"Like a shepherd, He feeds His flock"
--Isaiah 40:11

THE "CHARISM OF EXHORTATION":  THE MINISTRY OF ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA

Today the Church remembers one of its most influential saints, the Dominican tertiary Catherine of Siena (1347-1380).  Catherine lived at a time of great unrest in Western Europe:  popes had abandoned Rome for Avignon, anti-popes claimed the papacy, Europe lived in fear of the Turks, and, most fearful, the Black Death devastated the population.  With little education, but with a bold and wise spirit, Catherine cared for the sick, challenged the powerful, and even exhorted popes to rise to the dignity of their office.

Reading some of her four hundred surviving letters, we see Catherine's directness and candor.  Writing to Pope Gregory XI, who was living in Avignon, France, for fear of being poisoned by his Roman opponents, she says:  "Be manly and not fearful.  Answer God who is calling you to take possession of the place of the glorious shepherd, Saint Peter, who you represent.  Restore to Holy Church the heart of burning charity which she has lost:  she is pale because iniquitous men have drained her blood.  Come Father!"  Catherine's exhortations paid off:  Pope Gregory returned the papacy to Rome.

The popes listened to Catherine because they knew she loved the Church and prayed for its unity.  They sought her help and advice often.  She spent the last two years of her life in Rome, writing and pleading for the Church to be united under Pope Urban VI.  She died at the age of thirty-three.  Her efforts for the Church were honored eighty some years later, when she was declared a saint.  In 1970 Pope Paul VI declared Catherine a Doctor of the Church, a title given only to one other woman up to that time, St. Teresa of Avila.

Her surviving writings, which are filled with common sense exhortations, reveal a woman devoted to her faith and willing to challenge anybody, high or low, who was marring the mission of the Church.  She shows that sometimes believers show their fidelity and love for the Church by their willingness to confront what is unholy in it but always in a spirit of love.


Petitions
For the Dominican religious family; for the new St. Catherine of Siena Academy, which is scheduled to open in Wixom this fall; for unity and holiness in the Church; and for all who have asked for our prayers.

Reflection
"The Peace of Wild Things"  by Wendell Berry

When depair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the green heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.  For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.