Letters of Catherine Benincasa | Page 7

we
realise that to tragedy her spirit was dedicate. Her energy of mind was
constantly on the increase. Still, it is true, she wrote to disciples near
and far long, tender letters of spiritual counsel--analyses of the religious
life tranquilly penetrating as those of an earlier time. But her political
correspondence grew in bulk. It is tense, nervous, virile. It breathes a
vibrating passion, a solemn force, that are the index of a breaking heart.
Not for one moment did Catherine relax her energies. From 1376, when
she went to Avignon, she led, with one or two brief intermissions only,
the life of a busy woman of affairs. But within this outer life of
strenuous and, as a rule, thwarted activities, another life went on--a life
in which failure could not be, since through failure is wrought

redemption.
From the days of her stigmatization, which occurred in 1375 at Pisa,
Catherine had been convinced that in some special sense she was to
share in the Passion of Christ, and offer herself a sacrifice for the sins
of Holy Church. Now this conception deepened till it became
all-absorbing. In full consciousness of failing vital powers, in
expectation of her approaching death, she offered her sufferings of
mind and body as an expiation for the sins around her. By word of
mouth and by letters of heartbroken intensity she summoned all dear to
her to join in this holy offering. Catherine's faith is alien to these latter
days. Yet the psychical unity of the race is becoming matter not only of
emotional intuition, but established scientific fact: and no modern
sociologist, no psychologist who realizes how unknown in origin and
how intimate in interpenetration are the forces that control our destiny,
can afford to scoff at her. She had longed inexpressibly for outward
martyrdom. This was not for her, yet none the less really did she lay
down her life on the Altar of Sacrifice. The evils of the time, and above
all of the Church, had generated a sense of unbearable sin in her pure
spirit; her constant instinct to identify herself with the guilt of others
found in this final offering an august climax and fulfilment.
During the last months of her life--months of excruciating physical
sufferings, vividly described for us by her contemporaries--the
woman's rectitude and wisdom, her swift tender sympathies, were still,
as ever, at the disposal of all who sought them. With unswerving
energy she still laboured for the cause of truth. When we consider the
conditions, spiritual and physical, of those last months, we read with
amazement the able, clearly conceived, practical letters which she was
despatching to the many European potentates whom she was
endeavouring to hold true to the cause of Urban. But her spirit in the
meantime dwelt in the region of the Eternal, where the dolorous
struggle of the times appeared, indeed, but appeared in its essential
significance as seen by angelic intelligences. The awe-struck letters to
Fra Raimondo, her Confessor, with which this selection closes, are an
accurate transcript of her inner experience. They constitute, surely, a
precious heritage of the Church for which her life was given. Catherine
Benincasa died heartbroken; yet in the depths of her consciousness was
joy, for God had revealed to her that His Bride the Church, "which

brings life to men," "holds in herself such life that no man can kill her."
"Sweetest My daughter, thou seest how she has soiled her face with
impurity and self-love, and grown puffed up by the pride and avarice of
those who feed at her bosom. But take thy tears and sweats, drawing
them from the fountain of My divine charity, and cleanse her face. For I
promise thee that her beauty shall not be restored to her by the sword,
nor by cruelty nor war, but by peace, and by humble continual prayer,
tears, and sweats poured forth from the grieving desires of My servants.
So thy desire shall be fulfilled in long abiding, and My Providence
shall in no wise fail."
V
Psychologically, as in point of time, St. Catherine stands between St.
Francis and St. Teresa. Her writings are of the middle ages, not of the
renascence, but they express the twilight of the mediaeval day. They
reveal the struggles and the spiritual achievement of a woman who
lived in the last age of an undivided Christendom, and whose whole life
was absorbed in the special problems of her time. These problems,
however, are in the deepest sense perpetual, and her attitude toward
them is suggestive still.
It has been claimed that Catherine, a century and a half later, would
have been a Protestant. Such hypotheses are always futile to discuss;
but the view hardly commends itself to the careful student of her
writings. It is suggested,