Today September 15

Today is the feast of St. Catherine of Genoa, laywoman (1447-1510). What an interesting and enlightening character. She had a normal marriage, and later, by agreement, these two (Catherine the Guelph and Julian the Ghibelline, "Montagues and Capulets of the Genoese nobility") lived together in perfect continence. They had no children together. Julian, however, had a child, a daughter, by an illicit liaison, and provided for her (named Thobia) in his will, Catherine magnanimously taking her in and caring for her after the reprobate Julian's holy death. "Monsieur Giuliano is gone," Catherine said, "and as you know well he was of a rather wayward nature, so that I suffered much interiorly. But my tender Love (she often called Jesus "Love," as in "O Love, if it be necessary I am ready to confess my sins in public!" and "O Love, who shall hinder me from loving thee? Though I were in a camp of soldiers I could not be hindered from loving thee") assured me of his salvation before he had yet passed from this life."

She was not in love with Julian, nor he with her, when she was forced into marriage at age 16. For five years she lived in depression, under a dark and unmoving cloud. Then for five more, she lived for pleasure, engaging her senses in any frivolity she could. But she was still unhappy. Then she had a dramatic, profound and complete conversion (though she was already a practicing Catholic) -- an interior conversion, such as we are all called to -- while she was kneeling for a blessing from a priest. In her heart she said with conviction: "No more world! No more sins!" And this she did, giving herself and her goods completely over to the service of the poor and the sick (this was the time of the Black Death, when over 4/5ths of Genoese citizens died -- and she herself contracted it, though she recovered) -- but as a laywoman, even though her husband joined a third order, which was a much bigger deal in those days than it is in ours.

She had many platonic male friends, including Hector Vernazza, a layman who gave himself over to charitable works and preserved many of her doings and sayings in document form, and Father Marabotto, her spiritual adviser.

She wrote a great deal, and her "Treatise on Purgatory which understands and explains Purgatory in light of its earthly counterpart -- the purgatory of consuming love -- is one of the two most illuminating views of Purgatory given to the Church." - Angelus Book of Saints. Saint Catherine, pray for us.