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.