The Wisdom of the Saints

I love the Saints. I mean come on, how cool (to use a colloquialism) is it that we are united to all the people in heaven!? They are truly are brothers and sisters in Christ as we have been united to Christ. They each have such cool things to say and contemplate.

Take, for example, St. Catherine of Genoa, whom I decidely have named my daughter after (though my wife claims it was for Catherine of Siena). She wrote very little during her life, but her manuscripts help to explain the Church's teachings about Purgatory & Purgation. This was done in a little book called, what else, Purgatory & Purgation. Again it is not a long read, but it has great wisdom about why God has given us such mercy as to have a "safety net" like purgatory. In another text, called The Spiritual Dialogue, she gives an account of her own life as it comes to an end.

Here are some sweet excerpts (and these may be just for you Jon as no one else has posted comments or appears to have heard about this blog yet.):

"For God is terrible in dealing with sin, since in His presence there cannot be the slightest stain. Sin and sin alone is the object of God's hatred, for it prevents His love from transforming us."

"Although man inherits limitless pain in an infinite time, God's mercy puts a limit not to the time but to the suffering."

"Once the soul is emptied of love, however, it becomes as evil as love is gentle. I say almost, for God still shows it some mercy."

" The more God draws the soul up to Him, the more He instills in it the desire to be drawn up; once God has led the soul to the last step, when He wishes to release the soul and have it come home, the soul is so impatient to find itself in God that it experiences the body itself as purgatory."

You gotta love that some human people have loved God so much that they have a particular insight into His relationship with each of us. By standing on the shoulders of these spiritual giants we can understand the Christian Tradition much more clearly. And in our modern world, there is, unfortunately and demonstrably, a lot of confusion about our Catholic Faith.

One needs only see some of the recent books published, such as The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins who decidedly is atheist. However, as some Catholics have read through his arguements, they report that most of them are misinformed diatribes. Certainly, many of our contemporaries, however, will read this book and have their prejudices against Christiainty reconfirmed, even if it is through mis-information. Who besides you and I can take the Truth to them? For the only Truth, at the twilight of our lives, that will truly matter is having known the Way, the Truth and Life who is Christ Jesus himself. May we each approach this upcoming Holy Week seeking to find Him more fully in our lives.