Session 13: "Spend Your Life for the Church" — Catherine and Active Mysticism

Session 13 — St. Catherine of Siena

"Spend Your Life for the Church" — Catherine and Active Mysticism

Opening Prayer

LEADER: Let us begin by asking the Holy Spirit to be with us tonight.

ALL: Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love.

LEADER: Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created.

ALL: And you shall renew the face of the earth.

LEADER: O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit did instruct the hearts of the faithful,

ALL: Grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever rejoice in His consolation, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

LEADER: Tonight we sit again with St. Catherine — the same wool dyer's daughter from Siena, but now we follow her out of her cell and into the world. Lord, do not let us imagine that union with You is an excuse to do less in the world. Let it be the only foundation strong enough for the work You are giving us to do.

ALL: St. Catherine of Siena, pray for us. Amen.

Scripture Assignments

Assign each passage to a woman in the group before beginning.

Passage 1: Luke 10:38-42
Passage 2: Matthew 25:34-40
Passage 3: James 2:14-18
Passage 4: 1 Corinthians 12:4-11

Who Was This Woman?

Last week we met St. Catherine in her cell — the three silent years in her parents' house, the mystical marriage at nineteen, the deep contemplative life that grounded everything she would later become. Tonight we follow her out of that cell, because the most striking thing about St. Catherine of Siena is not that she was a great mystic. The Church has many great mystics. The striking thing is that, having been espoused to Christ in the silence of her room, she walked out of it and spent the rest of her life in motion.

She nursed plague victims through three separate outbreaks of the Black Death. Bubonic plague had killed somewhere between a third and a half of the population of Europe in 1347–48, the year of her birth, and it kept returning in waves. Siena was hit hard in 1374. She and her companions worked in the pesthouses and homes of the dying, taking the worst cases, attending people whose own families had abandoned them.

She intervened in Italian politics during the most chaotic decade her country had seen in centuries. The papacy had been in Avignon since 1309 — seventy years of French popes living in southern France, away from Rome, away from the apostolic seat. Many in Italy, including most of the Italian clergy, believed this was a catastrophe for the Church. St. Catherine — a laywoman in her twenties from Siena, with no official position, no diplomatic credentials, and no formal education — took it upon herself to do something about it.

She wrote to Pope Gregory XI. Letter after letter. She did not flatter him. Be not, I beg you, a timid child, but manly, she wrote in one. Come, come, come, and do not wait for time, for time waits not for you. In 1376 she traveled to Avignon herself — a journey of weeks, on foot and by donkey, with a small band of disciples — and met with the Pope in person. She told him what God wanted him to do: leave Avignon, return to Rome, reform the Church, be the man Christ had called him to be. She was twenty-nine years old.

He did it. In January 1377, Pope Gregory XI entered Rome — the first pope to live there in seventy years. St. Catherine of Siena, a woman with no office and no power, had ended the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy.

She kept working. She advised the next pope, Urban VI, during the start of the disaster that would become the Western Schism — when the College of Cardinals split and elected a rival pope, plunging the Church into a forty-year crisis. She wrote letters to soldiers begging them to repent. She wrote to prostitutes urging them to come back to Christ. She wrote to abbesses about their communities. She wrote to her own family. She wrote to prisoners — and on at least one occasion, walked beside a condemned man to his execution, holding his head as the axe fell, having prepared his soul for death herself. She dictated her great theological work, the Dialogue of Divine Providence, in a series of mystical raptures that lasted months. She continued to work for the unity of the Church until she physically collapsed.

She died in Rome on April 29, 1380. She was thirty-three years old. Her body had given out. Her followers said she had, quite literally, worn herself out for the Church.

Six hundred years later, in 1970, Pope Paul VI named her — along with St. Teresa of Ávila — the first woman Doctor of the Church. In 1999, Pope St. John Paul II named her co-patroness of Europe. The Church she had spent her life trying to save has spent six centuries telling her story.

That is the woman we are sitting with tonight. The mystic who would not stay in her cell. The contemplative who left the contemplation to do something with it. The woman who, having been espoused to Christ, gave Him back the only gift He had not already given her: her own life, spent for what He loved.

Teaching Block 1 — Mary and Martha — A Catholic Reading

There is a story in the Gospel of Luke that the Christian tradition has read for two thousand years as the foundation text of the distinction between contemplative and active life. Most modern readings of it get it wrong.

Now it happened that, while they were traveling, he entered into a certain town. And a certain woman, named Martha, received him into her home. And she had a sister, named Mary, who, while sitting beside the Lord's feet, was listening to his word. Now Martha was continually busying herself with serving. And she stood still and said: "Lord, is it not a concern to you that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore, speak to her, so that she may help me." And the Lord responded by saying to her: "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled over many things. And yet only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the best portion, and it shall not be taken away from her."
Luke 10:38-42 — CPDV

Read it carefully. Jesus is at the home of two sisters, Martha and Mary. Martha is busy serving — preparing the meal, handling the household tasks, doing the work of hospitality. Mary is sitting at Jesus's feet, listening to His teaching. Martha gets frustrated, comes to Jesus, and asks Him to send Mary to help her. Jesus responds: Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.

The reading most modern Catholics have heard goes something like this: Martha represents the active life, Mary represents the contemplative life, and Jesus is telling us that the contemplative life is better. This reading is partly true — but it is not the whole truth, and the Catholic mystical tradition has always known it.

What Jesus is actually saying is more precise. He is not saying that contemplation is good and action is bad. He is saying that, in this particular moment, Mary has chosen what is needful — the one essential thing — and Martha is anxious and troubled about many things that have crowded it out. The problem is not that Martha is working. The problem is that Martha has let her work pull her away from the foundation of her work. She is serving Christ, but in her serving she has forgotten to listen to Him. She has forgotten Whose feet she is supposed to be sitting at when no work is being done.

The Catholic mystical tradition has always read this passage as teaching not that contemplation replaces action but that contemplation is the foundation of action. Mary is not chosen instead of Martha. Mary is chosen first, because without the listening, the serving becomes restless, frantic, performative — anxious and troubled about many things. When Martha has done the sitting at Jesus's feet that Mary is doing, then her serving will have the depth and the peace it lacks. She will be able to serve without the anxiety, because she will be serving from the foundation of the contemplative encounter.

St. Catherine of Siena lived this teaching at its highest pitch. She had spent three years in her cell — three years as Mary, sitting at Jesus's feet, listening to Him in the silence — before she walked out and into the world. The activity of her short life was extraordinary, but it was possible because of those three years. When she walked into pesthouses and into the papal court and into the homes of dying prostitutes, she did not walk in with the anxious energy of someone trying to prove herself to Christ by her busyness. She walked in as the woman who already belonged to Him. The serving flowed out of the listening. The work was real, but the work was not the foundation. The foundation was the cell.

This is the great teaching the Catholic mystical tradition has carried across the centuries, and it is the teaching that modern Catholic women most need to hear. You do not earn your way to Christ through work. You belong to Him already. The work — the real work of love in the world — flows out of that belonging, not toward it. The Marys are not the people who never work. The Marys are the people who work from the place of having sat at His feet. And the Marthas, in the bad sense, are not the people who work hard. The Marthas are the people who work anxiously, as if their working were the proof of their love.

Discussion Question 1: Jesus does not condemn Martha's serving — He says Martha is anxious and troubled about many things, while Mary has chosen the one thing needful. Most of us live more as anxious Marthas than as listening Marys. Where in your life is your serving — your work, your duties, your care for others — being driven by anxiety rather than by the peace of having sat at Christ's feet first? What would change if you began each day with the listening, before you began with the working?

Teaching Block 2 — The Works of Mercy

There is a moment in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus describes, in concrete detail, what He will look at when He judges the nations at the end of time. The moment is one of the most pastorally important passages in all of Scripture, and it is the passage that animated St. Catherine of Siena's entire active life.

Then the King shall say to those who will be on his right: 'Come, you blessed of my Father. Possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in; naked, and you covered me; sick, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me.' Then the just will answer him, saying: 'Lord, when have we see you hungry, and fed you; thirsty, and given you drink? And when have we seen you a stranger, and taken you in? Or naked, and covered you? Or when did we see you sick, or in prison, and visit to you?' And in response, the King shall say to them, 'Amen I say to you, whenever you did this for one of these, the least of my brothers, you did it for me.'
Matthew 25:34-40 — CPDV

Read it slowly. Then the King will say to those at His right hand, "Come, O blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed Me, I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you visited Me, I was in prison and you came to Me."

The righteous are confused. Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? And when did we see You a stranger and welcome You, or naked and clothe You? And when did we see You sick or in prison and visit You? They do not remember doing it. They have not been keeping score. They have not been performing acts of mercy in order to be noticed by Christ at the end of time. They have simply been living their lives in mercy, and the King reveals to them, at the judgment, that He was the one they were serving all along. Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.

This is the doctrine the Catholic Church has formalized as the corporal works of mercy — feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned, bury the dead — and to these the tradition has added the spiritual works of mercy: instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, admonish sinners, bear wrongs patiently, forgive offenses, comfort the afflicted, pray for the living and the dead. Together they are the concrete acts by which the love of Christ becomes visible in the world.

St. Catherine did them all. She fed the hungry — out of her family's kitchen, and later from the resources of her growing circle. She gave drink to the thirsty — most concretely, in the parched throats of dying plague victims. She clothed the naked. She sheltered the homeless. She visited the sick at the height of one of the deadliest pandemics in history. She visited the imprisoned. She buried the dead — and not just any dead, but the most contagious dead of her century. She instructed the ignorant through her letters. She counseled the doubtful — including a Pope. She admonished sinners, including powerful sinners, in writing that survives to this day. She bore wrongs patiently. She forgave offenses. She comforted the afflicted, including her own family. She prayed for the living and the dead, daily, by name, for hundreds of people across Europe.

And here is what is striking: she did not see any of this as separate from her mystical life. For St. Catherine, the works of mercy were not a sideline to her contemplation. They were the expression of her contemplation. The same Christ she had seen in vision in her cell was the Christ she was washing in the plague wards. The same Bridegroom who had placed the ring on her finger was the Bridegroom whose face she was kissing in the face of a dying leper. As you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me. For St. Catherine, this was not a metaphor. It was the literal explanation of what was happening every time she helped a sick person. She was, every time, attending to Christ Himself.

This is the great Catholic conviction about the works of mercy that modern catechesis sometimes loses: the works of mercy are not optional Christian extras. They are the place where the love of God meets the world. They are how the contemplative life becomes visible. They are what proves that a Christian's union with Christ is real — not because the works earn the union, but because the union, if it is real, flows out into the works. You cannot be united to Christ in the silence of your room and remain indifferent to the suffering of the world. The two are connected. The same blood that pumps through the soul also pumps through the hands.

My brothers, what benefit is there if someone claims to have faith, but he does not have works? How would faith be able to save him? So if a brother or sister is naked and daily in need of food, and if anyone of you were to say to them: "Go in peace, keep warm and nourished," and yet not give them the things that are necessary for the body, of what benefit is this? Thus even faith, if it does not have works, is dead, in and of itself. Now someone may say: "You have faith, and I have works." Show me your faith without works! But I will show you my faith by means of works.
James 2:14-18 — CPDV

St. James says this with characteristic directness. What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit?... So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. The Catholic Church has always read this as the inseparable partner to Pauline teaching on faith. Faith is not opposed to works; faith expresses itself in works, and faith without works is a corpse. The works of mercy are the evidence that the faith is alive.

Discussion Question 2: Jesus tells us that, at the end of time, the question He will ask is whether we fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick and imprisoned — and that He Himself was the one we were serving all along. Most Catholic women practice some works of mercy, but often without seeing Christ in the act. Where in your life are you already serving Christ in the hidden — caring for a sick parent, raising children, visiting an elderly relative, working in a job that serves others — and how would your experience of that work change if you saw it, every time, as a direct meeting with Christ?

Teaching Block 3 — The Whole Body of Christ

There is one more text we have to read tonight, because it answers a question that follows from everything we have said so far. If every Christian is called to active mercy, and if the Catholic life is meant to overflow from contemplation into the world, what does this look like for the woman who is not St. Catherine of Siena? What does it look like for the woman whose life is much smaller — a teacher, a nurse, a mother of small children, a single woman in an office, a widow on a fixed income? What does an active mysticism look like for her?

St. Paul has the answer.

Truly, there are diverse graces, but the same Spirit. And there are diverse ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diverse works, but the same God, who works everything in everyone. However, the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one toward what is beneficial. Certainly, to one, through the Spirit, is given words of wisdom; but to another, according to the same Spirit, words of knowledge; to another, in the same Spirit, faith; to another, in the one Spirit, the gift of healing; to another, miraculous works; to another, prophecy; to another, the discernment of spirits; to another, different kinds of languages; to another, the interpretation of words. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one according to his will.
1 Corinthians 12:4-11 — CPDV

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

This is one of St. Paul's most important teachings, and it changes how we read the lives of the saints. The Holy Spirit gives different gifts to different members of the Body of Christ. Some are given prophecy. Some are given teaching. Some are given service. Some are given healing. Some are given mercy. Some are given administration. Some are given the work of intercessory prayer. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. The Church needs all the gifts. The Church does not need every Christian to do every gift.

This means that the active mysticism of St. Catherine of Siena is her particular gift, in her particular life, for her particular moment in the history of the Church. The Church needed a Catherine in fourteenth-century Italy, and the Holy Spirit raised one up. The Holy Spirit does not need every Catholic woman to be a Catherine. The Holy Spirit needs every Catholic woman to be the specific saint she was made to be — to discover the gifts she has been given, and to spend them generously for the Church and the world.

This is the great clarification the Catholic theology of vocation has always offered. You are not called to be St. Catherine of Siena. You are called to be the saint God made you to be. Whatever your gifts are — and you have them, whether you have named them or not — they are given to you, by Him, for the common good. Your job is not to imitate someone else's vocation. Your job is to discern your own, and to spend it.

And here is the connection back to the active mysticism of St. Catherine: she spent her gifts. That is what makes her a saint. Not that her gifts were larger or more dramatic than yours. That she did not waste them. She did not hide her contemplative depth and refuse to engage the world. She did not throw herself into the world without the foundation of contemplation. She found the proper relationship between the cell and the road, and she walked it for thirty-three years until her body gave out. The question for every Catholic woman is the same question, in her own form: am I spending the gifts I have been given for the common good of the Church and the world, in the proper rhythm of contemplation and action?

Some women in this room have been overactive — drowning in service, with no contemplative foundation, exhausted and resentful. Some have been overcontemplative — protecting an interior life that has never quite turned into love of neighbor, mistaking introspection for prayer. Some have been neither — going through Catholic motions without either deep prayer or real charity. The Catholic call is the same in all three cases: to recover the balance St. Catherine had. To sit at Christ's feet long enough to know who you are. To stand up from His feet and give what you have received to whoever is in front of you. To keep doing this — back to His feet, back out into the world — until your body gives out.

St. Catherine died at thirty-three having lived this rhythm at its highest intensity. Most Catholic women in this room will live to seventy, eighty, ninety. The question is not the length of the rhythm. The question is the faithfulness of it.

Discussion Question 3: Every Catholic woman has been given specific gifts by the Holy Spirit for the common good — gifts that are particular to her, her vocation, and her moment in the Church. What are your gifts? Have you named them? Are you spending them — or hiding them, neglecting them, wasting them? What would change if you took seriously that the Holy Spirit gave you what you have, on purpose, for the common good?

This Week

Identify one of the works of mercy — corporal or spiritual — that the Holy Spirit is asking you to do this week, in a specific way, for a specific person. Then do it. It does not have to be grand. Drop off a meal. Write a letter. Visit a person you have been meaning to visit. Pray, by name, for someone you have stopped praying for. Forgive someone whose offense you have been carrying.

Then, separately, identify one of your gifts — one specific thing the Holy Spirit has given you that you could spend more deliberately for the Church and the world. Write it down. Ask Him this week to show you how He wants you to spend it in the year ahead.

St. Catherine spent thirty-three years pouring out everything she had been given. You may have more years than she did. Begin now to spend yours.

Closing Prayer

Gather prayer requests and close out.