The doctor of the Church dedicated herself to God at age 6 and was ‘eager for’ the next Mass
By Father Randy Stice
In previous columns, I have introduced the eucharistic teaching of St. John Chrysostom, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. This month, I want to look at the teaching of St. Catherine of Siena.
Catherine was born in 1347, the 24th of 25 children. She was a precocious child, dedicating herself to God at the age of 6. She entered the Third Order of St. Dominic and lived her life as a laywoman. She received profound mystical experiences while active in the world, working for reconciliation between cities, advising the pope, and promoting the renewal of religious life. Her masterpiece is The Dialogue, an extended conversation between Catherine and God. She was named a doctor of the Church by St. Paul VI in 1970.
Early in The Dialogue, Catherine summarized her love for and experience of the Mass. She wrote that she was “eager for the next day’s Mass…because in communion the soul seems more sweetly bound to God and better knows His truth. For then the soul is in God and God in the soul, just as the fish is in the sea and the sea in the fish.”1 This hints at the riches that will unfold in the pages that follow.
Important for Catherine was a revelation she received from Christ during Mass in which He explained how He is present in the Eucharist. Christ said, “When the celebrant reached the consecration you looked up toward him. And at the words of consecration I revealed myself to you. You saw a ray of light coming from my breast, like the ray that comes forth from the sun’s circle yet never leaves it. Within this light came a dove, and dove and light were as one and hovered over the host by the power of the words of consecration the celebrant was saying. Your bodily eyes could not endure the light, and only your spiritual vision remained, but there you saw and tasted the depths of the Trinity, wholly God, wholly human, hidden and veiled under that whiteness. Neither the light nor the presence of the Word, whom in spirit you saw in this whiteness, took away the whiteness of the bread. Nor did the one stand in the way of the other. I did not block your sight either of me, God and human, in that bread, or the bread itself. Neither the whiteness nor the feel nor the taste was taken away from the bread.”2
In this vision, the Lord emphasized to Catherine the importance of faith, not the senses, in discerning Christ’s presence for, He said, “your dull bodily senses are deceived.”3 God posed a series of questions to Catherine about how Christ’s presence is discerned in the sacrament.4 He first asked, “What tastes and sees and touches this sacrament? The soul’s sensitivity.” He then asked, “How does she see it? With her mind’s eye, so long as it has the pupil of holy faith. This eye sees in that whiteness the divine nature joined with the human; wholly God, wholly human; the body, soul, and blood of Christ, His soul united with His body and His body and soul united with my divine nature, never straying from me.” And His third question, “How is this sacrament touched? With the hand of love…The hand of love touches through faith, confirming as it were what the soul sees and knows spiritually through faith.”5 Faith, He told Catherine, was paramount, “It was your mind’s eye, with the pupil of holy faith, that had vision in the end. So, the spiritual must be the principal vision, because it cannot be deceived. It is with this eye, then, that you must contemplate the sacrament.”6
God also stressed the importance of our desire for Christ. “How is this sacrament tasted?” He asked. “With holy desire. The body tastes only the flavor of bread, but the soul tastes me, God and human. So, you see, the body’s senses can be deceived, but not the soul’s.”7 Our desire to receive Christ in communion, he said, is like a candle. “Each one of you brings your own candle, that is, the holy desire with which you receive and eat this sacrament. Your candle by itself is unlit, and it is lighted when you receive this sacrament.”8 “And your candle is love, because it is for love that I created you, so without love you cannot have life…even though all of you receive the light, each of you receives it in proportion to the love and burning desire you bring with you….You share as much of the light (that is, the grace you receive in this sacrament) as your holy desire disposes you to receive.”9
God explained to Catherine the power of the Eucharist. “When this appearance of bread has been consumed, I leave behind the imprint of my grace, just as a seal that is pressed into warm wax leaves its imprint when it is lifted off. Thus does the power of this sacrament remain there in the soul; that is, the warmth of my divine charity, the mercy of the Holy Spirit, remains there. The light of my only-begotten Son’s wisdom remains there, enlightening the mind’s eye.”10 “[The soul] is left strong, sharing in my strength and power, which make her strong and powerful against her selfish sensuality and against the devil and the world.”11
The image that occurs over and over in these quotes is light. The Lord told Catherine that “the gentle light of this sacrament” cannot be contaminated, divided, or diminished.12 “Though all the world should ask for His light, all would have it whole, and whole it would remain.”13
1 Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue, translated by Suzanne Nofke, OP (Paulist Press, 1980), p. 27. All subsequent references are to this source.
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Father Randy Stice is director of the diocesan Office of Worship and Liturgy. He can be reached at frrandy@dioknox.org.