NAME: LORENSIUS NGGOU

NUMBER: 14334

1. To describe Catherine of Siena as an apostle of freedom is to describe the very core of her
message and mission. Discuss

ANSWER: THE THREE REMARKABLE FREEDOMS

T317: To Queen of Naples: THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE FROM FALSEHOOD. Giving you
light in God’s knowledge. In this truth you will be free. Here we see the Gospel source of Catherine’s
vision. And her Dominican spirituality. Congar said a certain truth and liberality. She attached herself
to an order with the motto VERITAS. She lived under truth. Also to Praise, to Bless, to Preach
(laudare, benedice, predicare) was also attached to the Order. A papal legate who met the early friars
was shocked at this unheard of type of religious order, the friars. The Legate opened up a Missal in the
name of the Lord and the first thing he read was to Praise, to Bless, to Preach as part of a preface. The
legate took this as enough evidence the movement was from God. A canonical, priestly and apostolic
spirituality. Laudare, benedice, predicare in relation to Catherine shows that the phrase is not just for
the friars. To praise in the office, to bless in all ones conversations and to preach to people and clergy.
Catherine was focused principally on FREEDOM FOR not just freedom from. Dialogue 144 does
speak of things people need to be liberated from: disordered appetite, gossip, complaining, perverse
desire etc. Even here though freedom from is not the key. “Nevertheless the life and freedom and
energy of the five senses are great gifts of God!” They require purification but never suppression.
Their purpose is to offer opportunity for greatness and fullness of life: D144: “I gave your eyes to look
at the sky and the beauty of creation and my mysteries through me. Your ears to listen to the needs of
your neighbours. Your hands to serve your neighbours.”

FREEDOM FOR WORSHIP OF GOD. FREEDOM FOR BLESSING OTHERS (helping the broken).
FREEDOM FOR PREACHING.

FREEDOM FOR PRAISE: The opportunity to pray the office was exclusively for the religious.
Catherine wanted this, not a poor second best. She was determined to read in order to recite the praises
of God and the Office. At first she made little progress. One morning she bowed down in prayer and
asked God to teach her Himself if it be His will. Her prayer was answered and soon she could read off
words with great rapidity and would look out for books of the Office. Raymond said Jesus would walk
up and down with her sometimes saying the psalms and she would say Glory be to the Father, to you
and to the Holy Spirit.

FREEDOM FOR BLESSING OTHERS: We owe God glory and praise in Love for His name. Praise
Him and serve others. They are not in opposition. Can we love in the extraordinary way God loves us?
He has no need for our human love. Cannot use the Office as an excuse not to help others. God the
Father nails this by saying these people just seek their own Spiritual pleasure. They are decieved! They
are held fast by the chain of old customs. Dialogue 69. Told someone to respond to whatever you feel

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called to that doesn't come for yourself. Our principal and foundation is charity for God and
neighbour. Gods honour and love for your neighbors. T316.

FREEDOM FOR PRAISE: Catches fire in praise. “Let our hearts explode wide open as we
contemplate a flame and fire of love so great that God has engrafted Himself into us” Letter T226v2.
Biggest source of wisdom is the Cross and mystery of Redemption: “Oh mad lover it was not enough
for you to take our flesh but you had to die for us.” Madness and magnanimity of His love. Blood for
Catherine meant absolute love, redemption. “My dearest child you were the stone that held me, you
and everyone else, my love for you nothing else could have held me there” T223v2. Catherine is
emboldened by the sheer madness of this love. She kept saying it was mad. Incarnation and
redemption are the great themes. Others: unknowability of God, self-knowledge. “You paid the price
of your blood when you rescued us from slavery to sin” Prayer 1, 1376, in Ecstasy at Avignon. Her
friends said she remained silent, motionless, absorbed in the form of a Cross for an hour or so and she
said after an hour or so “praise to God now and always”. After Mass in Sienna the brother who wanted
to close the Church kicked her down the steps of the Church: she was bruised and sore on awaking.
Prayer is absolute gift. It is the Holy Spirit praying in and through us. So Catherine says “do yourself
give yourself thanks by giving me the ability to praise”. STA: it is fitting to praise God by God: letting
God in you praise God (commentary on Ps39). St Raymond said that often in prayer she could be
heard praising the Lord. Her body was frequently lifted in ecstasy (Vita 184). However the common
struggles of us all in prayer were known to her and she knew the critical importance of
PERSEVERANCE: Karl Hutchins Fr Paul’s spiritual Master: tell me the two great laws… Ok. 2 great
laws: 1) Pray. 2) Keep at it. The Father teaches her in the dialogue: Simple dogged perseverance in
prayer, waiting on God with a lively faith is the only way to attain to genuine and free love. You must
not break away for any reason! The devil comes when you are at prayer with many struggles and
annoyances to make you weary of holy prayer. But prayer is a weapon with which you can defend
yourself, with the light of holy faith. Catherine exhorts her young nun niece to keep praying: “we
shouldn’t abandon prayer if we experience many different sorts of struggle in prayer and spiritual
darkness and confusion. We must stand firm with courage and perseverance”. Despite all the
supernatural occurrences she insists on the ordinary path of Faith and Love. She keeps things plain,
direct and simple when writing to friends. “Light seems to be failing us, dazzled as we are by our
consolations and revelations, things that do not let us know the truth properly although we may be
acting in good faith” .She asks us to focus our attention on Christ and the liberating objectivity of his
teaching. It is the astonishing sacrificial love of Christ Jesus that is the bridge, not our subjective
personal mystical experience. LIBERATING OBJECTIVITY OF THE CROSS. “The Jews demand
signs and the Jews search for wisdom but we preach Christ crucified!” St Paul. Tonier says self-
knowledge is not psychological but theological that allows us to grasp our identity as creatures, sons
and daughters of God. From objective revelation received with faith. We do not fixate on our own
sinfulness but are impelled towards others, from self to the Kingdom, to neighbour and God. AN
EXODUS OUT OF THE WORLD OF THE SELF. Prayer 19 is an example of the objective element
in Catherine:Catherine asks when did it become possible for me to reach up to your charity in my
lowliness? The great and saving event of the Incarnation! When the great doctor came into the world!

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The fire hidden under our ashes came to show itself completely and generously by splitting itself open
on the Cross. FOR CATHERINE TO PRAY YOU NEED TO CONTEMPLATE THE
INCARNATION AND THE CROSS: whatever your experiences this is the key, how we gaze into the
fire. WHAT REDEEMED US FOR HER WAS NOT THE SUFFERING, BUT THE FIRE OF LOVE
THAT WAS BEHIND BEING WILLING TO SUFFER FOR OUR SAKE.Her refreshment is the
knowledge of incarnation and redemption, the bridge, the objective astonishing sacrificial love of
Christ Jesus. Fr Paul recommends the Letters because Catherine moved amongst very weak and
broken sinners. So she includes in her letters the voices of those who think they just can’t do it. She
says yes you can and God is doing a work in you now, you just can’t see it now. She says simply
contemplate the Cross to hate vice and begin virtue. We have access to God because of the Cross. You
cannot say you have no access because you are the soil in which it is planted. His love for us held Him
there. V1p300 Letters: “Father forgive them”… not only does He forgive them He makes excuses for
them! A gentle Lamb! Never a complaint! It would have been impossible for the nails to hold Him
was it not for the bond of charity! The baptism of blood and fire. “So tender and gracious is our God
that we are able to receive the lavish flow of Divine Mercy. The New Law of the Gospel is founded on
love and mercy. It seems he does not want to remember the offences we commit against Him. He does
not condemn us for eternity but wants always to be merciful.” “the darkness of sin made us unable to
lift up our lowly affection. You used a bait that caught us and the devil by thus making yourself small.
By doing thus you made us great.” “For us you have made a cavern in your open side where we might
have a refuge…. There we have found the bath where we have washed our souls face clean in the face
of sin.”

FREEDOM TO BLESS:To Bless in all ones conversations (Thomas Agni). Marvellous

encouragement in her communications to people. “We need Christ’s blood” which for Catherine is
God’s unconditional love! In this blood we will discover the confidence we need to throw off fear!
The love the soul sees that God has for her she sees in others now too. The love of neighbour is not
just something added on. In the living faith experience, of receiving Gods love and loving Him back,
you automatically drawn to love and forgive your neighbour. Nothing can compare with the human
soul (Life 151). Her radical concern for the salvation of others led to her spending lots of time with
notorious sinners. Raymond criticised her for this so she let him in on her “little secret” where she was
lifted up to heaven. The Lord said no you must go back. After this her only consolation was helping
sinners get to heaven. Merton says in religious life there is an eternal conflict between rigid
authoritarian ascetic who then feels qualified to call down curses on the world. Vs the compassionate
Zosima one who calls down blessings upon it. Catherine clearly calls down blessing! Dialogue 13 she
appeals to God’s love and mercy with such boldness. Catherine had correspondence with William an
English ascetic: she upbraids him for criticism and rash judgement. She tells him off for besmirching
the calling. Mortifying the body is not the aim but pure love! Fr Paul on Mother Teresa: the Conveto
sat around her in her last year: she said we must all stop complaining and lamenting all the time! We
are not seeing deeper. Catherine says those who get it right don’t make themselves judges but rejoice
in every situation, every form of living. She told another not to be investigators and judges! She loved
truth and proclaiming it but knew how hurtfult hat could be with cordiality of delivery, compassion.

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“Let the truth be your delight and always be your delight. Proclaim it with a certain congeniality.
Putting the shortcoming of the others on your own shoulders. If in the past you haven’t done this as
well as you should let’s do better in the future.” Letter to Frate Felice). The source of this ability to
bless was her CONTEMPLATIVE COURAGE: BEING WILLING TO STAND IN ALL HER
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS BEFORE HIM.She wanted others to be like this. Not to be narrow
and constricted! But to open up to those most stricken and in need of mercy! Unless a soul raises itself
up and opens its eye to focus on the boundless love of God for the creature: you will never attain to
greatness of soul without this. Narrow and constricted = no room for self or neighbour. The way to
make room for self is to lift our eyes to God – then we will be able to bear with ourselves and love
others: St Therese too realized this gift in prayer of being able to bear with self before she was perfect.
A headstrong macho womaniser stormed off to meet her on a challenge! She met him with such
compassion and mercy (like she was expecting me) that he was moved… she sent him off to
confession then to come back. It wasn’t instant… when she was around he was fine. When she left he
went away again! She would go search for him and bring him back into the group. Lt45 Vol 1 Italian:
come back, acknowledge your guilt but in light of God’s love.
To the wayward son: “open the eye of your mind… look up from the darkness with self-knowledge
and hope in God’s goodness… well may I call you dear because you have cost me so much!” He
immediately went to see her. Catherine was enamoured with human nature, she is the saint of our
humanity, she loves the rational creature. A Summa on Fire! An ecstasy of enthusiasm. What
happened to Francesco Malavolte? His wife and children died. Catherine had prophesised he would be
bound by a yoke he could not escape from. Then Catherine appeared to him from heaven and said
“rise negligent that you are and sleep no more… still following the vanities of the world… go to Mt
Olivet Monastery (Sienna) and there you shall be received… the yolk you would never be able to
escape from... if you do not do what I instruct you will fall into great dangers. Then I was filled with a
miraculous desire to join the order. Catherine then appeared to a holy hermit near Sienna to tell him
the same and he was then accepted into the monastery.” He left in 1410 to become a Black
Benedictine.

FREEDOM TO PREACH:How did a young uneducated lay woman end up speaking with such
authority, usually reserved to ordained men? It came as a great surprise to her! She was a
contemplative but one day Christ appeared to her and said you must now begin to bear fruit, not only
in your own soul but for others as well. Christ said “I have laid down two commandments, two feet,
two wings.” Christ also reveals an early desire of Catherine to preach that was so great she had
planned to dress as a man to preach in foreign climes. “Why are you sad now that I am calling you to
this”. She was somewhat heartened but asked the Lord “how can this be done by one so feeble and a
woman? And propriety forbids one to mix so freely with men.” She was a woman of her own time.
She told a queen to be strong and she would become a virile man (L312). She said to three widows at
Naples: “be manly and constant”. Widespread misogynist views of the time. When she was worried
about all this Christ said L121(p116): “Was it not I who created the human race, male and female?
With me there is no longer male and female and upper class and lower class. All are equal now. My
justice needs to put the learned back in their place” L122. Two centuries later St Teresa of Avila found

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that “a thousand persecutions would rain down on her head” for speaking as a woman. The Lord
would not have it, tell them not to look at just one part of scripture. Catherine at one point makes
reference to that loving Apostle Magdalene, the drunken on love preacher who preached in Marseille.

4. St. Catherine’s teaching on self-knowledge places too much emphasis on the self, and
ultimately distracts from the need to focus on the mission of the Church.

ANSWER:SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN GOD ACCORDING TO ST CATHERINE:T343: Those who

are humble and simple want only to know themselves and God’s eternal will, the fire of His charity.
Many people without humility and effort to know themselves want to peer into holy scripture for
special knowledge – with dull eye! With faithlessness. From life they derive death and from the light
darkness. They have wanted to climb before descending. The way up is the way down (John of the
Cross) – the answer is in the fertile valley. How ignominious our life is until we get to know
ourselves! In the depths of the well of true humility we come to contemplate these stars of God’s
mysteries. Faithfull people throw themselves to the ground and then God raises them high. They gaze
into the mirror of continual prayer constantly looking at themselves in God’s truth, the incense of
humble prayer. Know thyself. Fides et Ratio 1: “the more human beings know reality the more they
know themselves… the admonition know thyself… minimum norm…”

Father in Dialogue 4: “Never leave the knowledge of yourself”. Held in conjunction with “Open the
eye of your mind and look within me”: Dialogue 13. “Gaze into the gentle mirror of God” D13. TO
experience that I have great dignity and am beautiful in the eyes of God. The saving and demanding
knowledge of self in God. Not all delight though: a touch adventure, a night of self-knowledge T365.
“Without that humble purifying knowledge… we will be enslaved by pride, presumption, worldly
pleasure. But if instead we enter willingly into that self-knowledge we will have a new dawn”. A
purifying and demanding night.Writingto Maconi: “you will never be truly captured without self-
knowledge, living between day and night by coming to know yourself in God.” “These virtues have
their wellspring in self-knowledge” (patience, perseverance, fortitude) T335. Facing up to the reality
about oneself, coming to the realisation I need grace: FACING UP TO THE REALITY OF YOUR
WEAKNESS, SINS – ONLY THEN IN LIGHT OF THAT HUMBLE KNOWLEDGE CAN ONE
BEGIN THE PROCESS OF ATTAINING THE VIRTUES. Acknowledging the fool that one is!!!
Then you begin to receive the virtues, naked in the presence of God. The journey from bondage to
freedom, vice to virtue, if to prove successful must take care not to avoid the challenge of true self-
knowledge. The journey will involve confrontation with the shadow side of oneself. Young
(psychologist) compared with Catherine: brings Catherine into focus, not the same. You have to face
“the dark of self-knowledge” own shadow, T184. HaroldBloom said he was terrified of sleepless
nights and solitary days – the modern condition – how to bear with oneself. For Catherine corruption
is only one aspect of the human being and not the most important! She looks through and beyond the
sin to the beauty and dignity of each individual (think of the look on a friends face when he saw the
addicts with me ‘you do know they are on drugs don’t you). T265 she confronts her own “lack on
charity” T344 and her “stunted life”. Prayer 1 in Knofke: “I am a foolish and wretched creature while
you are supreme and eternal goodness… I am darkness and you are light… [using own weakness as

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springboard to God’s wonder].” Self-knowledge in action. Prayer 12: “you tell me to gaze into you
and you want me to come to know myself, your greatness in my own smallness…. Oh fire ever
blazing the soul who comes to know self in you finds your greatness in all things.” Once you know
yourself in Him you find your perspective totally changes, seeing His power and wisdom and mercy in
all things. T73: against the darkness of discouragement – see your problems in the light of the
infiniteness goodness of God. The devil wants you to just dwell in your past sinfulness and current
weakness. He comes in with discouragement because this is a threshold of great progress in the
spiritual life. Never hold conference with the devil! You have to let God bring you down and lift you
up. Not beat yourself up or take a perverse pride in being the chief of sinners! “vanity my little man
you are nothing of the kind” – guardian angel to poet in a swoon of thinking he was worst of sinners.
Lift gaze beyond self. In painful self-knowledge prayer Catherine discovers AS ONE MADE IN THE
IMAGE OF GOD SHE IS FIRE. God wants us to know this, us in Him, to experience our true dignity.
This is why the saints can get on with serving others, they don’t need to be affirmed by the world. “In
the mirror T343 of continual prayer however she continues to discover faults and weakness”. “The
soul in true self-knowledge of the gentle mirror of God sees the self-more clearly” D13. Sweet and
bitter experience. “a sweet bitterness was both heightened and mellowed” D13. The loving kindness
and mercy of the Father is heightened. Hatred and T24 contempt of sin. She contrasts loving self
reasonably (authentic) with false self-love T223. She also writes about the dangers of cold self-hate.
Neri de Palorezzi the poet was tempted to malaise and confusion, self-doubt and grim self-
interrogation, a deep and wounding self-hatred. Catherine wanted this burnt up in the love of God. Not
true self-knowledge. “Isn’t God more ready to forgive then we are to sin? And isn’t He our doctor and
we the sick ones? Doesn’t he consider spiritual discouragement worse than any other sin?” Confusion
has the quality of self-hated, making us unbearable even to ourselves! A leprosy inspired by the devil.
It keeps you in continual torment. “With living faith and holy desire in Christ’s blood let the devil of
discouragement, confusion, be banished… gentle Jesus, Jesus love.”Writing to Sour Constanza she
speaks of the darkness of unwarranted despondency that often enters the soul under the guise of a
stupid exaggerated false humility. T73: “I mean when notions come into the heart that says you are in
a state of damnation”. St Therese was a genius who probably saw all the faults of those around her
with great clarity. Sometimes things slipped out: she is like an alarm clock that needs to be wound up
every 5 minutes! She had to confront and confess this pride that she couldn’t get beyond: then she
turns completely to God and is transformed. “The devils aim is to infest the mind with shadows,
seeking to undermine”. The answer is to expose the mind and heart to the light of God’s compassion.
Contemplation of this. Prayer 15: “If we open the eye of the understanding we know you, the light
stands at the souls gate. As soon as it is opened. The soul has to have a will to know. Then you flood
her. Then you dispel the darkness and give her light. Leaving the fire of your charity. A free heart.
Then she is truly compassionate to herself. In all things she exercises compassion because she sees
how wisely you have worked all things”. THE LIGHT STANDS AT THE SOULS GATE – WILL
NOT COME IN UNTIL THE SOUL OPENS THE EYE OF ITS UNDERSTANDING. GOD WAITS.
At the Annunciation God waits for Marys reply P18. Cell, fountain, well, peaceful sea, full circle and
house images used when she speaks of self-knowledge. Cell is most important. D1: accustomed to
dwell in the cell of self-knoweldge. T49: two rooms in 1: 1) Joyful knowledge of being loved by God.

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2) Knowledge of what a wretch you are. Both need to be inhabited at the same time to avoid confusion
2) or presumption 1). To Sour Constanza: act like when you go to your cell: you need your cell (basic
knowledge of self) – but your cell isn’t all you need. The bed represents absolute security in the
knowledge of being loved by God. “Get into the bed”. Let your soul grow fat on the goodness of God.
In this bed there is food, table and waiter. The Father is table, Son food, the Holy Spirit is waiter. YOU
NEED BOTH ROOMS TO LIVE IN.For love of Christ Crucified stay in this bed. The primacy of
acceptance. All our good works are secondary. Accepting what has already been done for you and that
you are loved must be first. Otherwise you will be unhappy, tense and unfulfilled. The fountain: at this
fountain T164 you will discover your souls dignity. We see neither our dignity not defects unless we
go look at ourselves in the still sea of the divine essence. T226. “Let us go then to the fountain of
God’s sweet goodness. In 1375 she had a powerful experience of the sea: “I have just rediscovered the
sea T146”. Stunned by the great beauty of it and began to refer to God as Mare Pacifico. The Well:
likened to inner core of self to deep clear water. To attain to the depth, the source, we have to confront
the muddied soil of our misery T41. Full Circle: imagine a circle traced on the ground, with a tree at
the centre that finds its nourishment in the earth. Were it uprooted it would die. It is necessary that the
fruit of this tree should issue from the circle of true self-knowledge D10. Our most fundamental task
then is to move from knowledge of God to knowledge of self and back to knowledge of God. Should
they become disconnected everything would end in confusion. The plane earth of self-knowledge is of
infinite expanse and has no beginning or end. D10 Trees living only for love. T113: we are a tree of
love because we are made for love. She then introduces freedom. God has given this tree a worker to
tend it – free choice. Free choice plants the tree in the soil of true humility. The enclosed garden of
self-knowledge. The house: self-knowledge is the hinge that swings open the door of freedom from the
bondage of fear and sin into new life. The disciples shut themselves up at home in watching and
continual prayer. The witness and example of them in the locking into the house of self-knowledge is
the task for all of us now. We too must shut ourselves up at home in watching and prayer. So those
who have come to love their Father must enter and shut themselves up in the house of self-knowledge.
T351: I trust that this sweet fire of the Holy Spirit will teach us – how we must dwell in the house of
self-knowledge. T188. D74: the movement from self-knowledge to new focus on the needs of others –
frees to go out of the house with the divine fire to do the mission without fear of tyrants. THE HEART
OF IT ALL IS TO ACCEPT THAT I AM LOVED. The really holy ones Fr Paul met rejoiced that
they were nothing and this was a painful path to get there. Until you have this real true extreme
humility you will know just how pathetic you have been and how tainted all your actions – the bravery
to stand in the fire where once you discover a fault you turn to God. Sister Wendy Beckett: God is fire
and when He seizes hold of me my filth crackles! Purification! Letting God deal with all the reality of
my black filth. “You are she who is not. I am He who is”.
Life of Raymond 10 p85 in Kearns: I am who is. You are who is not. Catherine sees this as a betrothal
pledge: she understands it as the royal road to fullness of grace – having beatitude in her grasp if she
can grasp it. She is aware of being totally dependent on God. At the core the strange words are a
revelation of Love from God. “In holy self-knowledge when we see we were loved before we came
into existence” God had the idea of each one of us and fell in love with it and was compelled to create
us from that loved idea T304. Loved into existence. A hidden joyous meaning to “you are she who is

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not.” Although tiny for Raymond it has meaning without measure Life 93. The revelation of a
bounteous and gracious Lord who loved us before ever making us L96. T16: “I have no doubt that if
you turn your understandings eye to look at self and realize you are not you will realize with what
blazing love you will realize your being has been given to you and your heart and affection will not be
able to withstand exploding”. Chesterton: “there is at the back of all our lives an abyss of light more
blinding and unfathomable than any darkness, the bliss of actuality… the fundamental fact of being….
Under all our grumblings there is a gratitude.” The thought she might not have been and realization
that she is causes the ecstatic shock.
Is Raymond’s life an accurate portrayal? We hear a spate of wonders, stupendous interior revelations
L181. Reports of appearances of Saints: Paul, Mary Magdalene, Dominic, St Thomas. Levitations.
Visions. Exchange of Hearts. Fr Paul knows someone who has similar experiences: saints, exchange of
hearts, revelations. Raymond stuck to a hagiographic formula to advance the cause of Catherine and
her causes. Some scholars thus ask if it is history or propaganda, overpainted? Raymond remains a
privileged witness. Was remarkable for the care he took with sources, solicitude for veracity.
Catherine in her letters is very down to earth, exhorting people to focus on love! Not on extreme
fasting and such. All the mystics are like this. But she told her spiritual director these things she
experienced. The witnesses at the canonisation confirmed the miracles and levitation.

The Mystic of Fire: the utter and complete transcendence of God. Prayer 14. “Ineffable God” P1 & 2.
Catherine finds herself stunned by the unutterable mystery of God. P23 “My memory cannot
comprehend you.”. D134: Ineffable fire, mysterious love.” “I’m not writing to you about what God has
done or is doing because there is no language or pen up to the task” T226. Raymond: Our Lord so
fanned the flame of love… she found L178 it impossible to express… sometimes she would say in
broken whispers what was happening in ecstasy”. Would sometimes repeat over and over “I have seen
the hidden things of God.” This experience of being wrapped in God only comes at the highest stage
of perfection in this life, those willing to go through the fires of purification: there is no mysticism
without the Cross, no love without sacrifice. Those who follow the lamb wherever he leads are like
burning coals in the fire, they have become D78 completely set alight in me (Father) one with me and
I with them. The path to this kind of union: Not the slow journey of a self-focused meditation! No,
they run in virtue along the bridge of Christ Crucified!The union is composed of love and hope. And
arrive at the gate with their spirits lifted up to me D79. Only then can the serene, unimaginable joy of
union be achieved. Perfect union. Lightness of Spirit lifts up the body D79. Impact on Understanding
(to know), Memory (to keep you in mind) and Will (to love you more than anything else) the three
powers of the soul: “Thanks to you that you have fashioned us with these gracious powers in our
soul.” Inevitably these faculties T319 ccome under attack in our frailty. But in union they are free.
Memory full of nothing but me. Understanding rests in truth. Will rests D79 in that truth. The
transformed faculties D79 impact the body too: Father: when these powers are united all together the
body loses its feeling, the eye sees without seeing, the ear without hearing, the hand touches without
touching… all the members are busied D79 with the bond and feeling of love. There are several
passages like this, but more common in the dialogue is passages to achieve the union rather than the
union itself. It’s the same in John of the Cross. The mystics are concerned to help us at the lower

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levels to get moving! In the Dialogue there is an extended passage on the Eucharist, the Father to her
on this sacrament D111: (p209): “open wide your mind’s eye and look into the abyss of my charity…
all your eye sees is this white bit of bread… your dull bodily senses deceived… but the souls
sensitivity cannot be unless dulled by infidelity… mind’s eye, pupil of holy faith… the spiritual must
be the principle vision… how is this sacrament touched? With the hand of love, which touches through
faith. Tasted with the spiritual sense of holy desire.”There is no path to union without self-knowledge
for Catherine and she relies on the image of fire most often: T154: the extravagant fire of God’s
charity – where the darkness of selfish love will be got rid of. Don’t stop throwing wood on holy
desire I mean self-knowledge T219. All through her life she felt the need to return to the theme of self-
knowledge: T141: “Let’s not put off any longer our move into this holy dwelling of self-knowledge…
God’s boundless infinite goodness is there”.