Our People

Homily for Vietnamese Dominican Laity Mass for the Feast of St Catherine of Siena

Vietnamese Catholic Community Centre, Bringelly

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
28/4/2006

Catherine Benincasa was called in her day amongst the Dominican laity, Mama, mother. Within a century of her death she had been canonized as Saint Catherine of Siena by Pius II (1461). Last century she got two more titles: Pius XII named this indefatigable champion of peace Patroness of Italy just as that nation was entering a terrible war (1939). On the eve of the millennium our beloved Pope John Paul II proclaimed her Co-patron of Europe (1999). Yet perhaps her most extraordinary title was the one conferred upon her by Pope Paul VI in 1970. He named her, with Saint Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church – the first of only four women so far. To date she is still the only ‘lay person’, in the ordinary sense of neither cleric nor religious, ever to receive this title.

The title ‘Doctor of the Church’ is one rarely bestowed even on very great saints. But Catherine was a prolific writer and her writings had much to say of enduring significance about the contemplative and the active life, about how to pray to God and study him in Catholic Truth, and about how to apply the graces thereby gained to a life of Christian service in the world. But to call her a doctor or professor of theology or of spirituality is one thing; to call her doctor ‘of the Church’ is to emphasize her particular and enduring ecclesial contribution.
The Church at the time of St Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) was in bad shape. In her Dialogue of Divine Love and her letters, Catherine paints a graphic picture of the corruption of the Church, especially of clerics and religious! They were, she said, either weak and ineffectual due to ‘slavish fear’ of public opinion or else self-confidently corrupt in their self-centredness. Lukewarm and ungenerous, ignorant and unprayerful, they abandoned the care of souls and devoted themselves instead to self-aggrandisement. Easy prey to flattery and bribes, they preached empty words and were unwilling to correct others because they themselves were living in the same or graver sins. Bloated with pride, gluttony, drunkenness and impurity, their sole concern was their own comfort. Quite a catalogue! Catherine did not mince words! Many clergy and religious were, she thought, ‘the blind leading the blind’.

One would not be surprised, therefore, if Catherine, so perceptive and demanding, had formed her own sect on the periphery of Church or more likely outside the Church. Yet she chose instead the mainstream of the Church. All commentators on her life agree that Catherine was a deeply ecclesial woman. Schism, heresy and disobedience to the Church were to her very terrible evils, as were scandalous, unloving or untruthful behaviour by the Church’s members which might drive people away from life in the Church. Catherine worked tirelessly until her death for Church unity and reform. And she was confident that these would come.

For Catherine was convinced that God would never abandon his people. Her God was a impassioned lover: we are, she said, God’s little darlings and He is infatuated, he is pazzo d’amore—mad or drunk with love for us—even before he creates us. Indeed it is this divine infatuation that brings us into being and sustains us in being. To put it in modern terms, God loves us in all our brokenness. He knows us inside out. He does not have unrealistic expectations of his people. Neither should we. Yet he does know our potential under grace. He has great hopes for us. So did Catherine. And so should we. So with her eyes wide-open to all its deficiencies Catherine was willing to give herself completely in prayer and preaching to the work of joining Christ in saving the Church so that the Church could join him in saving the world.

That meant hard hearts had to be converted. Some of you will know the moving story of Catherine’s prison ministry which included her visiting a young Perugian on death row in Siena, Niccolo di Toldo. He had been imprisoned for the ‘treason’ of speaking insultingly of the Sienese authorities—something Catherine herself did often enough. Catherine was asked to visit him after he refused to see a priest. In a letter to her confessor, St Raymond of Capua, Catherine described their encounter. Talking to Niccolo gently and with great compassion, she succeeded in winning his confidence. Leaning his head on her breast, he told her of his great fear and she consoled him. By degrees, as he experienced her loving concern and as she spoke of Jesus’ great love for him, the young man came to contrition for his sins and his fear disappeared. He asked for a priest and received the last rites.

Niccolo’s last request was that Catherine herself might be present at his execution to give him courage and pray for him. So she recalls: “I waited for him at the place of execution, and as I waited, I kept praying… Before he arrived, I lay down and stretched out my head on the block, and begged Mary for the grace I wanted, namely, that I might give Niccolo light and peace of heart at the moment of death.” As Niccolo was led to the block, he smiled when he saw Catherine. She went over to him and blessed him with the sign of cross. He knelt down and she stretched out his neck while whispering prayers and words of encouragement in his ear. She held his head in her hands up to moment he was beheaded and in his name surrendered his life to God with the words “I will”. The youth died murmuring the names of Jesus and Catherine, for in the latter he had seen the face of the former. When the execution was over, Catherine had a vision of Niccolo being welcomed into heaven. It was a deeply moving and hope-filled experience for her, yet it impelled her to devote letters and public preaching to inveighing against the Sienese authorities for their injustice and their bloody tactics.

For Catherine knew, as we in turn must recall today, that we are a Church of sinners called to be saints, many of whom do indeed become saints, some through martyrdom as the great Dominican saints of Vietnam; some through preaching and teaching, like St Dominic, St Thomas Aquinas and St Catherine; some through social service such as St Catherine again and also our beloved St Martin de Porres. Ecclesia semper reformanda, the Church forever reforming herself, as must the Dominican Order 800 years old, or 800 years young, this very year. Catherine knew where the reform of the Church, the Order and the world must begin: in the reform of our own hearts, our own lives. Priests and laity, the sanctity of the Church depends upon our willingness to work with God’s abundant grace.

When we feel we’re not getting enough out of Church life, we might question the way the commercial-consumer mentality of our age has subtlely entered all our thinking and expectations, so that we even go to Church ready to assess it in terms of value for money or value for time. But as Christ proclaimed in cleansing the Temple, there is more to his Father’s house than that; the Church is no ordinary market-place, even of ideas and feelings. Jesus taught that his disciples constitute a ‘flock’ led by the Good Shepherd, a vine of which He is the trunk giving life and fruit to all the branches, a field in which he plants and reaps, a building of which he is himself the cornerstone, a new mother given to us from the Cross. Catherine was heir to a rich ecclesiological tradition and much of her mysticism and poetry was devoted to presenting the Church anew for our gaze and contemplation. So she used images of such as the mystic body than bridges heaven and earth, the sheepfold, the safe ship on a stormy sea, the fragrant garden, the cellar of the Precious Blood and the shining pearl that lights up people’s spirits. Whatever her image, her passion for the welfare of the Church, that is, for the members of the Church and Christ their head, was unabated despite her many trials and persecutions. For Catherine the Church was a place of boundless opportunities to demonstrate love, a garden in which to smell sweet truth, with some virtuous pastors and people to goad us onwards to holiness, a hostelry offering us the Precious Blood to course through our veins. Let us join Catherine, Doctor of the Church, then, in giving thanks for the great gift of the Church and the graces Christ bestows abundantly upon us in the Church.