reading

Front cover: Saint Catherine of Siena (1746), Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770),
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. © FineArtImages / Leemage.
Back cover: Saint Catherine of Siena Meditating (c. 1593), Francesco Eugenio Vanni
(c. 1563-1610), Louvre Museum, Paris, France. © RMN-GP / Michel Urtado.

Good Friday fell on April 22 in 2011. At noon on New York’s Upper East Side, I began to preach a series of conferences according to the customary style of the three hours’ reflection on the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church makes use of this devotion in order to focus the attention of people everywhere on a moment of unsurpassable importance. It is the moment when Christ’s Death on the cross brings salvation to the whole world.

The church where these conferences were preached bears the name of Saint Catherine of Siena, a 14^th-century mystic and advisor to popes. This patronage explains the book’s sources, whereas the occasion explains its focus on Christ’s last words from the cross. I am grateful to Reverend Jordan Kelly, o.p., who held the post of pastor, for his kind invitation to preach these conferences.

Since its arrival in the United States twenty years ago, MAGNIFICAT has become for more than a quarter of a million people a standard feature of Catholic daily life and worship. This small book, which may serve as a companion to the monthly journal, commemorates the score of years that MAGNIFICAT has provided spiritual enrichment to American Catholics. Gratitude is also due Messrs. Romain Lizé and Axel d’Epinay for their roles in making the miracle of MAGNIFICAT happen. I dedicate the book to Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, a valiant and gracious woman who, like Catherine of Siena, has both advised popes and served the Holy See with passionate zeal.

During the Lent of 1380, the year in which Saint Catherine of Siena died in Rome, she walked daily to Saint Peter’s Basilica. ¹ This Lenten practice appears all the more remarkable when we consider that toward the end of February of that year, Catherine Benincasa had lost the normal use of her legs. What, we might ask, would have prompted Catherine to make this sacrifice? She supplies the answer in a letter from the same period: “Then God imposed this obedience on me, that during this entire time of Lent I should have the whole family sacrifice their desires and celebrate before him alone in this way for the holy Church. And I should attend Mass every morning at dawn—which, as you know, is impossible for me, but in obedience to God everything has been possible. ²” As Raymond of Capua explains in his Life of the saint, Catherine’s “family” comprises “her children in Christ, those spiritual sons and daughters of hers whom she had with her” in Rome. ³ Those blessed souls who take up the present volume should consider themselves among those whom Catherine of Siena welcomes into her “family,” that is, they should think of themselves as numbered among her spiritual sons and daughters. As Catherine’s spiritual children, we petition the saint to guide our reflections on those mysteries that she herself most loved and that, we are told, she bore in her own flesh: the mysteries of the Passion and the Death of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁴

In the Letters and in the Dialogue, her principal writings, Catherine of Siena describes the transformation that Christian faith and Baptism accomplish in the Catholic believer.⁵ In one especially poetic passage, she writes to a knight-monk. His name was Nicholas di Strozzi, and he was a prior in one of the military orders that flourished during the Middle Ages. These knight-monks aimed to combine the virtues of chivalry with the ideals of asceticism. To Prior Nicholas, then, Catherine writes:

Our King [she refers to Christ] behaves like a true knight who perseveres in battle until the enemies are defeated…. [W]ith unarmed hand, nailed fast to the cross, he defeated the prince of the world, with the wood of the holy cross as his mount. This knight of ours came armed with the breastplate of Mary’s flesh, flesh that bore the blows to make up for our wickedness. The helmet on his head is the painful crown of thorns, driven right into his brain. The sword at his side is the wound of his side, revealing to us the secret of his heart; it is a sword with a point of light that ought to pierce our inmost heart with the force of love. The staff in his hand is there in mockery. And the gloves on his hands and spurs on his feet are the scarlet wounds in the hands and feet of this gentle loving Word.⁶

What do we learn from this description of the suffering Christ? What does Catherine teach us about the transformation that brings the world stillness on Good Friday from noon until three o’clock? The answer is simple: We discover that because of his enormous love, Christ’s sufferings and Death cause the transformation of all that exists, the transformation we call Christian salvation. “What held him nailed firm and fast to the cross?” Catherine inquires. “Neither the nails nor the cross, which were not capable of holding the God-Man, but the bond of love for the Father’s honor and our salvation.”⁷ “What armed him?” Catherine further asks. Her answer: “Love.” The transformation that Catherine announces is one that creates in those persons who remain united with Christ a new ground for love, a new sort of loving. We call this freely bestowed transformation the gift of divine grace, both habitual and actual. The transformation affects both our persons and our actions.

In order to benefit from this meditation on Christ’s Passion, the benevolent reader is invited graciously to take Catherine of Siena as guide and companion. During those precious moments of retreat from the world’s busyness and distractions, moments that each Christian must daily find time to allow, the reader should become a member of Catherine’s “family,” her bella brigata, her beautiful bunch. Those who make this choice place themselves under the sign of Catherine’s motherhood, her spiritual maternity, her sisterly instrumentality. Saint Catherine of Siena surely will receive each Christian and will make each one her own.