As we have seen so far in this series, Catherine of Siena, lived in extra ordinary times.  Times of plague and insecurity all around her.  Yet as a young women she was trying to listen to and follow the Father.  As we continue, we will see yet more about this woman of amazing insight and faith, by the Holy Spirit.

     From many resources we learn that she was a warm, affectionate person.  As she grew older, she decided to dedicate her life to God as a Dominican Mantel late.  The Mantel late were a group of lay women who belonged to the Dominican Order.  This group made up what is known as a third-order movement or tertiary movement.  These movements produced several saints that became famous in medieval Europe.  Gerald Sittser writes,

“The most famous Dominican tertiary was Catherine of Siena.  As a young girl she pleaded with her parents to give her permission to become a Dominican tertiary.  She joined the movement in 1365.  Like Mary of Oiginies, she lived in isolation and contemplation for several years. Then she began her vocation as a reformer.  She purposed to reform herself, the church, and the world, and admittedly ambitious undertaking.”  

     During her time in solitude she spent much time in prayer and received much from God.  It was during this time that she developed a special closeness with Jesus Christ.  She was so close with God that she did not want to leave the Solitary life.  But it was also during this time that God was calling her to leave.  God was telling her that she still could abide with Him and in fact draw all the more close to Him, by loving her neighbor.  This now would be what would drive her.  This now would be her mission in life.  “The balance  of contemplation and action in the last twelve years of Catherine’s life was not merely a relationship of complementarity.  She did not pray simply to “refuel” herself for further activity  (the principle behind even the interpretation that her three years of solitude were but preparation for the years of activity to follow); nor was prayer and oasis of rest from work, a kind of holy self-indulgence.  It was precisely what she experienced in contemplation that impelled her into action.  All that she touched or was touched by in her activity was present in her prayer.”

     Catherine’s own writings chronicle many of the people she interacted with, and the places that she went.  Her biographers have created a time line of her life.  Though there is some discrepancy; we can clearly see a life in unity with God reaching out to the world around her.  There are accounts of her caring for the ill and dying, accounts of her interceding for various people, as well as Catherine confronting and encouraging the Popes of her day.  It is in these accounts and within her own writings that we will see how she not only shared her ideas with a wide range of people, but also with a small group of followers.

Quotes: Suzanne Nolfke, OP, Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue, pg.8