals who were members of the Pope's family and, reportedly, promoted so high for little other reason.
Undset also spends some amount of time defending - or perhaps simply explaining - Catherine's support for the Crusades. I admit, I had hoped she could shed some light on the subject. She does well in pointing out barbarism and invasion happening on both sides - and I can see, as she suggests, a person thinking that if men must make war, they should do it on the enemies far away rather than on their neighbors and fellow Italians.
I can't quite see Catherine thinking that, however. She is all about not making excuses for human nature. She believes in the conquering love of God to save every soul and correct every flaw in human nature. Or perhaps I misunderstand her. She does seem sympathetic that not everyone is called to her form of life, but does she really make a place for the soldier in her storm of rhetoric calling for love of God over war? Does she see a way for the overpowering love she describes to exist in a profession of killing?
Our own culture certainly tries to do so with love of country and service and support of our troops all tied up in a bloody job.
But really, this is the chapter that makes me realize that not only my willpower, my commitment, my soul are not like Catherine but that, in fact, I believe very differently than she did. I am so much more tied to the world, yes, but I also believe that Christianity is not the only path that God has given His children, that Jesus is not the only face He has offered us. I do believe that Christianity is the true religion. I wouldn't be a Catholic if I didn't believe that strongly. But I cannot believe that God would condemn His children because the path to peace most natural to their soul follows another religion's path. I cannot believe that my loving God would do that.
Perhaps He can. He is unfathomable to such as me, but for my money, barely two cents though it may be, I cannot see the God who sent His Only Son condemning most of the world for praying to the wrong god - especially when I see evidence that it leads so many to greater spiritual peace and more good deeds and love of fellow man. Surely, all such love comes from God.
So it is BECAUSE I believe that my God is true that I believe it is not only through the Church that men find salvation.
If that makes any sense.
But another reason it is hard to look at Catherine too closely: she is so much closer to God than I. She is undeniably stronger in her faith, wiser in the ways of faith, closer to God and therefore the truth than I will ever be. How can I hold on to my beliefs when they differ radically from hers? Can I chock it up to the time that has elapsed? What can I do?
This project has compelled me to reexamine things that I have left untouched and stagnant for a very long time - concerns that I have pushed down, sloth that I have left unaddressed. But this I cannot escape at all - or even thinking what will come of it. This is the challenge of my Advent - to look upon the faithful servant of Catherine Benincasa and be forced to question the comfortableness that has grown around my practice of my own faith.
Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Chapter XI: Catherine's Hesitation and Triumphs
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
or 12/12/12!
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XI
Two moments in this chapter, which was more about Catherine's growing flock and triumph including a time she completely shut down to learned men who came to show her up (actually, multiple men with various versions of going to shut this unlearned, upstart woman down more or less bluntly spoken).
The first was a description of one of her followers as a poet. Because I thought from the start of the description of him as a poet and a talented one that we were going to hear a tale of another kind of worldly love gone wrong. It turns out, Catherine did not change his nature to a penitent robbed of worldly poetry.
Grace does not change our inner nature but perfects it. I stand corrected, Undset. Catherine saw worth in this person and only tried to keep him aware of God's presence during his melancholia periods.
The second was the story of a family who tried to bring a possessed daughter to Catherine. And Catherine fled from them. Undset says that many of Catherine's biographers have tried to stress her humility when they tell this story, but Undset, like me, seems to see something very comforting and inspiring in that there was still something for Catherine to fear - to hesitate. There were still costs that she was paying. She still felt what she was giving up in her calling.
And, of course, it makes sense that all things of this world seems like tissue paper for her and God to wipe aside, but she still feared those who would weaken her soul for its frequent trips toward God. She still feared the temptations, she still feared being pulled back down to earth. It was a continual struggle, for all she was constantly victorious through the grace of God.
When great deeds pile as high and as fast as Catherine's do, it can be easy to forget what each one costs. It can be easy to think that there is nothing that can frighten her.
I also love it because, eventually, the couple goes to her confessor Fra Tommaso at this time, and he brings the girl to Catherine. When instructed by her confessor and spiritual director, to whom she had sworn obedience, Catherine helped to save the girl and proved just how difficult the work would be. Sometimes, even the saints need others to help them, to push them, to guide them, and to help them find the strength they need to do what is right.
We all need others' help sometimes, even saints.
or 12/12/12!
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter XI
Two moments in this chapter, which was more about Catherine's growing flock and triumph including a time she completely shut down to learned men who came to show her up (actually, multiple men with various versions of going to shut this unlearned, upstart woman down more or less bluntly spoken).
The first was a description of one of her followers as a poet. Because I thought from the start of the description of him as a poet and a talented one that we were going to hear a tale of another kind of worldly love gone wrong. It turns out, Catherine did not change his nature to a penitent robbed of worldly poetry.
Grace does not change our inner nature but perfects it. I stand corrected, Undset. Catherine saw worth in this person and only tried to keep him aware of God's presence during his melancholia periods.
The second was the story of a family who tried to bring a possessed daughter to Catherine. And Catherine fled from them. Undset says that many of Catherine's biographers have tried to stress her humility when they tell this story, but Undset, like me, seems to see something very comforting and inspiring in that there was still something for Catherine to fear - to hesitate. There were still costs that she was paying. She still felt what she was giving up in her calling.
And, of course, it makes sense that all things of this world seems like tissue paper for her and God to wipe aside, but she still feared those who would weaken her soul for its frequent trips toward God. She still feared the temptations, she still feared being pulled back down to earth. It was a continual struggle, for all she was constantly victorious through the grace of God.
When great deeds pile as high and as fast as Catherine's do, it can be easy to forget what each one costs. It can be easy to think that there is nothing that can frighten her.
I also love it because, eventually, the couple goes to her confessor Fra Tommaso at this time, and he brings the girl to Catherine. When instructed by her confessor and spiritual director, to whom she had sworn obedience, Catherine helped to save the girl and proved just how difficult the work would be. Sometimes, even the saints need others to help them, to push them, to guide them, and to help them find the strength they need to do what is right.
We all need others' help sometimes, even saints.
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Chapter X: The Pope in Avignon - The Struggles Before Catherine
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter X
A long title for the chapter of this post, but it was something of a heavy chapter about the history of the Pope's move of his seat of power to Avignon and many (though surely not all) of the political ramifications. It is also about two figures who tried and seemed like they might succeed before Catherine - Cola di Rienzi who tried to restore the Roman Republic and St. Brigitta of Sweden. Both were powerful figures who had some success - but they could not do what Catherine did.
The first thing that struck me reading this was the degree of temporal suffering caused by the Pope's absence. So much of Italy was the Papal States which, with the Pope in France, led to cruel and foreign leaders ruling the people there. It left hundreds, thousands of people unprotected. It was also during this time that the Church surrendered its objection to evidence that came from torture. A Pope accepted it to disband the Templars, and one of the greatest protections of the people broke.
I wrote a conversation between Lapa and Catherine where Lapa takes the position that this is a theological issue - where the Pope takes his seat - but I realize now my error. This is a political and practical point. The pope's presence in Avignon seems to have aggravated the wars between France and England (like they needed an excuse but still) and certainly to have prevented him from posing an objective voice to make peace. Germany doesn't seem to be happy with it, and Rome was in a constant state of riot and uproar such that all travellers feared (but still came, I mean, it's a pilgrimage).
The Pope's power was being undermined and the people who were meant to be under his direct care were left alone. A series of popes failed either to see this or act on it.
Cola di Rienzi led a revolution that restored order for precisely three years. St. Brigitta (who seems awesome, by the way) convinced several popes with her powerful rhetoric, but she could never seem to stir them to move NOW. St. Brigitta was practically royalty, a widow with many children, and a powerful, rich woman. Cola di Rienzi was a powerful political figure and powerful in several pope's administrations.
The daughter of a dyer would do what they couldn't.
Unfortunately, it would lead to the Great Schism, but I am going to wait on discussing that. But that reminder leaves me with a strange series of messages. Even if there are people who seem more qualified doing what we feel called to do, we must work toward it. We are not excused from service. God may have planned for us, humble though we are, to succeed through Him where others could not - to His greater glory.
Or we may be meant to struggle even if the field cannot be won. Perhaps we are making way for eventual peace - perhaps it is simply more important to continue the struggle even if it backfires or we simply fail. Perhaps we are making way for something better down the line. Perhaps we are making things better even if we don't see the fruits of it in clear, real world ways.
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter X
A long title for the chapter of this post, but it was something of a heavy chapter about the history of the Pope's move of his seat of power to Avignon and many (though surely not all) of the political ramifications. It is also about two figures who tried and seemed like they might succeed before Catherine - Cola di Rienzi who tried to restore the Roman Republic and St. Brigitta of Sweden. Both were powerful figures who had some success - but they could not do what Catherine did.
The first thing that struck me reading this was the degree of temporal suffering caused by the Pope's absence. So much of Italy was the Papal States which, with the Pope in France, led to cruel and foreign leaders ruling the people there. It left hundreds, thousands of people unprotected. It was also during this time that the Church surrendered its objection to evidence that came from torture. A Pope accepted it to disband the Templars, and one of the greatest protections of the people broke.
I wrote a conversation between Lapa and Catherine where Lapa takes the position that this is a theological issue - where the Pope takes his seat - but I realize now my error. This is a political and practical point. The pope's presence in Avignon seems to have aggravated the wars between France and England (like they needed an excuse but still) and certainly to have prevented him from posing an objective voice to make peace. Germany doesn't seem to be happy with it, and Rome was in a constant state of riot and uproar such that all travellers feared (but still came, I mean, it's a pilgrimage).
The Pope's power was being undermined and the people who were meant to be under his direct care were left alone. A series of popes failed either to see this or act on it.
Cola di Rienzi led a revolution that restored order for precisely three years. St. Brigitta (who seems awesome, by the way) convinced several popes with her powerful rhetoric, but she could never seem to stir them to move NOW. St. Brigitta was practically royalty, a widow with many children, and a powerful, rich woman. Cola di Rienzi was a powerful political figure and powerful in several pope's administrations.
The daughter of a dyer would do what they couldn't.
Unfortunately, it would lead to the Great Schism, but I am going to wait on discussing that. But that reminder leaves me with a strange series of messages. Even if there are people who seem more qualified doing what we feel called to do, we must work toward it. We are not excused from service. God may have planned for us, humble though we are, to succeed through Him where others could not - to His greater glory.
Or we may be meant to struggle even if the field cannot be won. Perhaps we are making way for eventual peace - perhaps it is simply more important to continue the struggle even if it backfires or we simply fail. Perhaps we are making way for something better down the line. Perhaps we are making things better even if we don't see the fruits of it in clear, real world ways.
Monday, 10 December 2012
Chapter IX: Catherine and Deathbed Conversions
Monday, December 10, 2012
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter IX
I feel like I should be better prepared to write a meditation on this chapter. I have written other blog posts (on my Of Shakespearean Proportions blog) about how things have changed since Catherine's time (or even Shakespeare's). We don't believe in angels and demons in the same way that they did then - demons as the active cause of evil within human souls. Even with most of the ardent believers, in that way psychiatry has replaced religion. Even if they don't believe in psychiatry per se, we believe in internal causes - in long journeys to recovery. We don't believe in instantaneous repentance.
Have we lost more than we've gained? Does our salvation feel more real or worthwhile when it is hard won? Or is that just a mark of pride? We want to have some stake in our salvation. We want to believe we put in the work. But the truth is that it is a free gift.
Catherine prays and prays and bargains with the Lord for the souls she snatched from Hell, yes, but the things that the penitent did because of their salvation all occurred after it was granted. They made wills, they attended daily mass for a year, they spent three days confessing, they gave Catherine a castle to start a convent - out of gratitude for the freely given gift.
I don't think we can recapture the idea of external causes of madness and sin. We've become too internal - and I don't mean cell phones and the Internet and TV driving us away from real human contact. I mean that we believe in internal causes. I believe in internal causes.
But we mustn't, in that change, lose the truth that God alone is responsible for our salvation. That we are not earning our salvation. We, in our thanksgiving, are trying to be closer to Him who saved us. He can save us at the last moment, in an instant.
Either way - long, drawn out rehabilitation or instantaneous repentance - it is nothing to do with us. We cannot get to heaven any other way than God's mercy.
It is good that we are willing to do the work, the often hard work of changing our ways in true and deep ways rather than waiting for something to happen to fix us. But we mustn't forget - the salvation is a free gift. Our rehabilitation is a byproduct of it.
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter IX
I feel like I should be better prepared to write a meditation on this chapter. I have written other blog posts (on my Of Shakespearean Proportions blog) about how things have changed since Catherine's time (or even Shakespeare's). We don't believe in angels and demons in the same way that they did then - demons as the active cause of evil within human souls. Even with most of the ardent believers, in that way psychiatry has replaced religion. Even if they don't believe in psychiatry per se, we believe in internal causes - in long journeys to recovery. We don't believe in instantaneous repentance.
Have we lost more than we've gained? Does our salvation feel more real or worthwhile when it is hard won? Or is that just a mark of pride? We want to have some stake in our salvation. We want to believe we put in the work. But the truth is that it is a free gift.
Catherine prays and prays and bargains with the Lord for the souls she snatched from Hell, yes, but the things that the penitent did because of their salvation all occurred after it was granted. They made wills, they attended daily mass for a year, they spent three days confessing, they gave Catherine a castle to start a convent - out of gratitude for the freely given gift.
I don't think we can recapture the idea of external causes of madness and sin. We've become too internal - and I don't mean cell phones and the Internet and TV driving us away from real human contact. I mean that we believe in internal causes. I believe in internal causes.
But we mustn't, in that change, lose the truth that God alone is responsible for our salvation. That we are not earning our salvation. We, in our thanksgiving, are trying to be closer to Him who saved us. He can save us at the last moment, in an instant.
Either way - long, drawn out rehabilitation or instantaneous repentance - it is nothing to do with us. We cannot get to heaven any other way than God's mercy.
It is good that we are willing to do the work, the often hard work of changing our ways in true and deep ways rather than waiting for something to happen to fix us. But we mustn't forget - the salvation is a free gift. Our rehabilitation is a byproduct of it.
Sunday, 9 December 2012
Chapter VIII: Fame and Father Lazzarino
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter VIII
Of course, it was not the quiet life that God had in store for Catherine, and her first taste of fame and its dark cousin, notoriety, came as a holy woman's to whom many faithful and many lost souls flocked. This, of course, in turn provoking jealousy.
It's an interesting arrangement for a chapter by Undset. She begins talking about some of this fame and notoriety - of Catherine no longer having private time to spend and a few hints of jealous enemies or just gossipmongers, as Undset constantly references. Then she discusses the increasing extremity of Catherine's visions and the toll it begins to take on her body. Then, lastly, we get the attempt of Father Lazzarino, a charismatic priest convinced Catherine's exaggerated holiness must be a sham, and his transformation into her friend.
In Camelot, Lancelot has a lovely line where he says that zealots are always annoying. They are more than annoying - they make others deeply uncomfortable. Zealots for petty things that constantly talk about them are annoying, frustrating. You learn to avoid them. But a zealot like Catherine - we have whole elaborate dances that keep us from looking too closely at such a person. Some, of course, are drawn to her, but the impulse to prove that such extremes cannot be real - that such ecstasies are not granted to mortal men in truth - that's natural too.
Father Lazzarino is the second person Undset describes to have convinced themselves that they are upright, good, and holy - surely moreso than this upstart girl who had people tramping through her little room all hours of the day and night. Surely their simple devotions and their lifetimes of service count for more than a few ecstatic trances! Surely, if God were to choose someone in Siena to bear His message, they would be a better choice than this girl - and He could use less extreme measures to speak through them!
The first was a nun who reconciled with Catherine before her death. Father Lazzarino likewise came to feel his pride and returned penitent to Catherine the next day. Then he sold most of his possessions and eventually retired to a life of greater contemplation and only occasional preaching outside of Siena's walls. Where, reportedly, his sermons were world's better - and perhaps more precious and marked for their greater rarity.
Our strategies these days seem, increasingly, to me to be more about designating these days of wonders as something that worked long ago and far away. I first wrote about this idea about stories of heroes - every story has two purposes: to remember forever the greatest inherent in the human spirit and to remind us that we don't do things that way anymore - that kind of thing only worked when everyone was running around wearing tights or pumpkin pants or robes and sandals. Our own age cannot be the Age of Wonder - for how then would you explain how we are so ordinary?
But it is not only the saints who try to tell us, over and over again, that they are simply ordinary. That their world seemed just as ordinary and grounded in reality as our own. Catherine knew her own world. The chapter casually mentions Catherine asking a friend in Florence to give her brothers a loan to get them out of a tight spot when they moved the family business there. Everything seemed just as real and cluttered and fallen from grace as it does now.
It is still the Age of Wonders. Miracles are still possible and happening. We are the stuff that saints and heroes were made from. The difference is our calling, our dedication, our will. The difference is us.
We should not hide from that. We need heroes and saints in our world as much as Catherine's time needed her.
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter VIII
Of course, it was not the quiet life that God had in store for Catherine, and her first taste of fame and its dark cousin, notoriety, came as a holy woman's to whom many faithful and many lost souls flocked. This, of course, in turn provoking jealousy.
It's an interesting arrangement for a chapter by Undset. She begins talking about some of this fame and notoriety - of Catherine no longer having private time to spend and a few hints of jealous enemies or just gossipmongers, as Undset constantly references. Then she discusses the increasing extremity of Catherine's visions and the toll it begins to take on her body. Then, lastly, we get the attempt of Father Lazzarino, a charismatic priest convinced Catherine's exaggerated holiness must be a sham, and his transformation into her friend.
In Camelot, Lancelot has a lovely line where he says that zealots are always annoying. They are more than annoying - they make others deeply uncomfortable. Zealots for petty things that constantly talk about them are annoying, frustrating. You learn to avoid them. But a zealot like Catherine - we have whole elaborate dances that keep us from looking too closely at such a person. Some, of course, are drawn to her, but the impulse to prove that such extremes cannot be real - that such ecstasies are not granted to mortal men in truth - that's natural too.
Father Lazzarino is the second person Undset describes to have convinced themselves that they are upright, good, and holy - surely moreso than this upstart girl who had people tramping through her little room all hours of the day and night. Surely their simple devotions and their lifetimes of service count for more than a few ecstatic trances! Surely, if God were to choose someone in Siena to bear His message, they would be a better choice than this girl - and He could use less extreme measures to speak through them!
The first was a nun who reconciled with Catherine before her death. Father Lazzarino likewise came to feel his pride and returned penitent to Catherine the next day. Then he sold most of his possessions and eventually retired to a life of greater contemplation and only occasional preaching outside of Siena's walls. Where, reportedly, his sermons were world's better - and perhaps more precious and marked for their greater rarity.
Our strategies these days seem, increasingly, to me to be more about designating these days of wonders as something that worked long ago and far away. I first wrote about this idea about stories of heroes - every story has two purposes: to remember forever the greatest inherent in the human spirit and to remind us that we don't do things that way anymore - that kind of thing only worked when everyone was running around wearing tights or pumpkin pants or robes and sandals. Our own age cannot be the Age of Wonder - for how then would you explain how we are so ordinary?
But it is not only the saints who try to tell us, over and over again, that they are simply ordinary. That their world seemed just as ordinary and grounded in reality as our own. Catherine knew her own world. The chapter casually mentions Catherine asking a friend in Florence to give her brothers a loan to get them out of a tight spot when they moved the family business there. Everything seemed just as real and cluttered and fallen from grace as it does now.
It is still the Age of Wonders. Miracles are still possible and happening. We are the stuff that saints and heroes were made from. The difference is our calling, our dedication, our will. The difference is us.
We should not hide from that. We need heroes and saints in our world as much as Catherine's time needed her.
Saturday, 8 December 2012
Chapter VII: The Death of Jacopo and First Death of Lapa
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Feast of the Immaculate Conception
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter VII
Catherine nearly loses both her parents in this chapter. Just before the town of Siena explodes into civil unrest, just before Catherine is forced to literally place her brothers under the mantel of her famous holiness, Jacopo dies. Days before, with God explaining to a mournful Catherine that it would be better for him to die now, when he is prepared and pure.
She asks to suffer his Purgatorial pains for him, and the pain in her side for the rest of her life is given to her.
Her mother clings so tenaciously to life and refuses to take the Final Sacraments that Catherine calls on a promise God made to her - that no one in her house would suffer eternal damnation - to bring her mother back from death. Despite the warnings to Lapa from God, delivered through Catherine, that there would come a time when she would beg to be taken from this world and find herself unanswered.
I listened to a podcast today that raised a similar topic. A woman who had adopted four children from a woman who, roughly every year (she had 8), delivered a baby badly addicted to drugs. This woman started a foundation to pay women who are addicted to drugs to use birth control - some permanent form of birth control. As the host of the show so eloquently put it: ironically, the best argument against what the woman is doing is the woman's two sons and two daughters that first provoked her crusade.
We would not know as much about the saint's early life - or, I imagine, her later life - if her mother Lapa had died so early, before even Catherine met her great biographer Raimondo. I cannot help thinking that, for all God's warning and all that Lapa would come to suffer, she had one part left to play. Can the world ever really be "done" with a person?
But then, that reminds me of a fantasy television show called Legend of the Seeker, which I am kind of ashamed to admit I watch. In the second season, the Keeper of the Underworld begins trying to conquer the world of the living, including allowing people who have died to return to their bodies as Banelings - they can live relatively normal lives, provided that they kill one person every twenty-four hours.
Besides the obvious serial murder, the sin of every Baneling is the same: the inability to imagine the world without us. The inability to imagine the world going on without us. Over and over again, the show would present Banelings with excuses like "who would take care of my son/mother?" to justify their serial murder, and that exposed the root of their sins.
It's the opposite of the suicide's sin - imagining that we can disappear without a trace. The world is capable of moving on without us, but that does not mean that our passing will have a profound cost to those we love, to those we hate, to many that we do not know, and perhaps even to future generations wanting to peer into the extraordinary life of a great saint.
I wonder, since Undset says that Lapa was the more worldly of the pair, if her sin was the Baneling's sin - unable to imagine her family going on without her, especially in this time of turmoil. And I wonder how many of us can claim immunity from it. We are fortunate not to have that kind of choice before us.
Lapa's return to life did not have the messy consequences of the fantasy world, but it cost her and others much. Something in me rebels and wants to say they and she also gained much, but I do wonder. Would we rather go out when our lives were happy than linger, a little more of this life, even if it turns bitter? Do we only want this life when it's sweet? Do we want more of life at any cost?
Is the problem that we cannot imagine the world going on without us? Or that we cannot imagine ourselves going on in the next world?
Was is it we fear in death? And if we cannot name it, can we ever conquer it? Are we meant to, or is it our final test?
What was it that made Jacopo pass and Lapa fail, in this pivotal year for the Benincasas and all of Siena?
Feast of the Immaculate Conception
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter VII
Catherine nearly loses both her parents in this chapter. Just before the town of Siena explodes into civil unrest, just before Catherine is forced to literally place her brothers under the mantel of her famous holiness, Jacopo dies. Days before, with God explaining to a mournful Catherine that it would be better for him to die now, when he is prepared and pure.
She asks to suffer his Purgatorial pains for him, and the pain in her side for the rest of her life is given to her.
Her mother clings so tenaciously to life and refuses to take the Final Sacraments that Catherine calls on a promise God made to her - that no one in her house would suffer eternal damnation - to bring her mother back from death. Despite the warnings to Lapa from God, delivered through Catherine, that there would come a time when she would beg to be taken from this world and find herself unanswered.
I listened to a podcast today that raised a similar topic. A woman who had adopted four children from a woman who, roughly every year (she had 8), delivered a baby badly addicted to drugs. This woman started a foundation to pay women who are addicted to drugs to use birth control - some permanent form of birth control. As the host of the show so eloquently put it: ironically, the best argument against what the woman is doing is the woman's two sons and two daughters that first provoked her crusade.
We would not know as much about the saint's early life - or, I imagine, her later life - if her mother Lapa had died so early, before even Catherine met her great biographer Raimondo. I cannot help thinking that, for all God's warning and all that Lapa would come to suffer, she had one part left to play. Can the world ever really be "done" with a person?
But then, that reminds me of a fantasy television show called Legend of the Seeker, which I am kind of ashamed to admit I watch. In the second season, the Keeper of the Underworld begins trying to conquer the world of the living, including allowing people who have died to return to their bodies as Banelings - they can live relatively normal lives, provided that they kill one person every twenty-four hours.
Besides the obvious serial murder, the sin of every Baneling is the same: the inability to imagine the world without us. The inability to imagine the world going on without us. Over and over again, the show would present Banelings with excuses like "who would take care of my son/mother?" to justify their serial murder, and that exposed the root of their sins.
It's the opposite of the suicide's sin - imagining that we can disappear without a trace. The world is capable of moving on without us, but that does not mean that our passing will have a profound cost to those we love, to those we hate, to many that we do not know, and perhaps even to future generations wanting to peer into the extraordinary life of a great saint.
I wonder, since Undset says that Lapa was the more worldly of the pair, if her sin was the Baneling's sin - unable to imagine her family going on without her, especially in this time of turmoil. And I wonder how many of us can claim immunity from it. We are fortunate not to have that kind of choice before us.
Lapa's return to life did not have the messy consequences of the fantasy world, but it cost her and others much. Something in me rebels and wants to say they and she also gained much, but I do wonder. Would we rather go out when our lives were happy than linger, a little more of this life, even if it turns bitter? Do we only want this life when it's sweet? Do we want more of life at any cost?
Is the problem that we cannot imagine the world going on without us? Or that we cannot imagine ourselves going on in the next world?
Was is it we fear in death? And if we cannot name it, can we ever conquer it? Are we meant to, or is it our final test?
What was it that made Jacopo pass and Lapa fail, in this pivotal year for the Benincasas and all of Siena?
Friday, 7 December 2012
Chapter VI: Nurse to the Helpless and Cruel
Friday, December 7, 2012
Pearl Harbor Day
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter VI
I admit I have some sympathy with those whom Catherine nursed in this chapter for thinking she was too good - or too much - to be sincere. I understand Andrea, the woman whose breast cancer made one breast an entire open sore that drove any other nurse from her house, thinking that Catherine kissing it was going too far.
But this chapter is the story of Catherine struggling with her very real humanity - and owning it. Not only does she kiss the sore, but when she feels she can bear the smell no longer, she drinks the water (and blood and pus) she has used to clean Andrea's wound. Later that night, she has a vision and drinks the blood of Christ as a reward.
This is a story of extremes - drinking that foul concoction, but Catherine says that once she began, it tasted delicious. I cannot help being reminded, however, of many smaller times when a thoroughly unpleasant task stood before me and, when I mustered my will to it, found it a joy or at least a light burden. I've always thought it was my attitude that prevailed or perhaps my attitude going in poisoned what I had no cause to fear.
But I think now that sometimes that is the reward of mind over matter - refusing to give in to the protests of the body or the mind in pursuit of doing good. It's not just self-satisfaction that is the potential reward for that. There is a victory over ourselves.
We all know that we are imperfect, and I think we also all suspect, deep down or on the surface, that there are tests we would not pass. There are things that - even with the grace of God - our imperfect human flesh will falter in the face of. Because it is one thing to say or even to know that in God all things are possible. It is another to banish the thought that though the spirit may be willing, the flesh will always be weak.
So it is inspiring to see someone like Catherine dramatically conquer not just the gossips of the town, not just the feelings of unpleasantness, but the very nausea with which her body protests her nursing of the sickest and most unpleasant of the patients of Siena.
It is nice to see humanity owned. It's little more than a bonus that it often becomes pleasant just on the other side of the potential failure. What really gives me hope is the thought that it can be conquered after all. The spirit can conquer the flesh.
Pearl Harbor Day
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter VI
I admit I have some sympathy with those whom Catherine nursed in this chapter for thinking she was too good - or too much - to be sincere. I understand Andrea, the woman whose breast cancer made one breast an entire open sore that drove any other nurse from her house, thinking that Catherine kissing it was going too far.
But this chapter is the story of Catherine struggling with her very real humanity - and owning it. Not only does she kiss the sore, but when she feels she can bear the smell no longer, she drinks the water (and blood and pus) she has used to clean Andrea's wound. Later that night, she has a vision and drinks the blood of Christ as a reward.
This is a story of extremes - drinking that foul concoction, but Catherine says that once she began, it tasted delicious. I cannot help being reminded, however, of many smaller times when a thoroughly unpleasant task stood before me and, when I mustered my will to it, found it a joy or at least a light burden. I've always thought it was my attitude that prevailed or perhaps my attitude going in poisoned what I had no cause to fear.
But I think now that sometimes that is the reward of mind over matter - refusing to give in to the protests of the body or the mind in pursuit of doing good. It's not just self-satisfaction that is the potential reward for that. There is a victory over ourselves.
We all know that we are imperfect, and I think we also all suspect, deep down or on the surface, that there are tests we would not pass. There are things that - even with the grace of God - our imperfect human flesh will falter in the face of. Because it is one thing to say or even to know that in God all things are possible. It is another to banish the thought that though the spirit may be willing, the flesh will always be weak.
So it is inspiring to see someone like Catherine dramatically conquer not just the gossips of the town, not just the feelings of unpleasantness, but the very nausea with which her body protests her nursing of the sickest and most unpleasant of the patients of Siena.
It is nice to see humanity owned. It's little more than a bonus that it often becomes pleasant just on the other side of the potential failure. What really gives me hope is the thought that it can be conquered after all. The spirit can conquer the flesh.
Thursday, 6 December 2012
Chapter V: The Hermit Reenters the World
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter V
I think this is the most miraculous story, really. Or at least tonight it really struck me. Because this is the chapter covering the years after Catherine first came out of seclusion.
If I ever do write that play, either the first act or the last scene will have to be that moment when, upon Jesus giving her instructions and after some debate, Catherine walks down to have dinner with her family (large and sprawling) for the first time in three years. What that scene must have been. I can imagine them thinking that she had grown tired of the life, or that she had stumbled here to give them some lecture/message, or perhaps just sheer confusion. I imagine the smaller grandchildren in the house asking who this was. I imagine a lot of things, and we have no account of it. It is a scene pregnant with meaning and significance.
It was the start of hermit Catherine coming out into the world - and the really remarkable thing is that she stayed precisely the same. She fell into ecstasies and had long, involved visions and conversations with God - completely lost to the world and apparently protected from it as well - in public.
There are stories of her falling in fires about her chores, of being carried out (stiff as a board) of the church so that they could close up for the afternoon siesta and being spat upon by passers-by. There are stories of her frantic mother trying to carry her or at least straighten her limbs unsuccessfully.
She was a visionary, right out in plain sight. What courage that must have taken. What trouble that must have caused.
Of course, her first priority was tending to the poor. I love the description of her getting a reputation for generosity then being able to spot and deflect the swindlers. I particularly love the comment Undset makes that her standards for worthy of charity and not worthy were often very different from the world's. I'd have liked more details on that, Sigrid.
There is also an interesting section on Catherine's obedience to her spiritual directors - without bowing to them. There's a lot of the obligatory "I am a poor woman" rhetoric in this chapter, as in all her letters, but once she starts, Catherine is all iron will. And she is not afraid to speak her mind. Undset describes her relationship with her confessors as "extraordinary" and I hope we learn much, much more in the time to come.
It soothes something in what has always made me uncomfortable about vows of obedience to see her not afraid to assert her own judgment and will. It is the spark of the Catherine I love to hear about, rather than the one I find it difficult to face. Of course, the spark and will come from the place I find unsettling. I'm not sure at all what to do with that.
But tonight I am in awe of her - to find the same contemplative joy in the midst of doubt and scorn and just the business of the world as she did in her cell. To be as bold in her love of God amongst those who cannot understand as she was when alone.
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter V
I think this is the most miraculous story, really. Or at least tonight it really struck me. Because this is the chapter covering the years after Catherine first came out of seclusion.
If I ever do write that play, either the first act or the last scene will have to be that moment when, upon Jesus giving her instructions and after some debate, Catherine walks down to have dinner with her family (large and sprawling) for the first time in three years. What that scene must have been. I can imagine them thinking that she had grown tired of the life, or that she had stumbled here to give them some lecture/message, or perhaps just sheer confusion. I imagine the smaller grandchildren in the house asking who this was. I imagine a lot of things, and we have no account of it. It is a scene pregnant with meaning and significance.
It was the start of hermit Catherine coming out into the world - and the really remarkable thing is that she stayed precisely the same. She fell into ecstasies and had long, involved visions and conversations with God - completely lost to the world and apparently protected from it as well - in public.
There are stories of her falling in fires about her chores, of being carried out (stiff as a board) of the church so that they could close up for the afternoon siesta and being spat upon by passers-by. There are stories of her frantic mother trying to carry her or at least straighten her limbs unsuccessfully.
She was a visionary, right out in plain sight. What courage that must have taken. What trouble that must have caused.
Of course, her first priority was tending to the poor. I love the description of her getting a reputation for generosity then being able to spot and deflect the swindlers. I particularly love the comment Undset makes that her standards for worthy of charity and not worthy were often very different from the world's. I'd have liked more details on that, Sigrid.
There is also an interesting section on Catherine's obedience to her spiritual directors - without bowing to them. There's a lot of the obligatory "I am a poor woman" rhetoric in this chapter, as in all her letters, but once she starts, Catherine is all iron will. And she is not afraid to speak her mind. Undset describes her relationship with her confessors as "extraordinary" and I hope we learn much, much more in the time to come.
It soothes something in what has always made me uncomfortable about vows of obedience to see her not afraid to assert her own judgment and will. It is the spark of the Catherine I love to hear about, rather than the one I find it difficult to face. Of course, the spark and will come from the place I find unsettling. I'm not sure at all what to do with that.
But tonight I am in awe of her - to find the same contemplative joy in the midst of doubt and scorn and just the business of the world as she did in her cell. To be as bold in her love of God amongst those who cannot understand as she was when alone.
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Chapter IV: Locked Away with Ecstasy
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter IV
I will probably return to this chapter again and again if I ever write that play. Because this is the story of the three years after she took orders, when Catherine spent three solid years in her room, leaving only to attend Mass. I have many thoughts on why, but none of them answer sufficiently why this is the part that commands my interest.
Maybe it has something to do with how there are great contemplative saints and anchorites; and, in turn, there are great leaders and prophets and those who spoke boldly to those in power and overturn damaging doctrines. But rarely are they the same life.
Maybe because I want to see so much of myself in the Catherine before and after these three years. I was a willful and devout little child. I like to think of myself as bold and clever and I wish I were more persuasive. I would like to think I have the potential to be a force of good in the world. I do not aspire to her heights. That is not modesty. It is an admission of a failing. I do not aspire to be as good as she is. It is an admission of a sin. But still, I can see bits of Catherine in me in other stories of her life. I cannot see any of myself in the recluse locked in her room. Or at least, not anymore.
Maybe what drives me to write a play is the idea of Before They Were Great. Perhaps I truly love the moment when the seed starts to sprout more than the bearing of fruit. Is that the teacher in me?
Maybe it is many things and all of these things or none of them.
But today, when I read the chapter I am sure I will return to again and again, I felt frustration. For this was also the period of Catherine's Long Night of the Soul, of the series of demonic temptations that besieged her. And, personally, I find no help in her answer to her struggles. There is something...upsetting about the fact that her response to opposing arguments was to shut down and refuse to even consider them.
Of course, they were demons, and she was a saint called by God. But I cannot help seeing that same attitude creating monsters of every politician, every political pundit, and oh so many religious people. Creating temporary monsters of ordinary people, many of whom I know and otherwise love. The refusal to listen to an alternative, even one you acknowledge as reasonable. An end of discussions.
Why? Why was that her answer - what I see as the chief sin of our combative times? As someone who believes that art is so necessary for the way it forces us to see the world from different perspectives, to remember and imagine worlds that do not operate even on the basic premises of our own, the idea of rejecting other viewpoints is upsetting.
It's not that I think she should have listened to or at least indulged for a time the temptations. That's what makes this hard - what makes her a hard saint to look at too closely.
We don't need people of conviction - we have plenty of fools who are sticking to their guns in the face of any objections or consequences. We need people of wisdom. Her path to wisdom came through conviction and humility. Perhaps what I lack is the necessary trust in God.
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Chapter IV
I will probably return to this chapter again and again if I ever write that play. Because this is the story of the three years after she took orders, when Catherine spent three solid years in her room, leaving only to attend Mass. I have many thoughts on why, but none of them answer sufficiently why this is the part that commands my interest.
Maybe it has something to do with how there are great contemplative saints and anchorites; and, in turn, there are great leaders and prophets and those who spoke boldly to those in power and overturn damaging doctrines. But rarely are they the same life.
Maybe because I want to see so much of myself in the Catherine before and after these three years. I was a willful and devout little child. I like to think of myself as bold and clever and I wish I were more persuasive. I would like to think I have the potential to be a force of good in the world. I do not aspire to her heights. That is not modesty. It is an admission of a failing. I do not aspire to be as good as she is. It is an admission of a sin. But still, I can see bits of Catherine in me in other stories of her life. I cannot see any of myself in the recluse locked in her room. Or at least, not anymore.
Maybe what drives me to write a play is the idea of Before They Were Great. Perhaps I truly love the moment when the seed starts to sprout more than the bearing of fruit. Is that the teacher in me?
Maybe it is many things and all of these things or none of them.
But today, when I read the chapter I am sure I will return to again and again, I felt frustration. For this was also the period of Catherine's Long Night of the Soul, of the series of demonic temptations that besieged her. And, personally, I find no help in her answer to her struggles. There is something...upsetting about the fact that her response to opposing arguments was to shut down and refuse to even consider them.
Of course, they were demons, and she was a saint called by God. But I cannot help seeing that same attitude creating monsters of every politician, every political pundit, and oh so many religious people. Creating temporary monsters of ordinary people, many of whom I know and otherwise love. The refusal to listen to an alternative, even one you acknowledge as reasonable. An end of discussions.
Why? Why was that her answer - what I see as the chief sin of our combative times? As someone who believes that art is so necessary for the way it forces us to see the world from different perspectives, to remember and imagine worlds that do not operate even on the basic premises of our own, the idea of rejecting other viewpoints is upsetting.
It's not that I think she should have listened to or at least indulged for a time the temptations. That's what makes this hard - what makes her a hard saint to look at too closely.
We don't need people of conviction - we have plenty of fools who are sticking to their guns in the face of any objections or consequences. We need people of wisdom. Her path to wisdom came through conviction and humility. Perhaps what I lack is the necessary trust in God.
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
Chapter III: The Vocation of Monna Lapa's Daughter
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Chapter III
This is the first instance of Lapa and Catherine's relationship proving absolutely fascinating. The Order that Catherine longed to join was originally a married order. I'm not entirely clear, but it seems to have been a mostly married couples order - with widows making up the Mantellata. I wonder if it seemed to the Benincasas that an obvious compromise lay before them.
But Catherine had her vow and a determination and will that they had apparently never seen before. And Jacopo understood at once, when she actually explained. But Lapa did not. Lapa fought her on the devotions, on the sleepless nights spent in prayer, on the denial of food, on the self-flagellation. And what mother wouldn't?
I cannot make myself see it as a sin to shun the mortification of flesh. I remember last Lent, I really wanted a physical, demanding devotion that would be good for me. Thus the sitting up straight - exhausting but not harmful - in fact, quite the opposite. But such things are rare, yes? Exercise is the other one - a kind of torture for me but not harmful. My mind recoils from the thought of harming yourself to prove love without another goal in clear sight.
But that's because I don't have Catherine's vision, again. It truly is hard to look too long at such a person - to realize what she must have felt herself moving toward to see her flesh and health, the foundations of her life here on earth, as something to be destroyed if necessary on the path.
The heart of the chapter, however, is not Catherine's determination or even the final temptation and Mary's reward for passing the test. The heart of Undset's chapter is Lapa's transformation. I really want to dramatize this woman. She fights her daughter on her extreme devotions because "she loved her daughters body more than her soul" as biographers put it. Lapa could not understand what drove her child, how precious and wonderful a thing she flew to with her sacrifices. So she threw obstacles in her way.
But then her daughter became ill, and Lapa stormed the Sisters of Penitence to demand they bend the rules to take her beloved daughter. She played them, actually. She cajoled and harangued them into listening, into coming to talk to Catherine. She set up the objection that if Catherine were a beauty, she would believe there could be a problem then brought them to her sick daughter covered in a rash that swelled her face. She brought the women to talk to Catherine and hear and see her devotion for themselves.
And Catherine was inducted into the order. Her mother, for all that came before and would come after between them, Lapa Benincasa got her daughter into the Sisters of Penitence. Because if, as Undset suggests, the devil used Lapa to try to stop Catherine's extreme forms of prayer, Lapa also chose to be an instrument of God.
Lapa's love of her daughter twisted both ways. I suppose the lesson is that we have to watch the things that we do because of love. I remember writing about Merchant of Venice in an email that it is necessary to look into our darkest impulses, our broken and twisty places. Because otherwise, we won't see the damage they are doing and change.
We have to be able to step back from our actions and look at them - whether they come from love or from hate. The ones we can identify as coming from hate are easy to spot. The damage we do in love - we can only pray we are lucky enough to redeem ourselves by storming the Sisters of Penitence.
Chapter III
This is the first instance of Lapa and Catherine's relationship proving absolutely fascinating. The Order that Catherine longed to join was originally a married order. I'm not entirely clear, but it seems to have been a mostly married couples order - with widows making up the Mantellata. I wonder if it seemed to the Benincasas that an obvious compromise lay before them.
But Catherine had her vow and a determination and will that they had apparently never seen before. And Jacopo understood at once, when she actually explained. But Lapa did not. Lapa fought her on the devotions, on the sleepless nights spent in prayer, on the denial of food, on the self-flagellation. And what mother wouldn't?
I cannot make myself see it as a sin to shun the mortification of flesh. I remember last Lent, I really wanted a physical, demanding devotion that would be good for me. Thus the sitting up straight - exhausting but not harmful - in fact, quite the opposite. But such things are rare, yes? Exercise is the other one - a kind of torture for me but not harmful. My mind recoils from the thought of harming yourself to prove love without another goal in clear sight.
But that's because I don't have Catherine's vision, again. It truly is hard to look too long at such a person - to realize what she must have felt herself moving toward to see her flesh and health, the foundations of her life here on earth, as something to be destroyed if necessary on the path.
The heart of the chapter, however, is not Catherine's determination or even the final temptation and Mary's reward for passing the test. The heart of Undset's chapter is Lapa's transformation. I really want to dramatize this woman. She fights her daughter on her extreme devotions because "she loved her daughters body more than her soul" as biographers put it. Lapa could not understand what drove her child, how precious and wonderful a thing she flew to with her sacrifices. So she threw obstacles in her way.
But then her daughter became ill, and Lapa stormed the Sisters of Penitence to demand they bend the rules to take her beloved daughter. She played them, actually. She cajoled and harangued them into listening, into coming to talk to Catherine. She set up the objection that if Catherine were a beauty, she would believe there could be a problem then brought them to her sick daughter covered in a rash that swelled her face. She brought the women to talk to Catherine and hear and see her devotion for themselves.
And Catherine was inducted into the order. Her mother, for all that came before and would come after between them, Lapa Benincasa got her daughter into the Sisters of Penitence. Because if, as Undset suggests, the devil used Lapa to try to stop Catherine's extreme forms of prayer, Lapa also chose to be an instrument of God.
Lapa's love of her daughter twisted both ways. I suppose the lesson is that we have to watch the things that we do because of love. I remember writing about Merchant of Venice in an email that it is necessary to look into our darkest impulses, our broken and twisty places. Because otherwise, we won't see the damage they are doing and change.
We have to be able to step back from our actions and look at them - whether they come from love or from hate. The ones we can identify as coming from hate are easy to spot. The damage we do in love - we can only pray we are lucky enough to redeem ourselves by storming the Sisters of Penitence.
Monday, 3 December 2012
Chapter II: Of Marriageable Age
December 3, 2012 (on the flight, uploaded later)
Chapter II
Having also started (but not finished) a biography of Sir
Isaac Newton, one of the other similarities between the two that has struck me
(besides their temporary hibernation and their single-minded focus) was the reactions
of their families. Here it’s more
of a contrast, but it could be interesting to beg the question of which
frustrates the saint or scientist more – neglect or loving interference?
In Chapter II we learn what happened when Catherine, who had
told no one of her vow at seven years old to remain a virgin always, came smack
up against the fact that her family needed her to marry to maintain their
alliances and strength of their family.
When her favorite sister, Bonaventura died, this problem became particularly
contentious, apparently.
I suppose the next step after hearing the call, then (as
yesterday) trying what you think the call might be to see if it’s right, is to
stick to your guns once you’ve found it.
And little Catherine did have to contend with some obstacles and endless
attempts at persuasion.
One of the things that makes me uncomfortable about her was
addressed early in the chapter.
There’s little but the admirable in her determination to stick to her
vow even when faced with hardships and lack of understanding even from those
who loved her. However, the first
round of this persuasion was when Bonaventura was still alive.
Lapa, Catherine’s mother, convinced Catherine’s oldest and
favorite sister to talk to the “suddenly” recalcitrant young girl into dressing
nicely and keeping herself looking good for the boys in town now that she was
of marriageable (by 13th century standards) age. Reportedly, Bonaventura had some
limited success, for which Catherine not only greatly repented later but that
she actually believed caused Bonaventura’s death in childbirth.
I recoil from this idea. A) Childbirth
killed your sister. You are in the
Middle Ages, it was the childbirth.
B) As stated in an Orson Scott Card book I actually am not ashamed of ever
having read, it is a kind of egomania to believe that all the misfortunes that
befall the ones you love are due to your sins. C) Really? God
wouldn’t try other means of removing
a potential corrupter than killing your otherwise almost painfully good sister? Seriously, in the first chapter there
was a story of how when Bonaventura was first married she became so upset she
started to waste away when her otherwise good husband and some of his friends
became a bit foul-mouthed in her presence.
The comfort Catherine was sent was being told that after a
brief little spell in Purgatory, Bonaventura got to go to heaven. I would have appreciated something of a
smack down about taking yourself too seriously, but I am not at all a saint.
And more than that, Catherine of Siena is a saint of
purity. As someone who’s always
been uncomfortable that her name means “pure,” I feel weird about saints of
purity – saints who completely reject the world and take the smallest infractions
as seriously as we would the cardinal sins.
But when you think about what they’re losing – when you are
as close to God and as full of His Graces as Catherine clearly was from a young
age, anything that threatens that connection even a little must be horrifying. It can make you jealous of that zeal,
because it may be the biggest clue we have to the depth of the spiritual
rewards that are given to such saints in place of it.
In a religion of repentance, purity is not the zero/sum game
that I mostly reject to, which is one of my favorite things about my
religion. It still makes me
uncomfortable, however, because I love this world, and knowing that there is
something so infinitely beyond it that the things of this world are like
smudges on my glasses…
I suppose that is an uncomfortable truth that saints make us
face. No wonder they have issues
with their families.
Chapter I: A Child of Grace
Sunday, December 2, 2012 (Dec 3rd in the airport,
uploaded later)
Chapter I
This Advent, I decided that I would read through Sigrid
Undset’s biography of Catherine of Siena (or, at least, one chapter a day) and
reflect on my impressions from the chapter. I have been reading this work in fits and starts for awhile,
and I thought this would be a good way to commit to the reading.
Sigrid Undset’s book is quite beautifully written – she’s a
Nobel prize winner who eventually converted to Catholicism and joined a holy
order because of her research into my name saint. A lot of her own philosophy – or at least her own learning
of the catechism and teachings of the Church – come through and may be a lot of
what I discuss in these entries.
One of the reasons I want to do this project is that
something really struck me about St. Catherine of Siena – who took three years
out of the world before she emerged to set it on fire with faith – and Sir
Isaac Newton – who took three months alone in his little room to learn all of
science before creating a new view of the physical universe. I think there’s a play in that
connection. I’ve also always seen
one between great scientists and saints – the pure pursuit of something
inexplicable but not impossible to experience, just beyond what everyone else
sees.
We’ll see if anything ever comes of it.
Chapter I
Honestly, there are a lot of things in this chapter that I
could write about. Firstly,
there’s the image adjustment I did on Catherine’s life when I learned that Dr.
Carole Levin (for all I adore her and cannot thank her enough for properly
introducing me to my patron saint) had Catherine Benincasa’s home life wrong.
Catherine was the 23rd child of Lapa and Jacopo,
but Jacopo was not a fisherman. He
was a dyer, and he was reasonably well-off. Dr. Levin had made a point that all the other female visionaries
we had studied had started as wealthy or even aristocratic women, but Catherine
was no one. Even to be an
anchoress, well, you’ve got to have a certain amount of resources. Catherine was not nearly that well off, but there is another
thing you need to be an anchoress or even just an ordered nun – you need a
family that supports your decision, and can spare you. That’s what Catherine had to win the
hard way at the very start of her spiritual journey in earnest. That will come with later chapters
though, so no need to spend this entry on it.
The first time I read the first chapter, I was struck by the
fact that Catherine had a twin sister, Giovanna, who did not live long. That’s when the Lapa monologue from
last Lent happened (read Lapa’s lament here). There’ll be a lot on Lapa as time passes.
This time reading, though, two things really struck me. The first was a line of Undset’s: “… it
is a fact that grace does not change our inner nature but perfects it.” I love that, I really do. God does not remake us, he makes us the
best that we personally have in us.
He takes the raw clay and makes it his vessel, rather than transforming
us into something like the angels.
The saints are still like us – they are precisely what they would have
been otherwise, only they met their potential for goodness and light.
The other is the story of a child Catherine running away
from the city to become a hermit then, after praying for some time, realizing
that God did not want a reclusive life for her – nor for her to frighten the
wits out of her parents in this way.
She was also much too young to care for herself as a hermit, I will
point out.
She had already had her first vision, and she had begun her
devotions (and self-flagellations, which I have many Thoughts about but I
haven’t worked through them yet and don’t feel like it in the airport right
now). She had, in effect, already
been called. She just didn’t know
where yet.
That’s quite a spot to be in, and I think a lot of people
stall out at this point. But
Catherine has already shown us the proper course – you try something, pray
about it, and listen. If it’s
wrong, well, you scurry back home and (if you’re as lucky as little Catherine
Benincasa was) no one even noticed.
If it’s right, you keep doing it.
What child-like wisdom indeed. If you feel a call, don’t wait for an explanation. Try what you think it might be, and
then pray to see if it’s right. If
so, stay in the cave. If not, go
home.
And try again.
This is a lesson I could really stand to learn.
Saturday, 14 July 2012
The Apple
Note: No, I don’t know if I believe this is literally how it went down. This is the story we tell of how we came to be. As Christians, this makes it just as important as if it did.
So sometimes I think about Adam and Even and the Apple. Mostly because the idea of Knowledge as the Apple has haunted me all of my life. Because I love knowledge, I eat it up desperately, hungrily. It has made me a better person. And I have tried ten different ways to reconcile that thought.
Of course, I know that the Apple is Knowledge of Good and Evil, but somehow that’s even harder. What does that even mean? Were we supposed to be like the animals in the field? Unsinning because he had never known sin? But then – we were told. We were told precisely one rule, and we were given the consequences: separation from God. Eve knew that she would be telling God that she didn’t love and need Him if she took the Apple, and the snake had to tell her something that would completely disillusion her (falsely) about that relationship in order to get her mad and jealous and hurt enough to bite down on the Apple in revenge.
And yes, the absolute surface lesson of this story is that if you tell humans there is ONE AND ONLY ONE RULE then you can bet that by teatime they will have broken it. I even went through a period where I thought that perhaps God was playing us; that the Apple was what he wanted us to have anyway. But that’s…well, I don’t pretend to understand the mind of God, but that just doesn’t scan in my ordinary human one. Because, yes, He showed us how much He truly loves us because after the Apple He sent His Son, but, well…about the time I figured out what Eve was really saying in the Garden, I thought “Who wants to hear that from their creations?”
And we already had free-will and decision-making powers and sentience and something that separated us, forever, from the animals and from the angels. We already had a (very, very short) list of Things You Shouldn’t Do, Please. We already had a reason for doing that – Love of God. That’s what the Snake broke to get Eve to eat the Apple. He told her God had betrayed her. That He had never really loved her. So she said, “Damn if I’m going to let Him tell me what to do on top of it!” Suddenly it wasn’t God taking care of you, offering you a choice but telling you what would make you happier, suddenly it wasn’t God offering a show of trust and letting the tree stand as a bond of mutual love – I trust you enough to put this here, you love me enough not to eat from it – but a manipulation. A withholding. A powergrab. A lie. Not something you do to someone you love, right?
So, what I came up with recently is: what if the Apple is Shame.
And not even personal shame and accountability but the icky Cultural Shame. Here me out here on the sequence of events that led to the discovery that Being Naked is bad – or even a thing.
Adam and Eve were naked in the garden. Presumably this was a physical fact of existence, although no one cared. No one even thought anything of it. It didn’t lead down bad roads. It wasn’t a prelude to sex (necessarily). It wasn't an empowering claim of self-acceptance. It wasn’t a gift of trust to your spouse. It wasn’t a violation to be seen by uninvited eyes. It wasn’t a thing. It had no power. Can you even imagine a world where a naked body has no power?
Then came the Snake and his lie and the breaking of Eve’s faith and heart. So she ate the Apple, and she became aware of the knowledge between right and wrong (or thought she did). And maybe she was ashamed and couldn’t bear to be alone in having betrayed God, so she committed her second sin of dragging Adam down with her. Or maybe she was still furious with what she saw as God’s betrayal and wanted Adam to be free as well.
But she wasn’t naked yet.
Not until she convinced Adam to try the Apple too. Then, suddenly, they were Naked. Suddenly, nakedness had power.
The instant there was a community that had bitten the Apple, there was Shame and things like nakedness had the power to just completely wreck us. The amount of terrible things that have happened because nakedness is a Thing is untold.
Of course, it isn’t all bad – but we could have loving sex without it. We could have intimacy without it being a Thing. What I’m saying is that when you turn the sacredness of the naked body back around, when you take something that you’ve been told to hide all your life and find the bravery to uncover it before eyes that you trust, then you are using the piece of the Apple inside of you to make you braver, to make you better and more loving. You are facing the Shame that God never wanted you to have to feel, and you learn how to become more. You find love of God in this.
Acting in defiance of the Apple feels powerful, but what are you proving? That nakedness is powerful and that you can use that power rather than it just being used on you. How lovely for you. But you’re only giving the Apple more power. Don’t get me wrong – you can make yourself better and find God in that too. But the first example is the only thing I can think of that actually combats the Apple itself – and that only obliquely. Defying the Apple still empowers the Apple.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we could move toward a whole where everyone has the Apple inside them – everyone has the instincts for Cultural Shame, for embarrassment and for bullying and for all the terrible things we do to each other because of cultural norms – but has the strength and the mindset to fight it down and away so that it has no power over us. Or to find the escape hatch and to reject all the dichotomies and the limits and the nonsense and step outside the conversation. I'd like to believe that, because I would like to live in that world. I think that is the world that Jesus promised us. I think it is the Holy Spirit that shows us each trap door and that gives us the strength to live in the world that insists on treating all these things like Things.
But for now that is the punishment for our lack of trust – for our inability to believe. For the first broken faith and lost love in human history: Shame.
So what does that leave us with? If original sin, the sin that is inborn in us, is the instinct to Shame ourselves and others, to make ourselves less and press down on the necks of others, to make up rules and treat them as absolutes, to try to control each other – then what do we do?
The two responses to Nakedness, to what a Thing it is in our world, is to repress the hell out of it or to flaunt it. Both are just powertrips. We're not capable of remembering that it doesn't have to be a Thing. Maybe as individuals, but not as a whole culture.
We ate the Apple. It’s never going away. Not until the Second Coming. Trying to take away the power of Nakedness just seems to give it a different kind of power, and we don’t seem to be able to stop bullying without turning it around on the bullies – who feel just as pushed down by Shame as the rest of us. So what do we do? The Apple gave these things power. We have, now, superpowers. How we use them determines everything.
They’re powers of manipulation of self and others. You can break yourself or use Shame to help you correct your faults. You can push people down or lead them away from danger. They’re powers of being able to see everyone’s levers. They are powers that make it easier to get what we want and easier to see someone else’s pain. They are powers of forgiveness, because we can see the forces that bring people to sin. They are powers of control, because we can try to keep people repressed and dismiss them for stepping out of line.
And it’s the same with all of the Things we give power to (yes, WE pick them, as a culture). Nakedness, Homosexuality, Race, Gender, Pork…none of these things are inherently good or bad, but denying that they are lightning rods is an excellent way to get burned. Lightning is not a good enough reason never to go outside, but you’re a fool if you ignore the storm. These things have enormous power – for good and evil, for transcendence and repression, for acceptance and for cruelty, for love and for fear. If you cannot escape a lightning rod, you must wear rubber-soled shoes and heart -- or let the fire burn away the parts of you that are harming yourself or others.
They are powers, in short, to love and to hate. We chose a world with things that are powerful beyond anyone’s individual power to resist. We chose it in a fit of pique in the world’s first bad break-up, but we chose it. We’re stuck with it. What will you use your superpower for?
Saturday, 7 April 2012
Saturday, April 7, 2012
RUTH
Holy Saturday
I've got to say what a beautiful day it has been today. I got up earlier than I would have liked, but that was my last complaint. I rushed to get the props for the rehearsal of the play I wrote last year which will be performed on Tuesday evening, got to dress up actors and play with my own language with them, and we had to go outside in all our finery for a fire drill, which was just added absurdity (and a validation of my plan to overestimate the time I needed for rehearsal). Then I had just enough time to come home, eat lunch, and set up the crochet set before Amanda's bridal shower - which was just epically lovely. So many people that I love, SO much good food I couldn't finish all of it, three rousing games of crochet with lots of blowing bubbles to accompany it, the retelling of everyone's favorite Dan and Amanda stories (which, seriously, "they are like a Ryan Gosseling movie"), and a truly epic round of gifts. Then I made the risotto stuff I get from Kroger for Clara and Amanda while we talked about our past shows and current lives (Amy also present for talking but not eating). Now I'm trying to get some work done with the gold of the sunset peeking between the leaves of the tree outside my kitchen window.
Thank You, Lord, for such a glorious day.
I've been thinking about what kind of entry to do today. I don't want to start another woman, but I'm not sure how I'd even begin a retrospective of all the women that I've looked at here. Wait, now I know where I'd start! I think I will pick my favorite line, paragraph, etc. of each woman (or perhaps each day? each monologue? Will that be too long? We'll see!). Hopefully, they will end up somewhat artfully arranged. Here we go!
ELIZABETH
I bore the weight for him: my son whom all the things of this world could not touch.
JOANNA
Salome danced when she thought she was alone. But she was never alone. I used to stand transfixed whenever I saw her. Most people in Herod's palace did....when she danced, all her silken chains fell to the floor, and she was bursting forth, pouring forth from some deep font deep within. Bursting to live. She never felt their gazes, but they were there. And one day, her uncle-father and aunt-mother demanded that she dance for their guests. Did she guess? Guess that they were binding her up in new chains? At first she danced as freely as before, but then she stumbled, just for a moment. And in that moment: she felt them. Hundred of male eyes devouring her, as if they were one leering trap. For all her bursting, flowing movements, she only weaved their gazes more and more around her own body. And when she fell still, she fell silent. Everyone did. She silenced everyone with her dance. Herself most of all.
WIDOW OF ZAREPHATH
The sins that start to come easier and easier, to fall faster and faster, as everyone begins to slowly starve to death. The charity refused, the crumbs stolen, the hope crushed under your heel. The advantage taken. The slow contraction of whom you consider it your responsibility to save.
PILATE'S WIFE
I had seen the world, more than most Roman women, and I knew that there was real suffering. But I did little, because I was waiting for a singular moment of clarity. I was waiting for a message, a sign, or just some understanding of what was beyond myself. I was drifting, waiting, straining my ears and blocking out everything in the world around me.
WOMAN OF SAMARIA
With the second wedding there was more gossip than bustle about me, but they were approving. Less sympathetic when he died. My third marriage ended in divorce, and that's when half the talk became whispers in ears and behind backs. By the fourth, whom I never actually married though I began to claim I had, I was like some attraction, some foreign seller of wonders barking in the streets of Jerusalem. I swear I saw money exchanged on the fifth. By then they were shunning me. The glares and lectures had died away into contempt and silence. I admit I took a perverse pleasure in how I could silence them, cut through the crowd and take my water quickly because no one wanted me there. But such things lose their charm quickly. Soon all you see is what they intended: the rejection.
MENSTRUATING WOMAN
It had been so long since I had touched even members of my family. You cannot imagine what that was like - to live at home, sequestered and shut up from the world, and even among my own family too unclean to touch. Impure and unclean. When the doctors stopped coming, it felt like the walls were sealed shut.
MARY MAGDALENE
I was possessed by seven demons. That's enough for a civil war between your wrist and elbow. They had tormented me so long I began to think of myself in terms of them - as if the several demons were my component parts. And I had forgotten myself long ago.
MIRIAM
I thought my mother had finally gone mad, bringing our baby to the river. I was screaming, she told me later. She had to put her hand in my mouth almost to the wrist to quiet me, and I bit right through her hand, still screaming. Trust in God? Where was God, she told me later that I screamed. Where was God when Pharoah came for our babies?
DELILAH
I lay beside him in the night, this beautiful fool lying beside me with no fear. Naked, utterly exposed, and yet at peace - not one whit of the terror I had summoned the courage to face every day of my life. I watched his chest rise and fall, and I told myself that whatever the propaganda said, he was not the entire Israelite army. The chance that he killed them was still small. And I wished, as I looked at his beautiful face in the moonlight, wished that the chance was smaller.
LAPA
I love that Catherine stands so strong. That she sees the world so clearly. I love that she of all my children shows the light I saw insider her father to the world most clearly. I love watching her stand with my strength and practically and think at last, Jacopo, between us we got the balance magnificently right. But I can't help thinking what Giovanna would be doing now. How close she would be. Infinitely closer than Avignon. I can't help thinking of Giovanna. The girl I thought that Catherine would be.
PRISCA
Aquila and I knew our job was to be the still, quiet voice keeping everyone from bedlam. Paul was the voice crying out in the marketplace, calling from the rooftops, making trouble. That's what you need at the start, and the rebuke you need when things have gone south. But there's a place in between, where the building of the Church happens. That is where we worked.
MARTHA
If I had sent for Him sooner, He would have come in time. This is the thing I know, deep down in my bones, as I prepare my brother for burial. That this is my pride. And my foolish fear for the man who is also the Son of God. Because He is my friend, and I want to protect Him. Protect the man I know is protected by God. Protect the man I have seen do wonders. Protect the prophet who walked through a crowd of people who wanted to stone Him with no harm done. Protect the Messiah and Son of God from mere petty men.
RUTH
And when Naomi spoke of her God, it was as if He told her every day how much He loved her. Not in some great spectacle down at the temple sacrifice, not in a blaze of fiery glory, nor with the amorous intentions of the Greek stories, but just like her husband did, a small moment before she went to sleep, a quick reminder in the morning before she rose to go about her day.
WIDOW OF ZAREPHATH
I had kept it guarded as a kind of close secret, lest they beg for food I could not take from my son's mouth. Lest a more worthy of the town take Elijah in and leave us to starve. Now I shared my joy. My blessing. The abundance of grace and peace I had been shown, when I was willing to settle for so little.
DELILAH
I watched him chained to the pillars. I watched him pulling against the chains, his face serene as it had always been in prayer, but every muscle in his body struggling as he never had before. In pain, as he never was before, but fighting all the same. Fighting still, still in love with His God. The strain of a miracle written across his body, suddenly so exposed to my view. The pain that could not stop him from fighting or loving. God never did abandon him. And all I could say as the walls came tumbling down was, "Oh, my love, my love."
MARTHA
When I heard that He had come, that Jesus was here, I was off like a cat out of an oven. I didn't notice that I dropped five pots and scrambled over them in my haste. I didn't notice that I bowled little Rachel over as I bolted out the door. I didn't hear the shouts of surprise when I leapt over the low wall at the edge of our house. I don't believe half the stories I heard later. All I knew at the time was that He was here at last. My Jesus. My Lord and my friend. The man at whose feet I would find peace. The peace I had been too busied to be wise enough to seek before now.
MIRIAM
That's how it always felt to me, when I spoke for God and His people. Like the rest of the world becoming something of a blur, not quite so real. There was a quiet, like a numb disbelief and then a prayer answered anyway. And suddenly, I knew what I had to do, saw it so clearly, and, the greater miracle: I had the courage to do it. The world went away, and it all became still, and grace appeared in the least likely form imaginable. That's how it always felt, when God intervened.
NAOMI
Ruth was a woman built to love: built to bear any weight, shoulder any cross, and fight any battle to love. She spent her life as if in search of an object worthy of the fierceness of her love, and I was surprised as she could never seem to understand to find that it was me. And through me, my God. I knew that whatever came of it, I would not see the fire of that love crushed even if it meant continuing on - even if it meant tethering myself to this life. Because it was a fearsome and beautiful thing to behold - the way that Ruth loved when at last she truly loved with all of her soul.
WOMAN OF SAMARIA
I am shocked to realize now what a small measure of grace I would have settled for. What an insignificant blessing I would have cradled like salvation itself - which is what He came to offer me instead.
MARTHA
I didn't know how strong I was, how much I could bear, how deep my faith ran, until that moment. Until I stood before my God and could say it. You chose that my brother should die. I believe in You, I hope in You. You know better than I. Twice in my life, I have thought I had to make a place for death, teach my heart how to survive its ravages. Twice in my life, I have sat by a dead body and made myself accept it, made myself forge a self that could live without my brother or my Lord. And twice, You have shown me that it is unnecessary. It is only a parting. It is only a temporary parting. It is only the first blink of sorrow that presages the reunion to come.
NAOMI
The tears of relief but also shame - shame to think that I had so insisted that I was alone - that I had been abandoned by my God. Shame at the gentleness of the rebuke that was the plenty in her arms. The love of God, and family, that I had forgotten. The Love I should have seen and known for what it was that day on the road with Ruth. The love I had overlooked as something extraordinary about her alone, rather than an arm of the love of God.
MARY MAGDALENE
I was the woman he rescued from the tower. But He also taught me to fight the battles when He was gone.
MARY OF BETHANY
They will never understand, on the outside. Only those who have felt that moment, when the truth of what God has done for us overflow the bounds we use to keep it in check so that we might live our lives from day to day. Only they will understand why three hundred denarii is mere dust on His feet - that it was foolishness to do it not because the money was better spent on the poor but because but for the love of God we are all dust on His feet, however much men would covet us. It cannot look like anything but foolishness, because what God has done, in coming down, in taking human form, looks like a kind of foolishness to us. And the only way to answer divine foolish kindness is with human foolish thanksgiving, knowing that even that is made beautiful only by the love He pours into us.
RUTH
Strange little things we do because the mind of God is unfathomable. Strange little things that remind us He is watching over us.
JOANNA
The wind that came from heaven was deafening. The flame was blinding. It burned away everything that had held back my voice. I could not longer see or hear anything but the still, quiet voice in my heart. I scarcely knew when it filled my throat and poured from my lips and when I remained silent, transfixed with the love of God coursing through me as I had never known.
WOMAN OF SAMARIA
Come see a man who told me everything I ever did and loved me anyway. Come see a holy man who did not look down on my fallen state. Come see a prophet who knew my every fault and treated me only as a fellow child of God. Could this be the Messiah? Not a figure of fire and judgment and punishment and war. Not a purging of all that steps outside of narrow precepts. A man who extends love to all, even knowing every fault. Could this be the Messiah? Could we possibly be that lucky? Could we possibly be that blessed? Could we possibly be that loved?
ELIZABETH
Anything that would have kept him from the divine message he bears - that lights him up like a Christmas tree - I bore it for him.
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