Monna Lapa was evidently not the only mother in Siena who fretted over the
long absence from home of Catherine and her spiritual children. Monna
Giovanna, of the noble family of the Maconi, longed for the presence of
Catherine's secretary, her beloved son Stefano. This is the second letter
which Catherine wrote in the effort to reconcile her. We cannot be
surprised if she murmured. Stefano had known Catherine for a few months
only when she bore him off with her to Avignon. Their relations dated from
January, 1376, when at his entreaty she healed a feud of long standing
between the Maconi and the rival house of the Tolomei. From this time he
attached himself to her person, and his devotion to her made him an object
of ridicule to his bewildered former friends. He was, by all accounts, a
singularly attractive and lovable young man--sunny, light-hearted, and
popular wherever he went. Catherine from the first loved him, as she avows
in this letter, with especial tenderness. She made him her trusted
intimate, and from now until shortly before her death he was in almost
constant attendance upon her, or when away was still occupied in her
affairs. Catherine was evidently on intimate and affectionate terms with
the rest of the Maconi family also; but it is not strange if Monna
Giovanna developed a little motherly jealousy, as she saw her brilliant
son not only absorbed by this new friendship, but borne away to distant
lands. Catherine's letter is as applicable to-day as then, to all parents
whose misguided tenderness would seek to hinder their children in a high
vocation.
In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:
To you, dearest sister and daughter in Christ Jesus: I Catherine, servant
and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write in His precious Blood,
with desire to see you clothed in the wedding garment. For I consider that
without this garment the soul cannot please its Creator, nor take its
place at the Marriage Feast in the enduring life. I wish you, therefore,
to be clothed in it; and in order that you may clothe you the better, I
wish you to divest yourself of all self-love according to nature and the
senses, which you feel for yourself, your children, and any other created
thing. You ought to love neither yourself nor anything else apart from
God; for it is impossible that a man can serve two masters; if he serve
the one, he does not give satisfaction to the other. And there is no one
who can serve both God and the world, for they have no harmony with each
other. The world seeks honour, rank, wealth, sons in high place, good
birth, sensuous pleasure and indulgence, all rooted in perverted pride;
but God seeks and wants exactly the opposite. He wants voluntary poverty,
a humbled heart, disparagement of self and of every worldly joy and grace;
that personal honour be not sought, but the honour of God and the
salvation of one's neighbour. Let a man seek only in what way he may
clothe him in the fire of most ardent charity with the ornament of sweet
and sincere virtue, with true and holy patience; let him take no revenge
on another for any injury his neighbour may show him, but endure all in
patience, seeking only to pass sentence on himself, because he sees that
he has wronged the Sweet Primal Truth. And what he loves, let him love in
God, and apart from God love nothing.
And did you say to me, "In what way should I love?" I answer you that
children and everything else should be loved for love of Him who created
them, and not for love of one's self or the children; and that God should
never be wronged for their sake or any other. That is, do not love through
regard to any utility, nor as your own thing, but as a thing lent to you:
since whatever is given us in this life is given for use, as a loan, and
is left to us so long only as pleases the Divine Goodness which gave it
us. You should use everything, then, as a steward of Christ crucified,
spending your temporal substance so far as is possible to you for the
poor, who stand in the place of God; and so you ought to spend your
children, nourishing and educating them ever in the fear of God, and
wishing that they should die rather than wrong their Creator. Oh, make a
sacrifice of yourself and them to God! And if you see that God is calling
them, offer no resistance to His sweet will: but if they welcome it with
one hand, do you reach out both like a true loving mother, who loves their
salvation; do not desire to shape their lives to suit yourself--for this
would be a sign that you loved them apart from God--but with any state to
which God calls them, with that be you content. For a mother who loves her
children according to the wickedness of the world, says many a time: "It
pleases me well that my children should please God; they can serve Him in
the world as well as anywhere else." But it happens often to these simple
mothers, who want to plunge their children in the world, that later they
possess those children neither in the world nor in God. And it is a just
thing that they should be deprived of them, spirit and body, since such
ignorance and pride reigns in them that they want to lay down law and rule
to the Holy Spirit, who is calling them. Such people do not love their
children in God, but with sensuous self-love apart from God, for they love
their bodies more than their souls. Never, dearest sister and daughter in
Christ sweet Jesus, could he clothe himself in Christ crucified who had
not first divested him of this. I hope by the goodness of God that all
this will not apply to you, but that you will give yourself and them to
the honour and glory of the Name of God, like a true good mother, and so
shall you be clothed in the Wedding Garment. But in order that you may
clothe you the better, I want that you should lift your desire and heart
above the world and all its doings, and that you should open the eye of
the mind to know what love God bears to you, who has given you, for love,
the Word, His Only-Begotten Son; and the Son in burning love has given you
life, and has sacrificed His Body that He might cleanse us with His Blood.
Ignorant are we and wretched who nor know nor love so great a benefit! But
all this is because our eyes are closed; for were they open, and had they
fastened themselves on Christ crucified, they would not be ignorant nor
ungrateful in presence of so great grace. Therefore I say to you, keep
your eyes ever open, and fasten them fixedly on the Lamb that was slain,
in order that you may never fall into ignorance.
Up, sweetest daughter, let us delay no more! Let us recover the time we
have lost, with true and perfect love; so that, clothing ourselves in this
life with the garment I spoke of, we may joy and exult at the Marriage
Feast in the enduring life--you and your husband and your children
together. And comfort you sweetly, and be patient, and do not grow
disturbed because I have kept Stefano so long: for I have taken good care
of him, for by love and tenderness I have become one thing with him,
therefore I have treated your things as if they were my own. I think you
have not taken this in bad part. I wish to do whatever I can for him and
for you, even to death. You, mother, bore him once; and I wish to bear him
and you and all your family, in tears and sweats, by continual prayers and
desire for your salvation.
I say no more. Commend me to Currado, and bless all the rest of the
family, and especially my little new plant, that has just been planted
anew in the Garden of Holy Church. Be it commended to you, and do you
bring it up for me virtuously, so that it may shed fragrance among the
other flowers. God fill you with His most sweet favour. Remain in the holy
and sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.