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.