Today we again take a step back from the season of Easter to reflect on the life of St Catherine of Siena.
This 14th century Dominican lived today’s gospel, for she had a remarkable relationship with the Lord. As a small child, aged 5 or 6, she had her first mystical experience of Christ. She spent her early life preparing for her life in Christ. This was threatened in her teenage years when her family tried to marry her to her deceased sister’s widow. She challenged this with self-discipline of fasting that saw her family succumb.
She had a remarkable life that was characterised by great mysticism shown in her “marriage” with Christ, great generosity in her almsgiving, but also, very importantly, her writing that survived through the ages.
It was St Catherine who began the process of returning the Bishop of Rome back to the Eternal City from Avignon.
She had great faith, humility and love that was demonstrated through her life. But the acute fasting that she undertook was almost certainly excessive and likely to be associated with her early death. Her life was cut short aged 33 after considerable fasting and a stroke.
She is now a patron of Europe and a Doctor of the Church
Today’s reading is most appropriate for her: “no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son choses to reveal him.” She experienced great blessings from Christ and had a great appreciation of the generous love of the Father. May her example help us, especially in this season of Easter, trust completely in the Father who sent his only begotten Son to bring us from death to life, from the wilderness to the bosom of Christ.
If we trust the Father we can be filled with the blessings of Christ and greater revelations come our way. May we, like St Catherine, open ourselves to God and act boldly on the insights into his kingdom that come our way.
Gospel Matthew 11:25-30 ©
Jesus exclaimed, ‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
‘Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.