Word to the Wise
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - St. Catherine of Siena, O.P. (Virgin and Doctor of the Church)
[Acts 8:1a-8 and John 6:35-40]Now those who had been scattered went about preaching the word.
When I entered the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) in 1964, the chapels at the novitiate (boot camp) and the studium (seminary) had stained glass windows with the major Dominican saints featured in them. In fact, I could at that time have named most of the canonized Dominican saints from having stared at those windows. However, Pope John Paul II added a huge number - some of them are in batches! However, a very few of them have made it onto the general calendar of the Church and are celebrated outside Dominican places. St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Pius V, St. Albert the Great AND St. Catherine of Siena are prominent examples. By the standards of almost any time, Catherine was a remarkable woman! To begin with, she was the youngest of 25 children! It would take too long to give a full account of her life. Suffice it to say that as a very young woman she became a member of a Dominican lay group called the "Mantellata," and as a member of that group she became active in the kind of work that is nowadays handled by church relief agencies and social workers! Just before she began her active ministry, she experienced the visions during which she dictated her famous DIALOGUE. Her reputation for holiness and action brought her some political attention (doesn't it always?) and she became involved with the efforts to bring the papacy back from Avignon, France, and in diplomatic missions between warring cities. Historians generally do not give her much credit for those efforts, insisting that she was a pawn for certain interests that used her. One response to that might be the one that comes from someone similar to her, Mother Teresa of Calcutta: "God has not called us to be successful. God has called us to be faithful!" We Dominicans honor our sister, Catherine, for her complete self-giving on behalf of her faith, the poor and the sick and for being a fearless preacher. She was among the "scattered" in a very sorry period of church history and she went about "preaching the word." Yes, she was unusual for her time and would be for our time as well. At least among the now many Dominican holy ones, she's an easy one to remember! AMEN
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