Catholic Heroes… St. Catherine Of Genoa
By DEB PIROCH
Caterina Fieschi, or St. Catherine of Genoa as she came to be known, was the youngest of five born in an aristocratic home (1447). Perhaps her connections should have predicted her future love of the Church: Her great uncle was Pope Innocent IV, and another relative was Pope Adrian V. Her sister became a nun and, additionally, she claimed nine cardinals and two archbishops in the family. At age eight she began precociously sleeping with a rock as a pillow and instigating a prayer life!
By 13, small Catherine desired to enter a convent, but was naturally told she was still too young to make such a life-altering decision.
And yet, the next year her father passed away and her brother arranged a marriage for her to help the family; she was married at 16. Regrettably, her husband was a wastrel, a huge disappointment who gambled away all of their money. At first, Catherine passed a few years in depression, then less in seclusion than pleasure. It may not have been sinful so much as lost time, because she put aside her formerly excellent spiritual life. Then one day, she spoke to her sister the nun, who urged her to make a good Confession.
We know that making a clean breast of things can make us feel better. In Catherine’s case, the experience would change her life. While waiting, for the priest stepped away for a few minutes:
“Her heart was wounded by a dart of God’s immense love and she had a clear vision of her own wretchedness…and the most high goodness of God.”
Catherine, you see, brought the Church something the Church had not experienced before; namely, she was given the ability to see our souls as God sees us. This became closely equated with the existence of the Poor Souls in Purgatory.
Being bankrupt, she and her husband meanwhile had moved into the hospital of Pammantone and began to clean and care for the poor and the sick. The work gradually changed her husband as it changed her. She had to get over her revulsion at the filth and disease faced in caring for those in desperate poverty. But again she embraced intense prayer, six hours a day, and convinced her husband to live platonically. She became a daily communicant, converted him, and both eventually became Third Order Franciscans.
She wore a hairshirt and experienced visions and ecstasies. She saw Christ suffering, angels and demons. Some say her first vision was actually in her childhood, but we do not know that for certain. When her husband died, as a widow she turned entirely to God as her spouse.
Which brings us to another aspect of Purgatory that had hereto not been dwelt on. Her visions of Purgatory surprised her because they filled her with so much joy! “I believe no happiness can be found worthily compared to the souls in Purgatory except that of the Saints in Paradise; and day by day this happiness grows.” The spiritual journey was a “unitive life,” becoming one with God in perfection. And Purgatory? She said it was not a location, say between Heaven and Hell, so much as a battle inside oneself.
This, too, was a revolutionary idea for medieval times. And this transformation was not necessarily after death, but could certainly begin on Earth.
Given her supernatural gifts, there was something she could not understand in the least, seeing our souls as God does:
“It has happened to me to behold something almost too shameful to relate, and this that man seems to live quite merrily in sin; it astonishes me that a thing so terrible should receive so little consideration.
“The more at one with God He graces us to become, the happier we are.”
Ultimately, God created us for happiness in the Garden, so it goes against the grain when we are not joyful and peaceful. And instinctively we know this; for what human does not crave to love and be loved in return?
“Christ revealed that like the sun that could not penetrate a covered surface, also the fire of His love cannot penetrate the souls who resist His purifying love. . . . The soul who does not want to be purified in the mortal life and who does not like purification should undergo a harder purification in Purgatory.”
There were at least 12 well-known saints named Catherine or derivatives thereof. Catherine of Genoa has her mystical experiences chiefly contained in two works, Treatise on Purgatory and Dialogues of a Soul and Body, these being published posthumously and the main reason that she became known. When Pope Clement XII canonized in 1757, he proclaimed her the patron saint of Italian hospitals. However, she is widely invoked by childless couples and those in difficult marriages.
She did not ask God for much, but she did request that she be allowed to fast during Lent on very little. For 23 years during Lent and also Advent she would subsist on essentially zero food. The year before she died, her intake of food during everyday meals dropped also, a reason for alarm. It was a sign her health was beginning to decline. In the end, she lost the ability to speak much, only repeating phrases like “charity, union, peace,” and at the last, simply “love of God.” She died on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross 1510.
When a year or so after burial she had to be moved when water invaded the area, her burial cloth was damp but she was found to be incorrupt.
St. Catherine never denied the purifying pain of Purgatory, but the fire seemed to be more within than without, and it was combined with the joy mentioned. Later in life she went through a period when she would visibly writhe in agony, as though perhaps wounded by God or suffering the pain of “fire” internally as she has described.
We know that when doctors were called, she informed them that her symptoms were supernatural in origin and they could not help her. It is entirely possible that she chose to embrace as much of her suffering on Earth as possible to appear immaculate in the eyes of her Beloved. For then, on her passing, there would have been perfect joy, perfect life, perfect peace, and perfect unification with her Spouse, Jesus Christ.
As in the Gospel, she would have been arraigned in her wedding garment, and been called to the feast!