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.