"I can do nothing on my own initiative.
As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just,
because I do not seek my own will,
but the will of Him who sent Me."
John 5:30
Our self will is so subtle and so deeply rooted within us, so covered with excuses and defended by false reasoning, that it seems to be a demon. When we cannot do our own will in one way, we do it in another, under all kinds of pretexts. -- St. Catherine of Genoa
Catherine of Genoa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Saint Catherine of Genoa (Caterina Fieschi Adorno, 1447 – 15 September 1510) is an Italian Roman Catholic saint and mystic, admired for her work among the sick and the poor and remembered because of various writings describing both these actions and her mystical experiences. She was a member of the noble Fieschi family, and spent most of her life and her means serving the sick, especially during the plague which ravaged Genoa in 1497 and 1501. She died in that city in 1510.
Her fame outside her native city is connected with the publication in 1551 of the book known in English as the Life and Doctrine of Saint Catherine of Genoa. She and her teaching were the subject of Baron Friedrich von Hügel's classic work The Mystical Element of Religion (1908).
For about 25 years, St. Catherine, though frequently going to confession, was unable to open her mind for direction to anyone; but towards the end of her life a Father Marabotti was appointed to be her spiritual guide. He had been a director of the hospital where her husband died in 1497. To him she explained her states, past and present, and he compiled the Memoirs. During this period, her life was devoted to her relationship with God, through "interior inspiration" alone.
In 1551, 41 years after her death, a book about her life and teaching was published, entitled Libro de la vita mirabile et dottrina santa de la Beata Caterinetta de Genoa. This is the source of her "Dialogues on the Soul and the Body" and her "Treatise on Purgatory", which are often printed separately. Her authorship of these has been denied, and it used to be thought that another mystic, the Augustinian canoness Battistina Vernazza, who lived in a monastery in Genoa from 1510 till her death in 1587, had edited the two works, a suggestion discredited by recent scholarship, which attributes a large part of both works to St. Catherine, though they received their final literary form only after her death.
Catherine's thought on purgatory, for which she is particularly known, and her way of describing it has original characteristics in relation to her era.
Catherine's writings were examined by the Vatican's Holy Office and pronounced to contain doctrine that would be enough, in itself, to prove her sanctity, and she was beatified in 1675 by Pope Clement X, and canonized in 1737 by Pope Clement XII. Her writings also became sources of inspiration for other religious leaders such as Saints Robert Bellarmine and Francis de Sales and Cardinal Henry Edward Manning. St Catherine of Genoa's liturgical feast is celebrated on 15 September. Pope Pius XII declared her patroness of the hospitals in Italy.
