CATHERINE’S DOCTRINE
The attentive reader will no doubt have perceived how great have been
the difficulties at every step taken, in the previous chapters, towards
a critically clear and solid account of Catherine’s life. He will,
then, be quite prepared again to find difficulties, though largely of
another order, in the task that now lies before us,--the attempt at a
clear and authentic reproduction of her teaching.
1. _Four difficulties in the utilization of the sources._
The sources are, it is true, at first sight, fairly
abundant,--altogether about one hundred of the two hundred and eighty
pages of the _Vita ed Opere_. But four peculiarities render their
utilization a matter of much labour and caution.
For one thing, they certainly include no piece written by herself,
and probably none written down before 1497. Catherine’s memory can no
doubt be trusted, and with it much of the oldest version of those great
turning-points of her inner life which occurred long before that date,
and which she thus, later on, communicated to her two closest friends.
Yet hers was a mind so constantly absorbed in present experiences and
in self-renewal as to be all but incapable of dwelling, in any detail,
upon her past experiences or judgments.
And next, within and for this her “doctrinal,” her “widowed” and
“suffering” period, we are perplexed by the total absence of logical
or indeed of any other order in the presentation of these discourses
and contemplations. We have either to do without any order at all, or
to construct one for ourselves,--which latter course of itself already
means a reconstruction of the book.
But far more delicate is the task presented by the third
peculiarity,--the fact, demonstrated both by the internal evidence
and analysis and by the external evidence of the MSS., of the
bewildering variety of forms and connections in which one and the same
doctrine, sometimes an obviously unique saying, will appear. Six,
ten, even twelve or more variants are the rule, not the exception.
And I am specially thinking, under this heading, of _contemporary
variations_--that is, variations of form that can reasonably be
attributed either to her own initiative at work under differences
of mood and of starting-point; or to the variety of the minds who
apprehended and registered this teaching at the time of its delivery;
or to both influences simultaneously. In the first case we get, say,
her doctrine as to man’s weakness and sinfulness, in two moments of
depression and consolation respectively, registered by one and the same
disciple,--say, by Vernazza or by Marabotto. In the second case we get
some such two sayings as rendered the one by Vernazza and the other by
Marabotto severally. And in the third case we get both the depressed
and the joyful original sayings, as they have passed through the minds
of both Vernazza and Marabotto.
And lastly, we get another class, _redactional variations_; and these
it is often as difficult as it is always necessary to detect. I mean
the parallel passages, evolved in course of time by her attendants or
constructed by successive redactors, more or less on the model of, but
also with more or less of departure from, her own authentic sayings:
blurred, partly inaccurate echoes, as it were, of her own living voice.
These will generally have grown up but semi-consciously, or at least
have arisen from simple motives of her glorification or of literary
filling-in or rounding-off. For we must not forget the forty years
which passed between her death and the _Vita_.
I am thinking here too of the _theological limitations and
corrections_, introduced into the older text in the form of definite
counter-statements, which we shall find to be especially visible in
the _Trattato_; and of the, doubtless preponderatingly unconscious,
modifications of an analogous kind which determined the composition
of the _Dialogo_, and are traceable throughout that whole long work.
For here again we have to remember how, between her living teachings,
so ardent and familiar, so entirely from within and unoccupied with
the world without, which reached up to 1510, and even the earliest
MS. redaction of the contemporary jotting down of those sayings
which we still possess,--that of 1547,--runs the great upheaval of
the Protestant Reformation, beginning with Luther’s Theses of 1517.
Catherine’s own fellow God-parent to Vernazza’s eldest daughter, the
Doctor of Laws Tommaso Moro, had meanwhile become a Calvinist (1537),
and then had returned to the Catholic Obedience in 1539, first under
this his God-daughter’s influence. No wonder that what, under the
magic suasion of her living personality, in times as yet free from
the controversial and polemical tone and temper, and through and for
her friends already won to and comprehensive of her teachings, had
been certainly registered, and perhaps for a while transmitted, in
its own pristine, winningly daring and unguarded, form, would, with
her old friends dead and a new generation grown up and engrossed in
attack and defence of various points of the Catholic position, be felt
to require tempering and safeguarding, rewriting and controversial
utilization. Hence we get three successive steps. The theological
counter-statements in the _Trattato_, probably introduced between
1524 and 1530. The controversial point and utilization attempted in
the very title of the _Vita_ which promises, “una utile e cattolica
dimostrazione e declarazione del Purgatorio,” and in the Preface, which
declares the book to contain things “specially necessary in these our
turbulent times,” touches which go back probably to 1536, perhaps even
to 1524-1530. And the composition of the entire _Dialogo_, hardly begun
before 1546.[221]
It is interesting to note how neither for the approbation of the first
edition in 1551 (by the Dominican Fra Geronimo of Genoa), nor during
the examination by the Congregation of Rites and the final approbation
by Pope Innocent XI, 1677-1683, was any additional correction required
or (as far as I know) even suggested. The latter point is particularly
striking; for we have thus the very Pope who, in 1687, condemned
Molinos’ teaching, solemnly approving Catherine’s doctrine four years
before, after a seven years’ examination.
2. _Catholic principles concerning the teaching of Canonized Saints._
Now it is a well-known principle of Catholic theology, propounded
with classic clearness and finality by Pope Benedict XIV, in his
standard work _On the Beatification and Canonization of the Servants
of God_, that such an approbation of their sayings or writings binds
neither the Church nor her individual members to more than the two
points, which are alone necessary with respect to the possibility
and advisability of the future Beatification and Canonization of the
author of the sayings or writings in question. The Church and her
individual members are thus bound only to hold the perfect orthodoxy
and Catholic piety of such a saintly writer’s intentions, and again the
(at least interpretative) orthodoxy of these his writings, and their
spiritual usefulness for some class or classes of souls. But every
kind and degree of respectful but deliberate criticism and of dissent
is allowed, if only based upon solid reasons and combined with a full
acceptance of those two points.
And indeed it is plain that heroism in action and suffering is one
thing, and philosophical genius, training and balance is another;
and even, again, that deep and delicate experiences on the one hand,
and the power of their at all adequate analysis and psychological
description, are two things and not one. Still, it is also evident
that in proportion as a Saint’s doctrine is, professedly or at all
events actually, based upon or occasioned by his own experience will
it rightly demand a double measure of respectful study. For, in such
a case, we can be sure not only of the saintly intentions of the
teacher, but also of his doctrines being an attempt, however partially
successful, at expressing certain first-hand, unusually deep and vivid
experiences of the religious life, experiences which, taken in their
substance and totality, constitute the very essence of his sanctity.
Now this is manifestly the case with Catherine. And hence she furnishes
us with those very conditions of fruitful discussion, so difficult
to get in religious matters. On the one hand, her undoubted sanctity
and the personal experimental basis of her doctrine gain for her our
willingness, indeed determination, first of all patiently to study and
assimilate and sympathetically to reconstruct her special spiritual
world from her own inner starting- and growing-point, and all this,
at this first stage, without any question as to the completeness or
final truth and value of the intellectual analyses and syntheses of
these experiences elaborated by herself. And, on the other hand, we
find ourselves driven, at our second stage, to examine the literary
sources and philosophical and theological implications of this her
teaching--if pressed; and to make various respectful, but firm and
free distinctions and reservations, with regard to these sources
and affinities. For here, in these her analyses and syntheses, a
special quality of her own temperament is ever at work, and causes
her to express, as best she can, a concentration of a whole host of
the strongest feelings concerning just the one point of that one
moment’s experience, with a momentary complete exclusion of all the
rest. Here, again, her dependence, for her categories of thought and
general language, imagery and scheme of doctrine, upon Fra Jacopone da
Todi and upon the Pseudo-Dionysian writings is readily traceable,--the
latter, compositions which we have only now succeeded in tracing, with
final completeness and precision, to their predominantly Neo-Platonist
source. And here we cannot but carefully consider the impressive series
of Church pronouncements which have occurred since Catherine spoke and
her devotees wrote. All these matters shall be carefully studied in the
second volume.
3. _The fortunate circumstances of Catherine’s teaching._
It was a rare combination of numerous special circumstances,--several
of them unique,--which rendered possible the retention and indeed
solemn approbation of the difficult and daring doctrine and language
not rarely to be met with in the _Vita_ (in contradistinction to the
so-called _Opere_).
For one thing, the originator, the subject-matter and form, above
all the school of her doctrine, all combined to secure it the
largest possible amount of liberty and sympathetic interpretation.
The originator, the soul from whom the doctrine had proceeded, had
not herself written down one word of it; but she had spoken it all,
warm from the very heart which loved and lived it: the cold and
chilling process of deliberate composition had but little part in
the whole matter, and that part was not hers. The subject-matter was
not primarily dogmatic, and not at all political or legal; it dealt
not with theological systems or visible institutions, but with the
experiences of single souls: and at all times a great latitude has been
allowed in such subject-matter, when proceeding, as here, from some
saintly soul as the direct expression of its own experience. The form
was not systematic, and aimed at no completeness; all was incidentally
addressed to a few devoted disciples, in short monologues or homely
conversations. The title _Trattato_, given later on to the collection
of her detached thoughts on Purgatory, is thoroughly misleading; her
whole spirit and form were precisely not that of the treatise. And
the school to which she so obviously belonged was probably her chief
protection. Indeed, the doctrinally difficult passages are, in a true
sense, the least personal of her sayings: we shall find all their
doctrinal presuppositions,--as to the immobility, indefectibility,
deification of the soul; the possession by the soul of God without
means or measure; and the like,--to go back to the writings which,
purporting to be by the Areopagite Dionysius, the Convert of St. Paul,
but composed in reality between A.D. 490-520, so profoundly influenced
all mystical thinking and expression for one thousand years and more of
the Church’s life.
And again, the period during which the corpus of Catherine’s doctrine
was in process of formation was specially favourable to such large
toleration. For if she died in 1510, ten years before the outbreak of
the Protestant Reformation, with its inevitable reaction, her chief
chronicler, the saintly philanthropist Vernazza, did not die, a true
martyr to that boundless love of souls which he had derived from
his great-souled friend, till 1524; and her Confessor Marabotto did
not depart till 1528. Thus her doctrine would remain substantially
untouched and treasured up till some twenty years after her death, and
thirteen years after the great upheaval.
We have already noted that (somewhere about 1528, and on to 1551)
her teaching _did_ meet with some opposition. It will be interesting
to study (in the Appendix) how the objection arose and was met. Here
it must suffice to point out that, whereas Catherine’s Purgatorial
doctrine is free from any final difficulty on the score of orthodoxy,
it is just that doctrine which was hedged in and glossed before all
the rest; and that whereas other parts of her teaching, in the form
given in the _Vita_, are full of such difficulty, they remain strangely
unmodified to this very day. It will appear that the _Dialogo_ was in
part composed to perform an office towards those doctrinal chapters of
the _Vita_, similar to that performed by the glosses in and towards the
text of the _Trattato_. Hence the glosses of the _Trattato_ will have,
in the following collection of sayings, to be removed from my text, and
the statements of the _Dialogo_ will have to be ignored in my text.
These glosses or re-statements shall be considered later on, whenever
these additions or substitutions are of sufficient interest.
4. _The theological order of presentation adopted._
Then again, it is far from easy to settle upon the right order and
method of presentation. The more closely we study the chapters in
question the more do we find that the strange discomfort and disgust,
engendered by any lengthy reading of them, proceeds from the curiously
infelicitous manner of their composition. These chapters, in so much as
they supply genuine materials, consist of a large number of detached,
usually short sayings, of every kind of tone and mood, occasion and
mental and emotional context and connotation, and yet all concerning
but a few great central realities and truths. These sayings in
themselves do not at all represent links in a chain of reasoning; they
are numberless variations on some few fundamental experiences of the
soul. Hence they require to be given in loose co-ordination, or in free
grouping around some great central truth; somewhat like what is done,
with such marked felicity, for Our Lord’s own sayings, which also are
occasional and freely various, by the oldest of our Gospels, St. Mark.
“And,” “and again,” can be used to join these recurrent similitudes,
aspirations, emotional reflections; not “because” nor “therefore,”
still less “firstly,” “secondly,” “thirdly,” as the Redactors have
been so fond of doing. Hence the reader in the _Vita_ feels himself
in a constant state of abortive motion, and is ever being promised a
precision which usually ends in vagueness.
Let us then group these parallel sayings around some few great central
truths or dispositions. But what is the order of these great centres
to be? Here again a difficulty occurs, and this time from the very
nature of the doctrine concerned. For the special characteristic of her
teaching, a teaching so largely derived both from her own intensely
unitive character and (through the Dionysian writings, Proclus and
Plotinus) from Plato himself, is precisely an infinitely close-woven
organization, in which part vibrates in sympathy with part, in which
each point carries with it the whole, and in which each one idea
and feeling passes, as it were, right through, and colours and is
coloured by all the rest. It would be almost as satisfactory to turn
the impassioned discourse of Diotima in the Symposium into a series
of numbered propositions, as here to try and detach any one feeling
or idea from out of the living network of its fellows, in and through
which it is, and gets and gives, its special self.
The historical order (_i.e._ the order in which, successively, each
doctrine grew up and dominated her thinking) is, alas! as we have seen,
out of the question.--The psychological order (_i.e._ the order in
which the doctrines, such as we have them, would reproduce themselves
within her own mind during that last period of her life, 1496-1510)
would doubtless throw most light upon the special characteristics of
her spirituality, and upon the hidden springs of her doctrine. But it
is far too difficult, and must remain too largely hypothetical, to be
even distantly aimed at here and now: some such attempt will be made
in a later chapter, with the help of the materials first collected and
grouped here in a more conventional way.--The theological order (_i.e._
the order in which these doctrines would appear if made to find their
places in an ordinary manual of scholastic theology) is the one that
I shall here endeavour to follow as far as possible. For thus I can
start with a scheme so thoroughly familiar as nowhere itself to require
any explanation; and I can thus help to bring out, from the first, the
characteristic peculiarities of the mystical position generally, and of
her own variety of it in particular.
I will then take here, successively, her teachings as to God in
Himself, and Creation; Sin, Redemption, and Sanctification; and the
Last Things. But I do so quite loosely, for I shall try nowhere to
break off any bridge that she herself has thrown across from one
subject to the other, and shall be satisfied if I can succeed in
grouping her doctrine even approximately within those three divisions,
according to the predominance of this or that point of her teaching.
And, for this, I shall not shrink from a repeated utilization of
one and the same text, when (as happens so often) it looks in many
directions, and becomes fully clear only in juxtaposition with various
parts of her teaching.
5. _Literary sources of Catherine’s teaching._
We have evidence, as regards literary influences, that Catherine
fed her mind on three books or sets of books: the Bible, the
Pseudo-Dionysian Treatises, and the _Lode_ of Jacopone da Todi.
The allusions to passages of Scripture are continual, but mostly of
a swiftly passing, combinatory, allegorizing kind. Direct quotations
and attempts at penetrating the objective sense of particular passages
are rare, for most of the direct quotations are clearly due to her
historians, not to herself; yet they exist and put her direct study of
Scripture beyond all doubt. Her favourite Bible books were evidently
Isaiah and the Psalms, and the Pauline and Joannine writings. Some
touches (remarkably few for a mystic) are derived from the Canticle of
Canticles, and many less obvious ones from the Synoptic Gospels; but
there are no certain traces, I think, of any other Old Testament books,
nor, in the Pauline group, of any passage from the Pastoral Epistles.
The evidence for her direct knowledge and use of Dionysius is, it
is true, but circumstantial. But the following three facts seem,
conjoined as they are in her case, sufficient to prove this knowledge.
(i) We have already seen how her cousin and close spiritual friend,
Suor Tommasa, wrote a devotional treatise on Denys the Areopagite,
presumably before Catherine’s death, since Tommasa was sixty-two years
of age in that year 1510; it would be strange indeed if Catherine did
not, even if but from this quarter, get to know some of the Dionysian
writings, perhaps even whilst they could still only be read in MS.
form. (ii) Marsilio Ficino published in Florence, in 1492, his Latin
translation of the _Mystical Theology_ and of the _Divine Names_, with
a copious commentary; and the book, dedicated to Giovanni de’ Medici,
Archbishop of Florence and future Pope Leo X, found its way at once to
all the larger centres of life, learning and devotion in Italy. Thus
Catherine lived still eighteen years after the publication of this, the
first printed, edition of any part of Denys (original or translation);
even if she did not know these writings before, it seems again very
unlikely that she would not get to know them now. (iii) There are, it
is true, no direct quotations from Denys, nor does his name appear
in the _Vita ed Opere_, except in that account of Suor Tommasa. But
numerous sayings of Catherine bear, as we shall see later on, so
striking a resemblance to passages in those two books of Denys, that
it is difficult to explain them by merely mediate infiltration; and
that those sayings ultimately, as to their literary occasion, go back
to the Areopagite, is incontestable. I quote Denys from the usually
careful translation of the Rev. John Parker: _The Works of Dionysius
the Areopagite_, Pt. I, London, Oxford, 1897, with certain corrections
of my own.
The proofs for her knowledge and love of Jacopone da Todi’s Italian
“Praises” is, on the other hand, direct and explicit. The _Vita_,
p. 37, makes her say: “Listen to what Fra Jacopone says in one of
his _Lode_, beginning: ‘O amor di povertade,’” and then gives her
word-for-word commentary on verse 23 of this his _Loda_ LVIII. Words
from this same verse are again quoted by her on p. 62; the opening line
of this _Loda_ is put into her mouth on p. 83; and another verse, the
sixth, is quoted by her, as by the Blessed Jacopone, on p. 92. I have
been able to find many other sayings of hers which are hardly less
directly suggested by the great Umbrian than these. Here, again, she
probably knew the _Lode_ in MS. form, before they appeared in print in
1490; but will in any case have known them in this their printed form.
I have carefully studied in this, the first printed edition (Florence:
Bonaccorsi), all the _Lode_ bearing upon subjects and doctrines dear
to Catherine. They are twenty in all, from among the hundred and two
numbers of that collection.[222]
6. _The Psycho-physical Occasions or Reflexes of her Doctrine. Her
special reaction under and use of her literary sources shall be
examined in a later chapter._
The psycho-physical occasions or reflexes of her various teachings, as
far as the interconnection can be traced with probability, shall also
be studied in the second volume. But already here I would have the
reader clearly to understand, that nowhere are such psycho-physical
conditions and experiences to be considered the _causes_ of her
doctrine, as though the lower produced the higher, and as though the
spiritual were the automatic resultant and necessary precipitate of
certain accidental, involuntary conditions in time and space. For
everywhere such conditions can only, at best, be accepted as the
occasions or materials for the development or illustration of some
spiritual doctrine, or, contrariwise, as the psychic effects and
embodiments of some vividly realized invisible truth or law; whilst
this spiritual teaching itself is derived from far other and deeper
causes,--the interaction of her own experience and free spiritual
powers and of God’s grace, and the conflict of these with her own
passions, the whole helped or hindered by the world without.
I. GOD AS CREATIVE LOVE. THE CREATURE’S TRUE AND FALSE SELF; TRUE AND
FALSE LOVE.
1. _Creation, an overflow of Goodness._
First, then, we will take the sayings about Creation, and the original,
substantially indelible character of all created beings. “I saw a
sight which satisfied me much. I was shown the Living Fountain of
Goodness, which was (as yet) all within Itself alone, without any kind
of participation. And next I saw that It began to participate with the
creature, and made that very beautiful company of Angels, in order that
this company might enjoy His ineffable glory, without asking any other
return from the Angels than that they should recognize themselves to be
creatures created by His supreme goodness.… And hence, when they were
clothed in sin by their pride and disobedience, God suddenly subtracted
from them the participation of His goodness.… Yet He did not subtract
it all, for in that case they would have remained still more malign
than they (actually) are, and they would have had Hell infinite in
pain, as they now have it in time.” … “When we ourselves shall depart
from this life,--supposing we are in mortal sin,--then God would
subtract from us His goodness and would leave us in our own selves,
yet not altogether, since He wills that in every place there should
be found His goodness accompanied by His justice. And if any creature
could be found that did not participate in His goodness, that creature
would be as malignant as God is good.”[223]
2. _Natural conformity between God and all rational creatures._
From her sayings as to Creation and Pure Love, Creation’s cause, we
come to those as to the Natural Conformity between God and Rational
Creatures; His constant care for the human soul; and the consequent
law of imitative love incumbent upon us. “I see God to have so great
a conformity with the rational creature, that if the Devil himself
could but rid himself of those garments of sin, in that instant God
would unite Himself to him, and would make him into that which he, the
Devil, attempted to achieve by his own power. So too with regard to
man: lift off sin from his shoulders, and then allow the good God to
act,--God who seems to have nothing else to do than to unite Himself
to us.”--“It appears to me, indeed, that God has no other business
than myself.”--“If man could but see the care which God takes of the
soul, he would be struck with stupor within himself.”--“I see that God
stands all ready to give us all the aids necessary for our salvation,
and that He attends to our actions solely for our good. And, on the
contrary, I see man occupied with things that are opposed to his true
self and of no value. And at the time of death God will say to him:
‘What was there that I could do for thee, O man, that I did not do?’
And man himself will then see this clearly.”--“When God created man,
He did not put Himself in motion for any other reason than His pure
love alone. And hence, in the same way as Love Itself, for the welfare
of the loved soul, does not fail in the accomplishment of anything,
whatever may be the advantage or disadvantage that may accrue from
thence to the Lover, so also must the love of the loved soul return
to the Lover, with those same forms and modes with which it came from
Him. And then such love as this, which has no regard for aught but love
itself, cannot be in fear of anything.”[224]
3. _Relations between Love, God; love of our true self; and false
self-love._
We can take next her teachings as to the relations between the love
of God, love of our true self, and false self-love. “The love of God
is our true self-love, the love characteristic of and directed to our
true selves, since these selves of ours were created by and for Love
Itself. The love, on the other hand, of every other thing deserves to
be called self-hatred, since it deprives us of our true self-love,
which is God. Hence ‘Him love, Who loveth thee,’ that is, Love, God;
and ‘him leave who doth not love thee,’ that is, all other things, from
God downwards.”[225]
“God so loves the soul, and is so ready to give it His graces, that,
when He is impeded by some sin, then men say: ‘Thou hast offended God,’
that is, thou hast driven away God from thee, Who, with so much love,
was desiring to do thee good. And men say this, although it is really
man who then suffers the damage and who offends his own true self. But
because God loves us more than we love our own selves, and gives more
care to our true utility than we do ourselves, therefore does He get
designated as the one who is offended. And, indeed, if God could be the
recipient of suffering, it would be when, by sin, He is driven away
by and from us.” “This corrupt expression: ‘Thou hast offended God.’”
“Thou couldst discover, (O soul,) that God is continually willing
whatsoever our true selves are wishing; He is ever aiming at nothing
but at our own true spiritual advantage.”[226]
Hence happiness and joy, different from all mere pleasure, ever
accompany this reconquest of our true self-love and this our
re-donation of it to its true source. “Man was created for the end
of possessing happiness. And having deviated from this his end, he
has formed for himself a false, selfish self, which in all things
struggles against the soul’s true happiness.” “This divine love is our
proper and true love.” “Man can truly know, by continual experience,
that the love of God is our repose, our joy, and our life; and that
(false) self-love is but constant weariness, sadness, and a (living)
death of our true selves, both in this world and in the next.” “All
sufferings, displeasures, and pains are caused by attachment to the
false self. And although adversities many a time seem to us to be
unreasonable, because of certain considerations which we believe to be
true and indeed quite evident; yet the fact remains that it is our own
imperfection which is preventing us from seeing the truth, and this it
is which causes us to feel pains, suffering, and displeasure.” “O Love!
if others feel an obligation to observe Thy commandments, I, on my
part, freely will to have them all ten, because they are all delightful
and full of love.… This is a point which is understandable only to him
who himself experiences it; for in truth the divine precepts, although
they are contrary to our sensuality, are nevertheless according to our
own spirit which, of its very nature, is ever longing to be free from
all bodily sensations, so as to be able to unite itself to God through
love.”[227]
4. _The true self instinctively hungers after God._
The sayings as to the close correspondence between the true self and
God lead us on easily to those about the true self’s instinctive
recognition of God, and its hunger for the possession, for the
_interiorization_ of God. “If I were to see the whole court of heaven
all robed in one and the same manner, so that there would be no
apparent difference between God and the Angels: even then the love
which I have in my heart would recognize God, in the same manner as
does a dog his master. Love knows how, without means, to discover its
End and ultimate Repose.” “If a consecrated Host were to be given me
together with other non-consecrated ones I would, I think, distinguish
It by the taste, as wine from water.”--“When she saw the Sacrament upon
the Altar in the hand of the priest, she would exclaim within herself
(as it were, addressing the priest): ‘O swiftly, swiftly speed It to
the heart, since It is the heart’s own food.’”[228]
5. _Superiority of interior graces over exterior manifestations. No
good within herself apart from divine grace._
Catherine’s hunger for the interiorization of all the external helps
of religion, even, indeed specially, of the Holy Eucharist Itself,
leads us on to her statements as to the superiority of interior
graces and dispositions over all exterior manifestations and sensible
consolations, and as to the nature of acts produced by the false self
or apart from the grace of God. “If we would esteem the operations of
God” as they truly deserve, “we should attend more to things interior
than to exterior ones.… The true light makes me see and understand that
we must not look to what proceedeth from God to aid us in some special
necessity and for His glory, but that we must look solely to the pure
love with which He performs His work with regard to us. When the soul
perceives how direct and pure are the operations of love, and that this
love is not intent upon any benefit that we could confer upon It, then
indeed the soul also desires, in its turn, to love with a pure love,
and from the motive of the divine love alone.”[229]
“This not-eating of mine is an operation of God, independent of my
will, hence I can in nowise glory in it; nor should we marvel at it,
for to Him such an operation is as nothing.”--And to her Confessor
Don Marabotto she says reprovingly, when he too wanted to smell the
strange, strengthening odour which she smelt on his hand: “Such things
as God alone can give” (_i.e._ states and conditions in the production
of which the soul does not co-operate) “He does not give to him who
seeks them; indeed, He gives them only on occasion of great need, and
in order that we may draw great spiritual profit from them.”[230]
“If I do anything that is evil, I do it myself alone, nor can I
attribute the blame to the Devil or to any other creature but only to
my own self-will, sensuality, and other such malign movements. And if
all the Angels were to declare that there was any good in me, I would
refuse to believe them, because I clearly recognize how that all good
is in God alone, and that in me, without divine grace, there is nothing
but deficiency.”--“I would not that, to my separate self, even one
single meritorious act should ever be attributed, even though I could
at the same time be certified of no more falling from henceforward and
of being saved; because such an attribution would be to me as though
a Hell.” “Rather would I remain in danger of eternal damnation than
be saved by, and see, such an act of the separate self.” “The one sole
thing in myself in which I glory is that I see in myself nothing in
which I can glory.”
“Yet it is necessary that we should labour and exercise ourselves,
since divine grace does not give life nor render pleasing unto God
except that which the soul has worked; and without work on our part
grace refuses to save.”--“We must never wish anything other than what
happens from moment to moment, all the while, however, exercising
ourselves in goodness. And to refuse to exercise oneself in goodness,
and to insist upon simply awaiting what God might send, would be simply
to tempt God.”[231]
6. _God is Pure Love, Grace, Peace, and the Soul’s True Self._
The passages concerning the close relations between man’s pure love
and instinct for God, and Pure Love, God Himself, easily lead us on
to those in which Pure Love, Peace, Grace, the True Self, indeed the
Essence of all things are positively identified with God. “Hearing
herself called” to any office of her state or of charity, “she would,”
even though apparently absorbed in ecstatic prayer, “arise at once,
and go without any contention of mind. And she acted thus, because she
fled all self-seeking as though it were the devil. And she felt at such
times as though she could best express her feelings by means of the
glorious Apostle’s words: ‘Who then shall separate me from the love of
_God_?’ and the remainder of the great passage. And she would say: ‘I
seem to see how that immovable mind of St. Paul extended much further
than he was able to express in words; since Pure Love is God Himself:
who then shall be able to separate Him from Himself?’” Elsewhere and
on other occasions we find her declaring: “Love is God Himself”; “Pure
Love is no other than God”; “the Divine love is the very God, infused
by His own immense Goodness into our hearts.”[232]
She also declares that: “Grace is God”; that “Peace is God,”--“wouldest
thou that I show thee what thing God is? Peace,--that peace which no
man finds, who departs from Him.” And further still: “The proper centre
of every one is God Himself”; “my _Me_ is God, nor do I recognize any
other _Me_, except my God Himself;” “my Being is God, not by simple
participation but by a true transformation of my Being.” “God is my
Being, my _Me_, my Strength, my Beatitude, my Good, my Delight.” Indeed
“the glorious God is the whole essence of things both visible and
invisible.”[233]
All these startling statements are but so many expressions of one of
the most characteristic moods and attitudes of her mind and heart. For
in her vehemence of love and thirst for unification she would exclaim:
“I will have nothing to do with a love that would be _for_ God or _in_
God; this is a love which pure love cannot bear: since pure love is
(simply) God Himself”; “I cannot abide to see that word _for_, and that
word _in_, since they denote to my mind a something that can stand
between God and myself.”[234]
All this doctrine would be summed up by her in certain favourite
expressions. “She was wont often to pronounce these words: ‘Sweetness
of God, Fulness of God, Goodness of God, Purity of God’”; and at a
later time “she had continually on her lips the term ‘(clear) Fulness’”
(Self-adequation, _nettezza_).[235]
II. SIN, PURIFICATION, ILLUMINATION.
1. _The soul’s continuous imperfection. Self-love and Pure Love, their
contradictory characters. Every man capable of Pure Love._
Catherine’s extreme sensitiveness is no doubt a chief cause of the
peculiar form in which she experiences her sinfulness and faults
and their actually slow purification, as expressed in those of her
sayings which refer to the growth of love and to the continuous
imperfections of the soul. “From the time when I began to love Him,
that love has never failed me”; “indeed it has continually grown unto
its consummation in the depths of my heart.” This growth takes place
only step by step; and is in reality never complete, and never without
certain imperfections. “The creature is incapable of knowing anything
but what God gives it from day to day. If it could know (beforehand)
the successive degrees that God intends to give it, it would never
be quieted.” “When from time to time I would advert to the matter,
it seemed to me that my love was complete; but later, as time went
on and as my sight grew clearer, I became aware that I had had many
imperfections.… I did not recognize them at first, because God-Love was
determined to achieve the whole only little by little, for the sake of
preserving my physical life, and so as to keep my behaviour tolerable
for those with whom I lived. For otherwise, with such other insight,
so many excessive acts would ensue, as to make one insupportable to
oneself and to others.” “Every day I feel that the motes are being
removed, which this Pure Love casts out (_cava fuori_). Man cannot see
these imperfections; indeed, since, if he saw these motes, he could
not bear the sight, God ever lets him see the work he has achieved, as
though no imperfections remained in it. But all the time God does not
cease from continuing to remove them.” “From time to time, I feel that
many instincts are being consumed within me, which before had appeared
to be good and perfect; but when once they have been consumed, I
understand that they were bad and imperfect.… These things are clearly
visible in the mirror of truth, that is of Pure Love, where everything
is seen crooked which before appeared straight.”[236]
And yet the slowness of this purification is, in the last resort,
caused, if not by the incomplete purity of her love, at least by the
deep-rootedness and evasive character of the wrong self-love that has
to be extirpated. “This our self-will is so subtle and so deeply rooted
within our own selves, and defends itself with so many reasons, that,
when we cannot manage to carry it out in one way, we carry it out in
another. We do our own wills under many covers (pretexts),--of charity,
of necessity, of justice, of perfection.” But pure love sees through
all these covers: “I saw this love to have so open and so pure an eye,
its sight to be so subtle and its seeing so far-reaching, that I stood
astounded.” “True love wills to stand naked, without any kind of cover,
in heaven and on earth, since it has not anything shameful to conceal.”
And “this naked love ever sees the truth; whilst self-love can neither
see it nor believe in it.” “Pure love loves God without any _for_ (any
further motive).”[237]
And man, every man, is capable of this pure love and of the truth which
such love sees: “I see every one to be capable of my tender Love.”
“Truth being, by its very nature, communicable to all, cannot be the
exclusive property of any one.”[238]
2. _Exactingness of Pure Love._
The next group of sayings deals with the purity of Love, and the
severity with which this purity progressively eliminates all selfish
motives and attachments, whilst itself becoming increasingly its
own exceeding great beatitude. “Pure Love loves God without why or
wherefore (_perchè_)” “Since Love took over the care of everything,
I have not taken care of anything, nor have I been able to work with
my intellect, memory and will, any more than if I had never had
them. Indeed every day I feel myself more occupied in Him, and with
greater fire.” “I had given the keys of the house to Love, with ample
permission to do all that was necessary, and determined to have no
consideration for soul or body, but to see that, of all that the law of
pure love required, there should not be wanting the slightest particle
(_minimo chè_). And I stood so occupied in contemplating this work of
Love, that if He had cast me, body and soul, into hell, hell itself
would have appeared to me all love and consolation.”[239]
Yet the corresponding, increasing constraint of the false self is most
real. “I find myself every day more restricted, as if a man were
(first) confined within the walls of a city, then in a house with an
ample garden, then in a house without a garden, then in a hall, then in
a room, then in an ante-room, then in the cellar of the house with but
little light, then in a prison without any light at all; and then his
hands were tied and his feet were in the stocks, and then his eyes were
bandaged, and then he would not be given anything to eat, and then no
one would be able to speak to him; and then, to crown all, every hope
were taken from him of issuing thence as long as life lasted. Nor would
any other comfort remain to such an one, than the knowledge that it was
God who was doing all this, through love with great mercy; an insight
which would give him great contentment. And yet this contentment does
not diminish the pain or the oppression.”[240]
3. _Blinding effect of all self-seeking. The gradual transformation of
the soul._
There is next a group of sayings as to the immense, blinding and
staining effect of even slight self-seekings, and as to how God
gradually transforms the soul. “God and Sin, however slight, cannot
live peaceably side by side (_stare insieme_). Since some little thing
that you may have in your eye does not let you see the sun, we can make
a comparison between God and the sun, and then between intellectual
vision and that of the bodily eye.” “After considering things as they
truly are, I find myself constrained to live without self.” “Since the
time when God has given the light to the soul, it can no more desire
to operate by means of that part of itself which is ever staining
all things and rendering turbid the clear water of God’s grace. The
soul then offers and remits itself entirely to Him, so that it can no
more operate except to the degree and in the manner willed by tender
Love Himself; and henceforth it does not produce works except such
as are pure, full and sincere; and these are the works that please
God-Love.”[241]
“I will not name myself either for good or for evil, lest this my
(selfish) part should esteem itself to be something.” “Being determined
to join myself unto God, I am in every manner bound to be the enemy
of His enemies; and since I find nothing that is more His enemy than
is self in me, I am constrained to hate this part of me more than any
other thing; indeed, because of the contrariety that subsists between
it and the spirit, I am determined to separate it from all the goods of
this world and of the next, and to esteem it no more than if it were
not.”[242]
“When she saw others bewailing their evil inclinations, and forcing
themselves greatly to resist them, and yet the more they struggled to
produce a remedy for their defects, the more did they commit them,
she would say to them: ‘You have subjects for lamentation (_tu hai li
guai_) and bewail them, and I too would be having and bewailing them;
you do evil and bewail it, and I should be doing and be bewailing it
as you do, if God Almighty were not holding me. You cannot defend
yourself, nor can I defend myself. Hence it is necessary that we
renounce the care of ourselves unto Him, Who can defend this our true
self; and He will then do that which we cannot do.’”[243]
“As to the annihilating of man, which has to be made in God, she spoke
thus: ‘Take a bread, and eat it. When you have eaten it, its substance
goes to nourish the body, and the rest is eliminated, because nature
cannot use it at all, and indeed, if nature were to retain it, the
body would die. Now, if that bread were to say to you: “Why dost thou
remove me from my being? if I could, I would defend myself to conserve
myself, an action natural to every creature”: you would answer: “Bread,
thy being was ordained for a support for my body, a body which is of
more worth than thou; and hence thou oughtest to be more contented with
thine end than with thy being. Live for thine end, and thou wilt not
care about thy being, but thou wilt exclaim (to the body): ‘Swiftly,
swiftly draw me forth from my being, and put me within the operation
of that end of mine, for which I was created.’” … The soul, by the
operation of God, eliminates from the body all the superfluities and
evil habits acquired by sin, and retains within itself the purified
body, which body thenceforth performs its operations by means of
these purified senses.… And, when the soul has consumed all the evil
inclinations of the body, God consumes all the imperfections of the
soul.’”[244]
In each particular instance, the process was wont to be as follows:
“When her selfish part saw itself tracked down by Love, Catherine
would turn to Him and say: ‘Even though it pain sense, content Thy
will: despoil me of this spoil and clothe me with Love full, pure and
sincere.’”[245]
4. _Suddenness and gratuitousness of God’s light; the obstacles to its
operation._
We get next a set of apparently contrary sayings, concerning the
suddenness of God’s illumination; how the degree of this light cannot
be determined by man; and what are, nevertheless, the conditions under
which it will not act. In some cases, “the soul is made to know in an
instant, by means of a new light above itself, all that God desires it
to know, and this with so much certainty that it would be impossible to
make the soul believe otherwise. Nor is more shown it than is necessary
for leading it to greater perfection.” “This light is not sought by
man, but God gives it unto man when He chooses; neither does the man
himself know how he knows the thing that he is made to know. And if
perchance man were determined to seek to know a little further than he
has been made to know, he would achieve nothing, but would remain like
unto a stone, without any capacity.”[246]
And she would pray: “Be Thou my understanding; (thus) shall I know that
which it may please Thee that I should know. Nor will I henceforth
weary myself with seeking; but I will abide in peace with Thine
understanding, which shall wholly occupy my mind.” “If a man would see
properly in spiritual matters, let him pluck out the eyes of his own
presumption.” “He who gazes too much upon the sun’s orb, makes himself
blind; even thus, I think, does pride blind many, who want to know too
much.” “When God finds a soul that does not move, He operates within it
in His own manner, and puts His hand to greater things. He takes from
this soul the key of His treasures which He had given to it, so that it
might be able to enjoy them; and gives to this same soul the care of
His presence, which entirely absorbs it.”[247]
5. _God’s way of winning souls and raising them towards pure love. The
fruits of full trust._
The next group can be made up of passages descriptive of the dealings
adopted by God with a view to first winning souls as He finds them,
and then raising them above mercenary hope or slavish fear; and of the
childlike fearlessness inspired by perfect trust in God. As to the
winning them, she says: “The selfishness of man is so contrary to God
and rebellious against Him, that God Himself cannot induce the soul
to do His will, except by certain stratagems (_lusinghe_): promising
it things greater than those left, and giving it, even in this life,
a certain consoling relish (_gusto_). And this He does, because He
perceives the soul to love things visible so much, that it would never
leave one, unless it saw four.”[248]
And, as to God’s raising of the soul, she propounds the deep doctrine,
which only apparently contradicts the divine method just enunciated,
as to the necessary dimness of the soul’s light with regard to
the intrinsic consequences of its own acts, a dimness necessary,
because alone truly purificatory, for the time that runs between its
conversion, when, since it is still weak, it requires to see, and its
condition of relative purity, when, since it is now strong, it can
safely be again allowed to see.“ If a man were to see that which, in
return for his good deeds, he will have in the life to come, he would
cease to occupy himself with anything but heavenly things. But God,
desiring that faith should have its merit, and that man should not do
good from the motive of selfishness, gives him that knowledge little
by little, though always sufficiently for the degree of faith of which
the man is then capable. And God ends by leading him to so great a
light as to things that are above, that faith seems to have no further
place.--On the other hand, if man knew that which hereafter he will
have to suffer if he die in the miserable state of sin, I feel sure
that, for fear of it, he would let himself be killed rather than commit
one single sin. But God, unwilling as He is that man should avoid doing
evil from the motive of fear, does not allow him to see so terrifying a
spectacle, although He shows it in part to such souls as are so clothed
and occupied by His pure love that fear can no more enter in.”[249]
And as to the full trust of pure love, we have the following: “God let
her hear interiorly: ‘I do not want thee henceforward to turn thine
eyes except towards Love; and here I would have thee stay and not to
move, whatever happens to thee or to others, within or without’; ‘he
who trusts in Me, should not doubt about himself.’”[250]
And this Love gives of itself so fully to those that give themselves
fully to It, that when asked by such souls to impetrate some grace
for them she would say: “I see this tender Love to be so courteously
attentive to these my spiritual children, that I cannot ask of It
anything for them, but can only present them before His face.” In other
cases, as in those of beginners when sick and dying, she would be
“drawn to pray for” a soul, and would “impetrate” some special “grace
for it.” “Lord, give me this soul,” she would at times pray aloud, “I
beg Thee to give it me, for indeed Thou canst do so.” And “when she was
drawn to pray for something, she would be told in her mind: ‘Command,
for love is free to do so.’”[251]
III. THE THREE CATEGORIES AND THE TWO WAYS.
The next set of sayings so eminently constitutes the aggregation, if
not the system, of categories under and with which Catherine habitually
sees her types and pictures, and thinks and feels her experiences of
divine things, that it will require careful discrimination and grouping.
1. _The Three Categories: “In” Concentration; “Out” Liberation; “Over,”
Elevation._
There is, first, the great category of _in_, _within_, _down into_;
that is, recollection, concentration. “The love which I have within
my heart.” “Since I began to love It, never again has that Love
diminished; indeed It has ever grown to Its own fulness, within my
innermost heart.” Hence she would say to those who dwelt in admiration
of her psycho-physical peculiarities: “If you but had experience
(_sapeste_) of another thing which I feel within me!” And again,“If
we would esteem (aright) the operations of God, we must attend more
to interior than to exterior things.” And, with regard to the Holy
Eucharist, she would whisper, when seeing at Mass the Priest about to
communicate: “O swiftly, swiftly speed It down to the heart, since it
is the heart’s own food ”; and she would declare, with regard to her
own Communion: “In the same instant in which I had It in my mouth, I
felt It in my heart.”[252]
There is, next, the category of _out_, _outside_, _outwards_; that is,
liberation, ecstasy. “The soul which came out from God pure and full
has a natural instinct to return to God as full and pure (as it came).”
“The soul finds itself bound to a body entirely contrary to its own
nature, and hence expects with desire its separation from the body.”
“God grants the grace, to some persons, of making their bodies into
a Purgatory (already) in this world.” “When God has led the soul on
to its last stage (_passo_), the soul is so full of desire to depart
from the body to unite itself with God, that its body appears to it a
Purgatory, keeping it far apart from its (true) object.” “The prison,
in which I seem to be, is the world; the chain is the body”; “to noble
(_gentili_) souls, death is the end of an obscure prison; to the
remainder, it is a trouble,--to such, that is, as have fixed all their
care upon what is but so much dung (_fango_).” And, whilst strenuously
mortifying the body, she would answer its resistances, as though so
many audible complainings, and say: “If the body is dying, well, let
it die; if the body cannot bear the load, well, leave the body in the
lurch (O soul).”[253]
And all this imprisonment is felt as equivalent to being outside of
the soul’s true home. “I seem to myself to be in this world like those
who are out of their home, and who have left all their friends and
relations, and who find themselves in a foreign land; and who, having
accomplished the business on which they came, stand ready to depart and
to return home,--home, where they ever are with heart and mind, having
indeed so ardent a love of their country (_patria_), that one day spent
in getting there would appear to them to last a year.”[254]
And this feeling of outsideness, seen here with regard to the relations
of the soul to the body and to the world, we find again with regard to
sanctity and the soul. In this latter case also the greater is felt to
be (as it were) entrapped, and contained only very partially within the
lesser; and as though this greater could and did exist, in its full
reality, only outside of the lesser. “I can no more say ‘blessed’ to
any saint, taken in himself, because I feel it to be an inappropriate
(_deforme_) word”; “I see how all the sanctity which the saints
have, is outside of them and all in God.” Indeed she sums this up in
the saying: “I see that anything perfect is entirely outside of the
creature; and that a thing is entirely imperfect, when the creature can
at all contain it.” Hence “the Blessed possess (_hanno_) blessedness,
and yet they do not possess it. For they possess it, only in so far
as they are annihilated in their own selves and are clothed with God;
and they do not possess it, in so far as they remain (_si trovano_) in
their particular (_proprio_) being, so as to be able to say: ‘_I_ am
blessed.’”[255]
There is, in the third place, the category of _over_, _above_,
_upwards_; that is elevation, sublimation. We will begin with cases
where it is conjoined with the previous categories, and will move on
into more and more pure aboveness. “I am so placed and submerged in His
immense love, that I seem as though in the sea entirely under water,
and could on no side touch, see, or feel anything but water.” And “if
the sea were the food of love, there would exist no man nor woman that
would not go and drown himself (_affogasse_) in it; and he who was
dwelling far from this sea, would engage in nothing else but in walking
to get to it and to immerse himself within it.”[256] The soul here
feels the water on every side of it, yet evidently chiefly above it,
for it has had to plunge in, to get _under_ the water.
“Listen to what Fra Jacopone says in one of his Lauds, which begins,
‘O Love of Poverty.’ He says: ‘That which appears to thee (to be), is
not; so high above is that which _is_. (True) elevation (_superbia_)
is in heaven; earthy lowness (_umiltà_) leads to the soul’s own
destruction.’ He says then: ‘That which appears to thee,’ that is, all
things visible, ‘are not,’ and have not true being in them: ‘so high’
and great ‘is He who _is_,’ that is, God, in whom is all true being.
‘Elevation is in heaven,’ that is, true loftiness and greatness is
in heaven and not on earth; ‘earthy lowness leads to the soul’s own
destruction,’ that is, affection placed in these created things, which
are low and vile, since they have not in them true being, produces
this result.”--“I feel,” she says in explanation of what and how she
knows, “a first thing above the intellect; and above this thing I feel
another one and a greater; and above this other one, another, still
more great; and so up and up does one thing go above the other, each
thing ever greater (than its predecessors), that I conclude it to be
impossible to express even a spark (scintilla) as to It” (the highest
and greatest of the whole series, God). Here it is interesting still to
trace the influence of the same passage of Jacopone (again referred to
in this place by the _Vita_), and to see why she introduced “greatness”
alongside of “loftiness” into her previous paraphrase.[257]
Now this vivid impression of a strong upward movement, combined with
the feeling of being in and under something, gives the following image,
used by her during her last illness: “I can no longer manage to live
on in this life, because I feel as though I were in it like cork under
water.” And this “above,” unlike to “outside,” is accompanied by the
image, not of clothing but of nakedness; the clothes are left below.
“This vehement love said to her, on one occasion: ‘What art thou
thinking of doing? I want thee all for myself. I want to strip thee
naked, naked. The higher up thou shalt go, however great a perfection
thou mayest have, the higher will I ever stand above thee, to ruin all
thy perfections’”--this, of course, inasmuch as she is still imperfect
and falls short of the higher and higher perfections to which her soul
is being led.[258]
And as to man’s faculties, she says: “As the intellect reaches higher
(_supera_) than speech, so does love reach higher than intellect.”
And again, as a universal law: “When pure love speaks, it ever speaks
above nature; and all the things which it does and thinks and feels are
always above nature.”[259]
2. _The Two Ways: the Negative Way, God’s Transcendence; the Positive
Way, God’s Immanence._
Now these three categories of within and inward, outside and outward,
above and upward position and movement, can lead, and do actually lead
in Catherine’s case, to two separate lines of thought and feeling. And
these lines are each too much a necessary logical conclusion from the
constant working of these categories, and they are each again far too
much, and even apart from these categories, expressive of two rival but
complementary experiences, for either of them to be able to suppress
or even modify the other. Each has its turn in the rich, free play
of Catherine’s life. I will take the negative line first, and then
the positive, so as to finish up with affirmation, which will thus,
as in her actual experience and practice, be all the deeper and more
substantial, because it has passed, and is ever re-passing, through a
process of limitation and purification.
First, then, if grace and God are only within, _and_ only without,
_and_ only above, she will and does experience contradiction and
paradox in all attempts at explaining reality; she will thus find
things to be obscure instead of clear; and she will end by affirming
the unutterableness, the unthinkableness of God, indeed of all reality.
“I see without eyes, I understand without understanding, I feel without
feeling, and I taste without taste.” “When the creature is purified,
it sees the True; and such a sight is not a sight.” “The sight of how
it is God” who sends the soul its purifying trials “gives the soul
a great contentment; and yet this contentment does not diminish the
pain.” Still, “pure love cannot suffer; nor can it understand what is
meant by pain or torment.” “The sun, which at first seemed so clear
to me, now seems obscure; what used to seem sweet to me, now seems
bitter: because all beauties and all sweetnesses that have an admixture
of the creature are corrupt and spoilt.” “As to Love, only this can
we understand about It, that It is incomprehensible to the mind.” “So
long as a person can still talk of things divine, and can relish,
understand, remember and desire them, he has not yet come to port.” For
indeed “all that can be said about God is not God, but only certain
smallest fragments which fall from (His) table.”[260]
And yet those experiences of God’s presence as, apparently, in a
special manner within us, and without us, and above us, also lead, by
means of another connection of ideas, to another, to a positive result.
For those experiences can lead us to dwell, not upon the difference of
the “places,” but upon the apparent fact that He is in a “place” of
some sort, in space somewhere, the exact point of which is still to
find; and, by thus bringing home to the mind this underlying paradox
of the whole position, they can help to make the soul shrink away from
this false clarity, and to fall back upon the deep, dim, true view of
God as existing, for our apprehension, in certain states of soul alone,
states which have all along been symbolized for us by these different
“places” and “positions.” And thus what before was a paradox and
mystery _qua_ space, because at the same time within and without, and
because not found by the soul “within” unless through getting “without”
itself, becomes now a paradox and mystery _qua_ state, because the soul
at one and the same time attains to its own happiness and loses it,
indeed attains happiness only through deliberately sacrificing it. And
we thus come to the great central secret of all life and love, revealed
to us in its fulness in the divine paradox of our Lord’s life and
teaching.
God, then, first seems to be in a place, indeed to be a place. “I see
all good to be in one only place, that is God.” “The spirit can find no
place except God, for its repose.”[261]
If God be in a place, we cannot well conceive of Him as other than
outside of and above the soul, which itself, even God being in a
place, will be in a place also. “God has created the soul pure and
full, with a certain God-ward instinct, which brings happiness in its
train (_istinto beatifico_).” And “the nearer the soul approaches” (is
joined, _si accosta_) “to God, the more does the instinct attain to
its perfection.” Here the instinct within pushes the soul “onwards,
outwards, upwards.” And the nearer the soul gets to God in front,
outside and above of it, the happier it becomes: because, the more it
satisfies this its instinct, the less it suffers from the distance from
God, and the more does it enjoy His proximity.[262]
This approach is next conceived of as increasingly conveying a
knowledge to the soul of God’s desire for union with it; but such
an approach can only be effected by means of much fight against and
through the intervening ranks of the common enemies of the two friends;
and, as we have already seen, chief amongst these enemies is the soul’s
false self. “The nearer man approaches to (_si accosta_) God, the more
he knows that God desires to unite Himself with us.” “Being determined
to approach God, I am constrained to be the enemy of His enemies.”[263]
And then, that “place” in which God was pictured as being, is found
to be a state, a disposition of the soul. Now as long as the dominant
tendency was to think God with clearness, and hence to picture Him as
in space, that same tendency would, naturally enough, represent this
place He was in as outside and above the soul. For if He is in space,
He is pictured as extended, and hence as stretching further than, and
outside of, the soul, which itself also is conceived as spacially
extended; and if He is in a particular part of space, that part can
only, for a geocentric apprehension of the world, be thought of as
the upper part of space. But in proportion as the picture of physical
extension and position gives way to its prompting cause, and the latter
is expressed, as far as possible, unpictorially and less clearly, but
more simply as what it is, viz. a spiritual intention and disposition,
she is still driven indeed, in order to retain some clearness of
speech, to continue to speak as of a place and of a spacial movement,
but she has now no longer three categories but only one, viz. _within_
and _inwards_. For a physical quantity can be and move in different
places and directions in space; but a spiritual quality can only be
experienced within the substance of the spirit. “God created the soul
pure and full, with a certain beatific instinct of Himself” (_i.e._
of His actual presence). And hence, “in proportion as it (again)
approaches to the conditions of its original creation, this beatific
instinct ever increasingly discovers itself and grows stronger and
stronger.”[264]
And God being thus not without, nor indeed in space at all, she can
love Him everywhere: indeed the _what_ she is now constitutes the
_where_ she is; in a camp she can love God as dearly as in a convent,
and heaven itself is already within her soul, so that only a change in
the soul’s dispositions could constitute hell for that soul, even in
hell itself. “O Love,” she exclaims, after the scene with the Friar,
who had attempted to prove to her that his state of life rendered him
more free and apt to love God, “who then shall impede me from loving
Thee? Even if I were in the midst of a camp of soldiers, I could not
be impeded from loving Thee.” She had, during the interview, explained
her meaning: “If I believed that your religious habit would give me
but one additional glimpse” (spark, scintilla) “of love, I would
without doubt take it from you by force, were I not allowed to have
it otherwise. That you may be meriting more than myself, I readily
concede, I am not seeking after that; let those things be yours. But
that I cannot love Him as much as you can do, you will never succeed
in making me even understand.” “I stood so occupied in seeing the work
of Love (within my soul), that if it had thrown me with soul and body
into hell, hell itself would have appeared to me to be nothing but love
and consolation.” And, on another occasion, she says to her disciples:
“If, of that which this heart of mine is feeling, one drop were to fall
into hell, hell itself would become all life eternal”; and she accepts
with jubilation this interpretation of her words, on the part of one
of them (no doubt Vernazza): “Hell exists in every place where there
is rebellion against Love, God; but Life Eternal, in every place where
there is union with that same Love, God.”[265]
And she now cannot but pray to possess all this love,--love being now
pictured as a food, as a light, or as water, bringing life to the soul.
“O tender Love, if I thought that but one glimpse of Thee were to be
wanting to me, truly and indeed I could not live.” “Love, I want Thee,
the whole of Thee.” “Never can love grow quiet, until it has arrived at
its ultimate perfection.” And, in gaining all God, she gains all other
things besides: “O my God, all mine, everything is mine; because all
that belongs to God seems all to belong to me.”[266]
But if she loves all God, she can, on the other hand, love only Him:
how, then, is she to manage to love her neighbour? “Thou commandest me
to love my neighbour,” she complains to her Love, “and yet I cannot
love anything but Thee, nor can I admit anything else and mix it up
with Thee. How, then, shall I act?” And she received the interior
answer: “He who loves me, loves all that I love.”[267]
But soon her love, as generous as it is strong, becomes uneasy as
to its usual consequences,--the consolations, purely spiritual or
predominantly psychical or even more or less physical, which come in
its train. And even though she is made to understand that at least the
first are necessarily bound up with love, in exact proportion to its
generosity, she is determined, to the last, to love for love itself,
and not for love’s consequences, battling thus to keep her spirituality
free from the slightest, subtlest self-seeking. “This soul said to its
Love: ‘Can it really be, O tender Love, that Thou art destined never to
be loved without consolation or the hope of some advantage in heaven or
on earth” accruing to Thy lover?’” “And she received the answer, that
such an union could not exist without a great peace and contentment of
the soul.” And yet she continues to affirm: “Conscience, in its purity,
cannot bear anything but God alone; of all the rest, it cannot suffer
the least trifle.”[268]
And she practices and illustrates this doctrine in detail. “One day,
after Communion, God gave her so great a consolation that she remained
in ecstasy. When she had returned to her usual state, she prayed: ‘O
Love, I do not wish to follow Thee for the sake of these delights, but
solely from the motive of true love.’” On another similar occasion she
prays: “I do not want that which proceedeth from Thee; I want Thyself
alone, O tender Love.” And again, “on one occasion, after Communion,
there came to her so much odour and so much sweetness that she seemed
to herself to be in Paradise. But instantly she turned towards her
Lord and said: ‘O Love, art Thou perhaps intending to draw me to Thee
by means of these sensible consolations (_sapori_)? I want them not; I
want nothing except Thee alone.’”[269]
IV. THE OTHER WORLDS.
We have now gone through Catherine’s contemplations and conceptions as
regards the soul’s relations with its true Life and Love, here and now,
on this side the veil. We have, in conclusion, to try and reproduce
and illustrate her teaching as to these relations on the other side of
death.
1. _No absolute break in the spirit’s life at the body’s death._
Now here especially is it necessary ever to bear in mind her own
presupposition, which runs throughout and sustains all her doctrine.
For she is sure, beyond ever even raising a question concerning the
point, that her soul and God, her two great realities and experiences,
remain substantially the same behind the veil as before it, and hence
that the most fundamental and universal of the soul’s experiences
_here_ can safely be trusted to obtain _there_ also. Hence, too, only
such points in the Beyond are dwelt on as she can thus experimentally
forecast; but these few points are, on the other hand, developed with
an extraordinary vividness and fearless, rich variety of illustration.
And it is abundantly clear that this assumption of the essential unity
and continuity of the soul’s life here and hereafter, is itself already
a doctrine, and a most important one. We will then take it as such, and
begin with it as the first of her teachings as to the Beyond.
“This holy soul,” says the highly authoritative prologue to the
_Trattato_, in close conformity with her constant assumptions and
declarations, “finding herself, whilst still in the flesh, placed in
the Purgatory of God’s burning love,--a love which consumed (burnt,
_abbrucciava_) and purified her from whatever she had to purify, in
order that, on passing out of this life, she might enter at once
into the immediate presence (_cospetto_) of her tender Love, God:
understood, by means of this furnace of love, how the souls of the
faithful abide in the place of Purgatory, to purge themselves of every
stain of sin that, in this life, had been left unpurged. And as she,
placed in the loving Purgatory of the divine fire, abode united to the
divine Love, and content with all that It wrought within her, so she
understood it to be with the souls in Purgatory.”[270]
2. _Hell._
The details of her doctrine as to the Beyond we can group under three
heads: the unique, momentary experience and solitary, instantaneous act
of the soul, at its passing hence and beginning its purgation there;
the particular dispositions, joys and sufferings of the soul during
the process of purification, as well as the cause and manner of the
cessation of that process; and (generally treated by her as a simple
contrast to this her direct and favourite purgatorial contemplation)
the particular dispositions, sufferings, and alleviations of lost
souls. Since her teachings on the last-named subject are more of an
incidental character, I shall take them first, and make them serve,
as they do with her, as a foil to her doctrine of the Intermediate
State: whilst her conception of Heaven, already indicated throughout
her descriptions of Pure Love, is too much of a universal implication,
and too little a special department of her teaching, to be capable of
presentation here.
As to the cause of Hell, she says: “It is the will’s opposition to
the Will of God which causes guilt; and as long as this evil will
continues, so long does the guilt continue. For those, then, who have
departed this life with an evil will there is no remission of the
guilt, neither can there be, because there can be no more change of
will.” “In passing out of this life, the soul is established for good
or evil, according to its deliberate purpose at the time; as it is
written, ‘where I shall find thee,’ that is, at the hour of death,
with a will either determined to sin, or sorry for sin and penitent,
‘there will I judge thee.’” Or, in a more characteristic form: “There
is no doubt that our spirit was created to love and enjoy: and it is
this that it goes seeking in all things. But it never finds satiety in
things of time; and yet it goes on hoping, on and on, to be at last
able to find it. And this experience it is that helps me to understand
what kind of a thing is Hell. For I see that man, by love, makes
himself one single thing with God, and finds there every good; and, on
the other hand, that when he is bereft of love, he remains full of as
many woes as are the blessings he would have been capable of, had he
not been so mad.”[271]
And yet, and this is her own beautiful contribution to the traditional
doctrine on this terrible and mysterious subject, neither are the
sufferings of the lost infinite in amount, nor is their will entirely
malign. And both these alleviations evidently exist from the first:
I can find no trace anywhere in her teaching of a gradual mitigation
of either the punishment or the guilt. Indeed, although she always
teaches the mitigation of the suffering, it is only occasionally that
she teaches the persistence of some moral good. Thus her ordinary
teaching is: “Those who are found, at the moment of death, with a will
determined to sin, have with them an infinite degree of guilt, and the
punishment is without end”; “the sweet goodness of God sheds the rays
of His mercy even into Hell: since He might most justly have given to
the souls there a far greater punishment than He has.” “At death God
exercises His justice, yet not without mercy; since even in Hell the
soul does not suffer as much as it deserves.” But occasionally she
goes further afield, and insists on the presence there, not only of
some mercy in the punishment, but also of some good in the will. “When
we shall have departed from this life in a state of sin, God will
withdraw from us His goodness, and will leave us to ourselves, and yet
not altogether: since He wills that in every place His goodness shall
be found and not His justice alone. And if a creature could be found
that did not, to some degree, participate in the divine goodness, that
creature would be, one might say, as malignant as God is good.”[272]
There can be no doubt, as we shall see further on, that this latter is
her full doctrine and is alone entirely consistent with her general
principles.
Certain details of her Hell doctrine which appear in immediate contrast
to, or in harmony with, some special points of her Purgatorial
teaching, had better appear in connection with the latter.
3. _Purgatory; the initial experience and act._
Let us now take, in all but complete contrast to this doctrine as
to Hell, what she has to say about Purgatory. And here we have
first to deal with the initial experience and act, both of them
unique and momentary, of the soul destined for Purgatory. As to that
experience, only one description has been preserved for us. “Once,
and once only, do the souls (that are still liable to, and capable
of, purgation) perceive the cause of (their) Purgatory that they bear
within themselves,--namely in passing out of this life: then, but
never again after that: otherwise self would come in (_vi saria una
proprietà_).”[273]
And this unique and momentary experience is straightway followed by
as unique and momentary an act, free and full, on the part of the
experiencing soul. Catherine has described this act in every kind of
mood, and from the various points of view, already drawn out by us, of
her doctrine, so that we have here again a most impressive and vivid
summing-up and pictorial representation of all her central teaching.
“The soul thus seeing” (its own imperfection) and, “that it
cannot, because of the impediment” (of this imperfection) “attain
(_accostarsi_) to its end, which is God; and that the impediment cannot
be removed (_levato_) from it, except by means of Purgatory, swiftly
and of its own accord (_volontieri_) casts itself into it.”[274] Here
we have the continuation of the outward movement: the soul is here
absolutely impeded in that, now immensely swift, movement, and is
brought to a dead stop, as though by something hard on the soul’s own
surface, which acts as a barrier between itself and God; it is offered
the chance of escaping from this intolerable suffering into the lesser
one of dissolving this hard obstacle in the ocean of the purifying
fire: and straightway plunges into the latter.
“If the soul could find another Purgatory above the actual one,
it would, so as more rapidly to remove from itself so important
(_tanto_) an impediment, instantly cast itself into it, because of the
impetuosity of that love which exists between God and the soul and
tends to conform the soul to God.”[275] Here we have an extension of
the same picturing, interesting because the addition of an upwards to
the outwards introduces a conflict between the image (which evidently,
for the soul’s plunge, requires Purgatory to lie beneath the soul), and
the doctrine (which, taking Purgatory as the means between earth and
heaven, cannot, if any spacial picturing be retained at all, but place
Heaven at the top of the picture, and Purgatory higher up than the soul
which is coming thither from earth). The deep plunge has become a high
jump.
“I see the divine essence to be of such purity, that the soul which
should have within it the least mote (_minimo chè_) of imperfection,
would rather cast itself into a thousand hells, than find itself with
that imperfection in the presence of God.”[276] Here the sense of
touch, of hardness, of a barrier which is checking motion, has given
way to the sense of sight, of stain, of a painful contrast to an
all-pure Presence; and the whole picture is now devoid of motion. We
thus have a transition to the immanental picturing, with its inward
movement or look.
“The soul which, when separated from the body, does not find itself in
that cleanness (_nettezza_) in which it was created, seeing in itself
the stain, and that this stain cannot be purged out except by means
of Purgatory, swiftly and of its own accord casts itself in; and if
it did not find this ordination apt to purge that stain, in that very
moment there would be spontaneously generated (_si generebbe_) within
itself a Hell worse than Purgatory.”[277] Here we have again reached
her immanental conception, where the soul’s concern is with conditions
within itself, and where its joys and sorrows are within. Its trouble
is, in this case, the sense of contrast, between its own original,
still potential, indeed still actual though now only far down,
hidden and buried, true self, and its active, obvious, superficial,
false self. In so far as there is any movement before the plunge, it
is an inward, introspective one; the soul as a whole is, for that
previous moment, not conceived as in motion, but a movement of her
self-observing part or power takes place within her from the surface
to the centre; and only then, after her rapid journey from this her
surface-being to those her fundamental ineradicable requirements, and
after the consequent intolerably painful contrast and conflict within
herself, does she cast herself, with swift wholeheartedness, with all
she is and has, into the purifying place and state.
And, in full harmony with this immanental conception, the greater
suffering which would arise did she abide with this sight of herself
and yet without any moral change is described as springing up
spontaneously within herself. “The soul, seeing Purgatory to have been
ordained for the very purpose of purging away its stains, casts itself
in, and seems to find a great compassion (on the part of God) in being
allowed (able) to do so.” This appears to be only a variety of the
immanental view just given.[278]
4. _Purgatory: the subsequent process._
We have finally to give her doctrine as to the particular dispositions,
joys, and sufferings of the soul during the process of its purgation,
and as to the cause and manner of the cessation of that process.
As to the dispositions, they are generally the same as those which
impelled the soul to put itself in this place or condition. Only
whereas then, during that initial moment, they took the form of a
single act, an initiation of a new condition, now they assume the shape
of a continuous state. Then the will freely tied itself; now it gladly
though painfully abides by its decision and its consequences. Then the
will found the relief and distraction of full, epoch-making action;
now it has but to will and work out the consequences involved in that
generous, all-inclusive self-determination. The range and nature of
this, its continuous action will thus be largely the very reserve of
those of that momentary act. “The souls that are in Purgatory are
incapable of choosing otherwise than to be in that place, nor can
they any more turn their regard (_si voltare_) towards themselves,
and say: ‘I have committed such and such sins, for which I deserve to
tarry here’; nor can they say, ‘Would that I had not done them, that
now I might go to Paradise’; nor yet say, ‘_That_ soul is going out
before me’; nor, ‘I shall go out before _him_.’ They are so completely
satisfied that He should be doing all that pleases Him, and in the way
it pleases Him, that they are incapable of thinking of themselves.”
Indeed they are unable even to see themselves, at least directly, for
“these souls do not see anything, even themselves in themselves or by
means of themselves, but they (only) see themselves in God.” Indeed we
have already seen that to do, or to be able to do, otherwise, would now
“let self come in (_sarebbe una proprietà_).”[279]
And the joys and sufferings, and the original, earthly cause of the
latter, are described as follows. “The souls in Purgatory have their
(active) will conformed in all things to the will of God; and hence
they remain there, content as far as regards their will.” “As far as
their will is concerned, these souls cannot find the pain to be pain,
so completely are they satisfied with the ordinance of God, so entirely
is their (active) will one with it in pure charity. On the other hand,
they suffer a torment so extreme, that no tongue could describe it,
no intellect could form the least idea of it, if God had not made
it known by special grace.” And indeed she says: “I shall cease to
marvel at finding that Purgatory is” in its way as “horrible as Hell.
For the one is made for punishing, the other for purging: hence both
are made for sin, sin which itself is so horrible and which requires
that its punishment and purgation should be conformable to its own
horribleness.” For in Purgatory too there still exist certain remains
of imperfect, sinful habits in the will. “The souls in Purgatory think
much more of the opposition which they discover in themselves to the
will of God,” than they do of their pain. And yet, being here with
their actual will fully at one with God’s purifying action (an action
directed against these remains of passive opposition), “I do not
believe it would be possible to find any joy comparable to that of a
soul in Purgatory, except the joy of the Blessed in Paradise.”[280]
Now the sufferings of the soul are represented either as found by it,
under the form of an obstacle to itself, whilst in motion to attain to
God, a motion which in some passages is outward, in others inward; or
as coming to it, whilst spacially at rest. Only in the latter case is
there a further attempt at pictorially elucidating the nature of the
obstacle and the cessation of the suffering. It is fairly clear that
it is the latter set of passages which most fully suits her general
teaching and even imagery. For, as to the imagery: after that one
movement in which the soul determines its own place, we want it to
abide there, without any further motion. And, as to doctrine: more and
more as the soul’s history is unfolded, should God’s action within it
appear as dominating and informing the soul’s action towards God, and
should change of disposition supplant change of place.
First, then, let us take the clearer but less final conception,
and see the soul in movement, in a struggle for outward motion.
“Because the souls that are in Purgatory have an impediment between
God and themselves, and because the instinct which draws the soul
on to its ultimate end is unable as yet to attain to its fulfilment
(_perfezione_), an extreme fire springs up from thence (within them),
a fire similar to that of Hell.” We have here an application and
continuation of the transcendental imagery, so that the impediment is
outside or on the surface of the soul, and God is outside and above
this again: but the whole picture here, at least as regards the fire,
is obscure and tentative.[281]
Or the soul is still conceived as in movement, but the motion is
downwards from its own surface to its own centre, a centre where
resides its Peace, God Himself. “When a soul approaches more and more
to that state of original purity and innocence in which it had been
created, the instinct of God, bringing happiness in its train (_istinto
beatifico_), reveals itself and increases on and on, with such an
impetuousness of fire that any obstacle seems intolerable.”[282]
Here we have the immanental picturing, the soul moving down, under
the influence of its instinct for God, to ever fuller masses of
this instinct present within the soul’s own centre. But the extreme
abstractness and confusion of the language, which mixes up motion,
different depths of the soul, and various dispositions of spirit, and
which represents the soul as capable of approaching a state which has
ceased to exist, cast doubts on the authenticity of this passage.
In both these sets where the soul is in motion, we hear only of an
impediment in general and without further description; and, in both
cases, the fire springs up because of this impediment, whereas, as we
shall see, in the self-consistent form of her teaching the Fire, God,
is always present: the impediment simply renders this Fire painful, and
that is all.
And next we can take the soul as spacially stationary, and as in
process of qualitative change. Here we get clear and detailed pictures,
both of what is given to the soul and of what is taken away from it.
The images of the positive gain constitute the beautiful sixth chapter
of the _Trattato_. But its present elaborate text requires to be broken
up into three or four variants of one and the same simile, which are
probably all authentic. I give them separately.
“If in the whole world there existed but one loaf of bread to satisfy
the hunger of every creature: in such a case, if the creature had not
that one bread, it could not satisfy its hunger, and hence it would
remain in intolerable pain.”[283] Note how, so far, the nature of the
possession of the bread is not specified, it is simply “had”; and how
the pain seems to remain stationary.
“Man having by nature an instinct to eat: if he does not eat, his
hunger increases continually, since his instinct to eat never fails
him.”[284] Here all is clearer: man now takes the place of the creature
in general; the possession is specified as an eating; the pain is a
hunger; and this hunger is an ever-increasing one.
“If in all the world there were but one loaf of bread, and if only
through seeing it could the creature be satisfied: the nearer that
creature were to approach it (without seeing it and yet knowing
that only the said bread could satisfy it), the more ardently
would its natural desire for the bread be aroused within it (_si
accenderebbe_),--that bread in which all its contentment is centred
(_consiste_).”[285] Here the image for the nature of the appropriation
has been shifted from the least noble of the senses, taste and touch,
to the noblest, sight: there is still a longing, but it is a longing to
see, to exercise and satiate fully the intellectual faculties. And yet
the satiety is evidently conceived not as extending to these faculties
alone, but as including the whole soul and spirit, since bread would
otherwise cease to be the symbol here, and would have been replaced by
light. Note too the subtle complication introduced by the presentation,
in addition to the idea of an increase of hunger owing to lapse of
time, of the suggestion that the increase is caused by a change in the
spacial relations between the hungering creature and its food, and by
an ever-increasing approach of that creature to this food.
“And if the soul were certain of never seeing the bread, at that moment
it would have within it a perfect Hell, and become like the damned, who
are cut off from all hope of ever seeing God, the true Bread. The souls
in Purgatory, on the other hand, hope to see that Bread, and to satiate
themselves to the full therewith; whence they suffer hunger as great as
will be the degree to which they will (eventually) satiate themselves
with the true Bread, God, our Love.”[286] Here it is noticeable how the
specific troubles of Hell and Purgatory are directly described, whereas
the corresponding joys of Heaven are only incidentally indicated; and
how the full sight is not preceded by a partial sight, but simply
by a longing for this full sight, so that, if we were to press the
application of this image, the soul in Purgatory would not see God at
all. And yet, as we have seen above, souls there see, though not their
particular sins, yet their general sinful habits; for what are the
“impediment,” the “imperfection,” the “stain,” which they go on feeling
and seeing, but these habits? And they see themselves, though not in
themselves, yet in God. But, if so, do they not see God?
The answer will doubtless be that, just as they do not see their sins
any more in their specific particularity, but only feel in themselves
a dull, dead remainder of opposition and imperfection, so also they do
not, after the initial moment of action and till quite the end of their
suffering, see God clearly,--as clearly as they do when the process is
at an end. During one instant at death they had seen (as in a picture)
their sins and God, each in their own utterly contrasted concrete
particularity; and this had been the specific cause of their piercing
pain and swift plunge. And then came the period of comparative dimness
and dulness, a sort of general subconsciousness, when their habits of
sin, and God, were felt rather than seen, the former as it were in
front of the latter, but both more vaguely, and yet (and this was the
unspeakable alleviation) now in a state of change and transformation.
For the former, the blots and blurrs, and the sense of contrariety are
fading gradually out of the outlook and consciousness; and the latter,
the light and life, the joy and harmony of the soul, and God, are
looming clearer, nearer, and larger, on and on. And even this initial
feeling, this general perception, this semi-sight and growing sight of
God, is blissful beyond expression; for “every little glimpse that can
be gained of God exceeds every pain and every joy that man can conceive
without it.”[287]
The imagery illustrative of what is taken from the soul, and how it is
taken, is two-fold, and follows in the one case a more transcendental,
in the other case a more immanental, conception, although in each case
God is represented as in motion, and the soul as abiding in the same
place and simply changing its qualitative condition under the influence
of that increasing approach of God and penetration by Him.
The illustration for the more transcendental view is taken from the
sun’s light and fire’s heat and a covering. It is, as a matter of fact,
made up of three sayings: one more vague and subtle, and two more clear
and vivid, sayings. “The joy of a soul in Purgatory goes on increasing
day by day, owing to the inflowing of God into the soul, an inflowing
which increases in proportion as it consumes the impediment to its
own inflowing.”--God’s action upon the imperfect soul is as the sun’s
action upon “a covered object. The object cannot respond to the rays
of the sun which beat upon it (_reverberazione del sole_), not because
the sun ceases to shine,--for it shines without intermission,--but
because the covering intervenes (_opposizione_). Let the covering
be consumed away, and again the object will be exposed to the sun
and will answer to the rays in proportion as the work of destruction
advances.”--Now “Sin is the covering of the soul; and in Purgatory
this covering is gradually consumed by the fire; and the more it is
consumed, the more does the soul correspond and discover itself to the
divine ray. And thus the one (the ray) increases, and the other (the
sin) decreases, till the time (necessary for the completion of the
process) is over.”[288]
It is clear that we have here three parallel passages, each with its
own characteristic image, all illustrative of an identical doctrine:
namely, the persistent sameness of God’s action, viewed in itself, and
of the soul’s reaction, in its essential, central laws, needs, and
aspirations; and the accidental, superficial, intrinsically abnormal,
inhibitory modification effected by sin in that action of God and in
the corresponding reaction of the soul.--The first, dimmer and deeper
saying speaks of an inflowing of God, with her usual combination of
fire-and-water images. We seem here again to have the ocean of the
divine fire, Itself pressing in upon the soul within It, yet here with
pain and oppression, in so far as the soul resists or is unassimilated
to It; and with peace and sustaining power, in so far as the soul
opens out to, and is or becomes similar to, It. We hear only of an
“impediment” in general, perhaps because the influx which beats against
it is imaged as taking place from every side at once.--The second
saying, the most vivid of the three, speaks of sun-light, and of how,
whilst this sun-light itself remains one and the same, its effect
differs upon one and the same object, according as that object is
covered or uncovered. Here we get a “covering,” since the shining is
naturally imaged as coming from one side, from above, only. But here
also it is the same sun which, at one time, does not profit, and, at
another time, gives a renewed life to one and the same object; and it
is clear, that either Catherine here abstracts altogether from the
question as to what consumes the covering, or that she assumes that
this consumption is effected by the sun itself.--The third saying is
the least simple, and is indeed somewhat suspicious in its actual form.
Yet here again we have certainly only one agent, in this case fire,
which again, as in the case of the influx and of the sun-light, remains
identical in itself, but varies in its effects, according as it does
or does not meet with an obstacle. The ray here is a ray primarily
of heat and not of light, but which is felt by the soul at first as
painful, destructive flame, and at last as peaceful, life-giving warmth.
Now, amongst these three parallel sayings, it is that concerning
the inflowing, which leads us gently on to the more immanental
imagery--that of fire and dross. And this image is again given us in a
number of closely parallel variants which now constitute one formally
consecutive paragraph,--the third of Chapter X of the _Trattato_.
“Gold, when once it has been (fully) purified, can be no further
consumed by the action of fire, however great it be; since fire does
not, strictly speaking, consume gold, but only the dross which the gold
may chance to contain. So also with regard to the soul. God holds it
so long in the furnace, until every imperfection is consumed away. And
when it is (thus) purified, it becomes impassible; so that if, thus
purified, it were to be kept in the fire, it would feel no pain; rather
would such a fire be to it a fire of Divine Love, burning on without
opposition, like the fire of life eternal.”[289] Here the imperfection
lies no more, as a covering, on the surface, nor does the purifying
light or fire simply destroy that covering and then affect the bare
surface; but the imperfection is mixed up with the soul, throughout
the soul’s entire depth, and the purification reaches correspondingly
throughout the soul’s entire substance. Yet, as with the covering and
the covered object, so here with the dross and the impure gold, sin
is conceived of as a substance alien to that of the soul. And, so
far, God appears distinct from the fire: He applies it, as does the
goldsmith his fire to the gold. But already there is an indication
of some mysterious relation between the fire of Purgatory and that
of Heaven. For if the very point of the description seems, at first
sight, to be the miraculous character of the reward attached, more
or less arbitrarily, to the soul’s perfect purification, a character
indicated by the fact that now not even fire can further hurt the
soul, yet it remains certain that, the more perfect the soul, the more
must it perceive and experience all things according to their real and
intrinsic nature.
Another conclusion to the same simile is: “Even so does the divine
fire act upon the soul: it consumes in the soul every imperfection.
And, when the soul is thus purified, it abides all in God, without any
foreign substance (_alcuna cosa_) within itself.”[290] Here God and
the fire are clearly one and the same. And the soul does not leave the
fire, nor is any question raised as to what would happen were it to be
put back into it; but the soul remains where it was, in the Fire, and
the Fire remains what it was, God. Only the foreign substance has been
burnt out of the soul, and hence the same Fire that pained it then,
delights it now. Here too, however, God and the soul are two different
substances; and indeed this Fire-and-Gold simile, strictly speaking,
excludes any identification of them.
“The soul, when purified, abides entirely in God; its being is
God.”[291] Here we have the teaching as to the identity of her true
self with God, which we have already found further back. But the soul’s
purification and union with God which there we found illustrated by
the simile, so appropriate to this teaching, of the absorption of food
into the living body, we find indicated here by the much less apt
comparison of the transformation of gold by fire. For in this latter
case, the gold remains a substance distinct from the fire, whereas
the doctrine requires a simile such as a great pure fire expelling
all impurity from a small, impure fire, and then itself continuing
to live on, with this small fire absorbed into itself. But we shall
see later on, why, besides the intrinsic difficulty of finding an at
all appropriate simile for so metaphysical a doctrine, the imagery
always becomes so ambiguous at this point. We shall show that a
confluence of antagonistic doctrines, and some consequent hesitation
in the very teaching itself, contribute to keep the images in this
uncertain state. However, the possibly glossorial importation of this
most authentic teaching of hers into this place and simile only helps
to confirm the identity of the Fire with God, and the non-moving of
the soul, throughout this group of texts. For the gold abides in the
fire, as the soul abides in God; and the identification which is thus
established of the painful with the joyous fire, and of both with God,
is what will have suggested the introduction in this place of the
further identification of the soul with God. And it is the continued
abiding of the identical soul, a soul which has not moved spacially
but has changed qualitatively, in the identical fire, God, which has
helped to suggest the insertion in this place of the doctrine that the
soul, in its true essence, is identical with God. God, in this final
identification, would be the gold, the pure gold of the soul; and this
pure gold itself would generate a fire for the consumption of all
impurity, in proportion as such impurity gained ground within it. And,
in proportion as this consumption takes place, does the fire sink, and
leave nothing but the pure gold, the fire’s cause, essence, and end. In
any case, we have here one more most authentic and emphatic enforcement
of the teaching that the place of Purgatory is really a state; that its
painfulness is intrinsic; and that it is caused by the partial discord
between spirit and Spirit, and is ended by the final complete concord
between both.