We have dwelt on Catherine, the friend and guide of souls; but it is
Catherine the mystic, Catherine the friend of God, before whom the ages
bend in reverence. The final value of her letters lies in their
revelation, not of her dealings with other souls, but of God's dealings
with her own.
But in presence of the record of these deep experiences, silence is better
than words: is, indeed, for most of us the only possible attitude. The
letters that follow must speak for themselves. The clarity of mind which
Catherine always preserved, even in moments of highest exaltation, and her
loving eagerness to share her most sacred experiences with those dear to
her, have given her a power of expression that has produced pages of
unsurpassed interest and value, alike for the psychologist and for the
believer. Moreover--and this we well may note--her letters enable us to
apprehend with singularly happy intimacy, the natural character and
disposition of her whom these high things befell. In the very cadence of
their impetuous phrasing, in their swift dramatic changes, in their
marvellous blending of sweetness and virility, they show us the woman.
Some of them, especially those to her family and friends, are of almost
childlike simplicity and homely charm; others, among the most famous of
their kind, deal with mystical, or if we choose so to put it, with
supernatural experience: in all alike, we feel a heart akin to our own,
though larger and more tender.
The central fact in Catherine's nature was her rapt and absolute
perception of the Love of God, as the supreme reality in the universe.
This Love, as manifested in creation, in redemption, and in the sacrament
of the Altar, is the theme of her constant meditations. One little phrase,
charged with a lyric poignancy, sings itself again and again, enlightening
her more sober prose: "For nails would not have held God-and-Man fast to
the Cross, had love not held Him there." Her conceptions are positive, not
negative, and joyous adoration is the substance of her faith.
But the letters show us that this faith was not won nor kept without sharp
struggle. We have in them no presentation of a calm spirit, established on
tranquil heights of unchanging vision, above our "mortal moral strife."
Catherine is, as we can see, a woman of many moods--very sensitive, very
loving. She shows a touching dependence on those she loves, and an
inveterate habit of idealising them, which leads to frequent disillusion.
She is extremely eager and intense about little things as well as great;
hers is a truly feminine seriousness over the detail of living. She is
keenly and humanly interested in life on this earth, differing in this
respect from some canonized persons who seem always to be enduring it
_faute de mieux_. And, as happens to all sensitive people who refuse to
seclude themselves in dreams, life went hard with her. Hers was a frail
and suffering body, and a tossed and troubled spirit; wounded in the house
of her friends, beset by problem, shaken with doubt and fear by the
spectacle presented to her by the world and the Church of Christ. The
letters tell us how these, her sorrows and temptations, were not separated
from the life of faith, but a true portion of it: how she carried them
into the Divine Presence, and what high reassurance awaited her there.
Ordinary mortals are inclined to think that supernatural experience
removes the saints to a perplexing distance. In Catherine's case, however,
we become aware as we study the record that it brings her nearer us. For
these experiences, far from being independent of her outer life, are in
closest relation with it; even the highest and most mysterious, even those
in which the symbolism seems most remote from the modern mind, can be
translated by the psychologist without difficulty into modern terms. They
spring from the problems of her active life; they bring her renewed
strength and wisdom for her practical duties. An age, which like our own
places peculiar emphasis and value on the type of sanctity which promptly
expresses itself through the deed, should feel for Catherine Benincasa an
especial honour. She is one of the purest of Contemplatives; she knows,
what we to-day too often forget, that the task is impossible without the
vision. But it follows directly upon the vision, and this great mediaeval
mystic is one of the most efficient characters of her age.