Saint Catherine of Genoa

At the age of twelve, God granted her the gift of prayer to such a degree that from then on she experienced the delicious ardors of holy love, particularly when she meditated on the Passion of her Savior, which was the most ordinary object of her thoughts. But as experience made her realize that it was difficult to taste these sweetnesses of grace amidst the occupations and conversations of the world, she wished to become a nun, and even took some steps to be received into a monastery in the city of Genoa, called Our Lady of Graces, where one of her sisters was already a professed nun. But her parents, who wanted to marry her off, refused their consent. She therefore remained in the world against her will, and found herself obliged to marry a young nobleman nam ed Julian Ado Julien Adorno Husband of Catherine, initially dissolute then converted. rno, who was also Genoese and from a very famous family.

This husband served only to exercise her patience and make her suffer for ten years; for he treated her like a stranger and gave her no knowledge of his domestic affairs, and yet he dissipated all his wealth in useless expenses and reduced himself to poverty; he spoke to her harshly and had no gentleness or cordiality for her. During the first five years, she remained very secluded, going out only to hear Mass, and spending the rest of the time locked in her townhouse. The other five years, wishing to charm away her boredom, she received and paid visits to ladies of her station, which engaged her in the world a little more than she had intended, always, however, within the limits of honor and without exceeding the bounds of Christian wisdom and modesty.

But God, who desired her to reach a higher perfection, imperceptibly spread bitterness over all the things in which she believed she found pleasure: at the end of the ten years of her marriage, she fell into an extraordinary sorrow and sadness, which made her wish for and even ask God for a three-month illness that would consume her and put her in a state where she could see no one. This word escaped her more from a surprise of the senses overwhelmed by anguish and pain than from a deliberate will. However, her religious sister, having learned of what was happening, advised her to present herself the next day to the confessor of her monastery, a man of holy life and very enlightened in the guidance of souls. Catherine was hardly disposed that day to confess; however, to satisfy her sister, she came to throw herself at the feet of this confessor and ask for his blessing. But, scarcely was she on her knees at his confessional, than she received in her heart a wound of love for God that cannot be expressed, with a view so clear and so penetrating of His divine goodness and of her own miseries, that she almost fell to the ground. This light and this fire purified at the same time her entire affective part, and gave her such a great detachment from sin, from the world, and from every creature, that she cried out from the depths of her soul: "No, no more sin, no more world, nothing but God!" And, at that moment, if she had been mistress of a million people, she would have left them and trampled them underfoot for the glory of her Savior. As she could not speak, it happened fortunately that someone came to look for the confessor for some other person who was asking for him. He rose without having noticed anything; but he returned immediately, and then Catherine, whose holy wound was expanding more and more, was obliged to tell him, although with difficulty, that she was not herself: "I pray you, my father, to agree that I postpone this confession to another time." He consented, and our penitent, having withdrawn from the confessional, returned promptly to her house, where she gave freedom to this fire that was devouring her to pour itself out in sighs, groans, and complaints: "O Love!" she said, "O Love! is it possible that you have touched me and called me with such tenderness? Is it possible that you have revealed to me in an instant what I see and what I perceive?" Her contrition was so great for all the offenses she had committed, that if God had not sustained her miraculously, her heart would have broken, and she would have given up the ghost at that very hour. Our Lord, to increase this disposition, which was supremely pleasing to Him, showed Himself to her burdened with His cross, and shedding blood from all His wounds in such abundance that it seemed to her that the whole house appeared flooded with it. She knew at the same time that He was shedding this blood only for her sins; and this sight produced in her soul such a great increase of love and pain that she could not bear the effort. This is what made her repeat so often: "O Love! no more sin; ah! no more sin, divine Love!" She conceived such hatred against herself for having committed sin that she could no longer endure herself, and she was disposed to confess publicly all her offenses to draw upon herself the contempt and aversion of all men.

It was in this disposition that she made her general confession; although her sins, otherwise light, had already been consumed in this great furnace that ignited in her bowels at the moment she was touched by God, she did not fail to weep for them with a bitterness that cannot be conceived. Then she was successively drawn to the feet, the knees, the breast, and the sacred mouth of her crucified Spouse, and she received there impressions entirely divine which operated in her a perfect death and a holy transformation of her spirit. Being leaned upon His breast, she perceived there His sacred heart all burning with those celestial flames with which she herself was inflamed, and she felt herself as if plunged and engulfed in this brazier; which made her say: "I no longer have a soul, I no longer have a heart; but my soul and my heart are those of my most sweet Love." The kiss that she received from His mouth bound her so closely to Him that she was as if lost in His divinity, living no longer but by His life, operating no longer but by His spirit, and discerning no longer but as much as the light of grace made her discern.

Her conversion having taken place on March 22, the day after the fe ast of Saint saint Benoît Founder of the Benedictine Order, cited as a chronological reference point. Benedict, she was moved, three days later, on the feast of the Annunciation, by an ardent desire for Holy Communion. She therefore asked for permission to receive communion every day, and Our Lord inspired those who governed her to grant her this grace. He even made it known through several wonders that this devotion was pleasing to Him; for often, without Catherine having troubled herself, priests would call her to receive communion: and when she did not receive communion, she felt an incredible pain and an exhaustion of body and spirit that seemed destined to lead her to the grave. She was not troubled, however, when she was deprived of this sacred food to test her; but she abandoned herself entirely to the dispositions of divine Providence, especially since she always feared that she was not pure enough to participate so often in this mystery, which even the angels are not worthy to behold. She received unspeakable consolations there, which sometimes ravished her out of herself; but she said to her Spouse that she did not seek Him for His caresses and for His consolations, but by the sole desire to be perfectly united to Him. Her body also found relief in its infirmities; and, once when she was extremely ill, she was cured by this precious remedy which was given to her three days in a row. She envied no one in the world but the priests, because they had the power to consecrate, to touch, and to receive her divine Love every day, without anyone finding it amiss, and she would have willingly walked several leagues on foot so as not to be deprived of this great treasure; and, in fact, during an interdict of the city of Genoa, she would go every morning half a league to receive it, without feeling any weariness, because her love carried her and made the path seem very short to her. When she heard Mass, she was so absorbed in the contemplation of the greatness and goodness of her Beloved that she could not know where the priest was in the service; but at the time of communion, her love would awaken her and lead her to the holy table: which made her say sometimes that she would have well discerned, by a supernatural taste, a consecrated host from an unconsecrated one, just as one naturally discerns wine from water.

Our Lord, redoubling His favors toward her, willed that she should live, during Advent and Lent, only on the holy Host. Indeed, for twenty-three years, it was impossible for her, from Saint Martin's Day until Christmas, and from Quinquagesima until Easter, to retain anything in her stomach other than this manna from heaven. She took only, every day, a glass of water mixed with vinegar and salt, to moderate the great fire that devoured her and consumed her entrails. This conduct gave her, at the beginning, a little pain and fear, and she even did, at that time, everything she could to eat; she would sit at the table with her family, and she would not fail to take and swallow something to hide this singular privilege which could make her esteemed by the world; but she was forced to reject what she had taken; and if, out of the respect and submission she owed to the orders of her confessor, she sometimes did herself more violence to retain it, she would fall into a state so alarming that it was believed she was going to die. Moreover, during this prodigious abstinence, she was no weaker than before; on the contrary, she slept better and felt more agile and vigorous than in the times when she ate like others. And what is more surprising, far from remaining at rest, she applied herself with more assiduity to the arduous exercises of charity and mortification, without feeling any weariness.

As the spirit of Jesus Christ is a spirit of penance, no sooner was she filled with it than she turned to extraordinary austerities and rigors. She first declared an irreconcilable war on all her senses and resolved to deny them everything capable of giving them pleasure and to molest them in every way that holy self-hatred suggested to her. Indeed, when she saw that her flesh sought something, she immediately deprived it of it and made it suffer the very opposite. She wore prickly hairshirts and lay on bundles of thorns and bare boards, more capable of breaking her bones than of giving her rest. She ate no meat, nor new fruits, nor other foods that could flatter the taste or provide good nourishment, but only insipid things of little value. Nevertheless, as the great excess of her love had kindled in her bowels a fire that devoured her to the bones, she constantly suffered extreme hunger. Sight, hearing, and speech served her only for necessary uses, or to procure the glory of God and the salvation of her neighbor. As soon as she felt in herself any repugnance to a mortification, she undertook it with intrepid strength and courage, and did not leave it until she had overcome this opposition. Thus, if her heart recoiled at seeing putrefying corpses, pus coming from ulcers, or other objects repugnant to nature, she immediately brought her lips to them, and sometimes even put some in her mouth: which made her victorious over all her repugnances and perfectly mortified all her feelings. God granting her the grace to recognize her smallest faults and the slightest pursuits of nature and self-love that slipped into her actions, she was admirably prompt and exact in uprooting and destroying them. Every day she regularly performed six hours of mental prayer, in a very humbled posture, whatever difficulty her sensuality had with it and whatever effort it made to force her to give it less time. At other hours, one still found her most often so absorbed in God that she neither saw nor heard anything of what was happening around her.

After four years of such an austere life, or to speak more accurately of such a great death, she received from above a clear, pure, free, detached spirit, and so filled with the first and eternal truth that no creature had access to it. Even while at the sermon or Mass, she had no discernment of what struck her senses externally; but she was entirely plunged into an ineffable feeling of the Divinity. However, the Spirit of God regulated and governed her so much that He let her do nothing against decency; but, when it was necessary that she rise to receive communion, or to return, or that she answer those who asked for her, He restored her to herself, or made her do all these things very appropriately. Her love was so ardent that often she could hardly speak or converse with the world; so that she was forced to go and hide to give more freedom to this great fire. When one went to look for her, one found her lying on the ground, entirely out of herself, and her face covered with her two hands, but filled with delights so ineffable that there are none on earth comparable to them. Sometimes she did not hear when she was called, even if one shouted very loudly: at other times she heard, and at that very hour she would rise and attend to what was desired of her, having nothing in greater horror than singularity and attachment to her own conduct. When she returned from these ecstasies, her face was so rosy that she appeared like a cherub filled with light and like a seraph covered in flames.

In one of her transports, her love gave her three rules, or means of perfection, which she faithfully observed. The first, never to say I want, or I do not want; nor my or mine; but only do, or do not do this: our book, our habit. The second, never to excuse herself; but to be always the promptest and the most severe in accusing herself. The third, when saying the Lord's Prayer, to take as the foundation of her whole life this maxim: Fiat voluntas tua: "thy will be done," in our body, in our soul, in our riches, in our honor, in our parents, in our friends and in everything that touches us for good or for ill: and, when saying the Angelic Salutation, to attach herself mainly to the adorable name of Jesus, as to a powerful safeguard against all kinds of perils; and finally, in all the rest of the Holy Scripture, to take the word love as a support, because, by means of this love, she would always walk in the light and purity of heart, and would be filled with a heavenly strength and vigor, which would make the greatest pains of this life perfectly agreeable.

It would be an endless task to describe the various impressions given to her by this spirit of pure love, and the different states of action and suffering through which it led her. At first, she had such a desire to die, in order to go and enjoy her Beloved in peace, without fearing any further interruption or diminution of her love, that she looked upon death as the greatest happiness that could befall her; sometimes she called it cruel because it spared her and did not end her life soon enough; at other times, she called it sweet, beautiful, pleasant, charming, and favorable, because it was the one that would place her in possession of the sole object of her desires. But after two years of these transports, she entered into a death even more perfect and precious, to die or not to die, according to the disposition of Providence. She saw so distinctly her original nothingness, the general corruption of her nature by sin, and that being and goodness belong properly to God alone, that she was as if incapable of pride, presumption, and vainglory. She pronounced the word 'I' only with regret, persuading herself that it was too bold for a creature and a sinner; if it happened that she was obliged to pronounce it in some discourse because she could not speak otherwise, she immediately referred it internally to God, as to Him who is the source and foundation of all beings. Divine love filled and possessed her so perfectly that she no longer felt body, nor soul, nor spirit, nor will, nor light, nor operation; but she was entirely melted and transformed into this blessed passion. It was this that governed her, that led her everywhere, that applied her to what she had to do, and that made her act, without her being obliged to reflect upon it or to be troubled by it; and, as pure love moves toward God only for God, without attaching itself to what comes from God, she sought neither lights, nor consolations, nor sweetnesses, but God alone, without mixture and without medium. We read further in her life, which an Italian doctor has given to the public, and in the admirable writings that she herself composed on her own experiences, other marvelous traits of her perfect annihilation, her entirely celestial wisdom, her incomparable zeal, and her union of body and spirit with God. Souls called to supernatural states will be able to consult them, to know how far the ardor and impression of holy love can go.

This interior occupation, which never left her day or night, did not prevent her from dedicating herself with indefatigable charity to the relief of the poor and the sick. At the beginning of her conversion, she joined the Company of the Ladies of Mercy, and not content with regulating with them, in their assemblies, the alms that had to be distributed to these unfortunates, she went herself to visit and assist them in their homes, bringing them what the ladies had given them. She cleaned them with surprising patience and courage, without ever being repulsed by filth or stench. She even took their dirty linens and clothes full of grease and vermin home with her to clean them; when they were quite clean, she brought them back and began again to render them various services. Although she was often in the midst of these poor, changing them with her own hands and taking care of their rags, one never found a single vermin on her, God not permitting her charity to cause any prejudice to her cleanliness. Her solicitude did not extend only to the temporal; she also took particular care of the spiritual. She gave strong remonstrances to the poor while giving them alms, to urge them to make a holy use of their pains and miseries. She exhorted the sick to patience, disposed them to confession and communion, prepared them for death, and assisted them generously in that last hour, upon which the decision of eternity depends.

Her husband did not at first find these devotions and charities very agreeable; but she finally won him over so much that he himself devoted himself to piety, consented to live together only as brother and sister, and finally embraced the Third Order of Saint Francis, or of Penance, and mari Husband of Catherine, initially dissolute then converted. faithfully practiced its exercises, without, however, leaving his house. He was later afflicted with a cruel illness, which caused him violent pains and often threw him into great impatience. Catherine, seeing him on the decline of his life, feared that this impatience might put his salvation in danger: she therefore retired into the secret of her oratory, and, shedding many tears at the feet of her crucified Savior, she said to Him: 'Love, I ask You for this soul, I pray You to give it to me; it is up to You to do it, it is in Your hands.' After half an hour, she felt internally that she was heard; and in fact, returning at that very hour to the sick man's room, she found him completely changed and so perfectly resigned to the will of God that he was ready to suffer even more acute pains.

He died in this happy disposition, and our holy woman did not doubt that God had shown him mercy. After his death, some people told Catherine that she was delivered from a great servitude and that she had enough reason to be consoled, given the evils she endured from the bizarre and melancholy mood of such a husband; but she replied that she did not trouble herself about these evils, because she looked at everything in the order of the will of God, which makes evils appear as sweet and as pleasant as goods. She lost almost at the same time her brothers and sisters, among others that holy nun who had so happily contributed to her conversion and whom she loved tenderly; but her union with the good pleasure of God was so great that she was no more touched by it than if these persons had not belonged to her at all.

Being perfectly free, she consecrated herself forever to the service of the great hospital of Genoa, where the administrators, seeing her so charitable and so full of zeal and fervor, gave her the care of all things. One cannot express the diligence and solicitude with which she provided for all the needs of this great house. She never omitted anything that was her duty, and nothing was ever lacking to the poor or the sick through her fault. She kept such an exact account of t he considerable sums s grand hôpital de Gênes The primary site of Catherine's charitable service. he handled for the expenses of the hospital that one never found the slightest error, neither in the receipts nor in the expenses. But what is surprising, and must be admired by everyone, is that these occupations, capable of distracting the most eminent souls and those most united to God, did not diminish anything of her recollection or of that great fire of divine love with which she was all ablaze. She was, in the midst of so many affairs, in the same taste for God, in the same death to herself, in the same passive state, and in the same suspension of her activity and her natural operations, as when she lived retired and solitary; the Holy Spirit joining in her exterior action with the pure dependence of her movement and her impression.

She was so disinterested in the management of this hospital that she never wanted to receive any reward for her living, however minimal it might be; but for the little that was necessary for her, she drew it from the property that remained to her after the dissipation her husband had made of her dowry and the inheritances that were to serve as her dower. Her generosity even went so far as to serve and embrace the sick who were infected with the plague and all kinds of contagious diseases: one day when she perceived a lady of the Third Order of Saint Francis, who was drawing to her end and making great efforts to pronounce the adorable name of Jesus, she conceived so much joy that, although she had a pestilential fever, she embraced her and kissed her mouth with much affection. She caught the illness through this kiss, and she thought she would die of it; but God restored her health to employ it with new fervor in the service of the suffering members of His son Jesus Christ.

Nine years before her death, she fell into another illness that lasted until her final breath. One cannot imagine the evils and pains that this visitation from heaven caused her; she was often at death's door, was nothing but skin and bones, and suffered from convulsions that made those who saw her shudder, and which forced her herself to cry out; yet no one could say what her ailment was. Remedies were of no use to her, and sometimes, in a week, she did not eat what would have been necessary for another for a single meal. The most skilled doctors of France and Italy saw her, and all judged that this illness did not come from a natural principle, but from a divine operation. Indeed, the true source was this devouring fire of holy love by which she was consumed. Thus, in the course of time, the area of her chest, above the heart, became yellow like saffron, and, if it happened that one brought a burning coal or a lit candle near her flesh, she felt no burn, because, as Saint Augustine says, speaking of Saint Lawrence, the fire that burned her within was stronger and more violent than that which roasted his limbs. In this state, she did not cease to enjoy in the depths of her heart an unspeakable joy and consolation; so that one saw in her the union of paradise and purgatory; her soul was in a spiritual paradise through the abundance of delights with which she was intoxicated; her body was in purgatory through the excess of torments in which it was plunged. She said things so beautiful and so elevated about divine love and the perfections of God, that everyone was charmed by them; persons of great virtue, and very enlightened in the ways of God, came expressly from far away to visit her and enjoy for some time the happiness of her conversation, and did not leave her except with astonishment and while praising the divine Goodness for the wonders it worked in her. The desire for communion never left her; she was insatiable for this bread of heaven; and in the extremity of her ills, her only relief was to be sated with it. Finally, she passed in the esteem of everyone for a soul entirely celestial, and no one doubted that she had a share in that union of love which makes the blessed consummation of beatitude.

In the last year of her life, it was shown to her that she must enter into a martyrdom even greater than that which she had endured until then; it was a supernatural operation, by which her spirit, living no longer but in God and of God, applied itself to making her nature die entirely, to stripping it of all that it had of its own, and to beginning to spiritualize it to make it perfectly conformable to His tastes and inclinations. One cannot describe the agonies and tortures that the lower part suffered through this operation; for there is nothing more hard and unbearable for it than to be deprived of its natural and sensual ways of acting, and to be drawn out of its own activity; but Catherine sustained this effort with a marvelous firmness, and such a transformation took place within her, that her flesh became in agreement with her spirit, and that she took on, so to speak, the sentiments, desires, and affections of the higher part.

Before her death, she was made to suffer, in her soul and in her body, the interior and exterior pains of Our Lord Jesus Christ crucified: angels appeared to her and assured her of her happiness. The demon also had the power to show himself to her, but she chased him away shamefully, because he has no hold on a soul that lives only by pure love. Finally, she saw a spark of the glory of paradise, which further increased this brazier that had been burning for so many years in her bowels. The author of her life has given an account of all that happened to her in the last month of her illness; but it suffices to say that she died in the same flames in which she had lived, and that she was drawn from this mortal life perfectly purified, to go immediately to enjoy Him whom she had so perfectly loved. It was on the day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14, 1510. Several people had a revelation of her glory; her doctor, among others, who was sleeping at the hour of her death, awoke with a start and heard her voice saying to him: "Goodbye, I am leaving now for heaven."

She is represented holding in her hand a heart pierced by an arrow.

## CULT AND RELICS. — WRITINGS.

As soon as the death of Saint Catherine was known, crowds rushed to the hospital church to venerate the holy body that was exposed there, and healings began to occur in great numbers. The holy body, enclosed in a wooden coffin, was buried in the church of the great hospital: it was placed near a wall, under which there was an aqueduct that had not been observed. This burial being only transitory, the holy body remained there for only eighteen months, at the end of which it was removed and found, despite the humidity of the place, in a perfect state of preservation. To satisfy public devotion, it was left exposed for eight days, after which it was placed in a chapel protected by a grille that allowed it to be seen by those who came to visit it. The holy body was then enclosed in a marble sepulcher that had been erected quite close to the high altar. Soon, a crowd of strangers was seen arriving from all parts; and the continuous circulation around the tomb becoming more noisy and inconvenient day by day, it was necessary to transport the tomb to a lower part of the church where it remained until 1593. At that time, a new tomb was built in a higher place where the holy body was transported and found in a state of perfect incorruptibility.

In 1642, the body, still preserved in its miraculous integrity, was transferred into a reliquary of an elegant shape and enriched with gilded ornaments. In 1692, it was removed, with the permission of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, from this wooden reliquary, and deposited in a silver ark, adorned with crystals, so that it would be visible to everyone. Finally, in 1708, the clothes that covered it falling into tatters, it was taken out, with the permission of Pope Clement XI, on the 23rd of the month of August. It was stripped of its old clothes which were replaced by more suitable garments, and it was put back into its reliquary, where it still rests today, without any mark of corruption.

Saint Catherine was placed, by word of mouth, among the Blessed, by Pope Julius II. In 1636, Pope Urban VIII had an inquiry made into her virtues and miracles in general. The cause remained pending until the year 1670. Then it was resumed by order of Pope Clement X, and, in 1675, it was decreed that the Sacred Congregation approved everything that had been done previously. This decree was issued on March 30 and confirmed on April 6 of the same year by the Pope. Her writings were approved by Pope Innocent XI, on June 14, 1676. After a large number of miracles performed through her intercession, Clement XII canonized her solemnly in 1727, and Benedict XIV i nserted her Clément XII Pope who canonized Catherine in 1727. name into the martyrology, under March 22.

We have from Saint Catherine of Genoa a remarkable treatise on Purgato ry, and Di Purgatoire A major mystical work by the saint. alogues bet ween the Dialogues Spiritual writings in the form of dialogues. soul and the body, self-love and the spirit, humanity and God. These dialogues are nothing other than the voice of the flesh which seeks to draw the soul away from the interior life, and the voice of the spirit which struggles against it and wishes to follow the divine attraction. The first author of this life was an Italia n doctor named Jacques Glanay The saint's first Italian biographer. Jacques Glanay, who made use of the memoirs of those who had known the blessed Catherine. The Carthusians of Bourg-Pontaine translated it into French at the beginning of the 18th century. — Cf. Acta Sanctorum; Vie de sainte Catherine de Gênes, by the Abbé P..., Vicar General of Évreux.