I took some time to transcribe the chapter on “Self-Knowledge” and Catherine of Siena from my book Praying with the Pivotal Players since I thought it pertains to a lot of conversations we’re constantly having these days.
You can get the book here. I don’t ordinarily link to Amazon, but WOF has put it out of print, and there are lots of used copies there. I was pretty proud (oops) of that book, and think it’s worth a look, even if you’re not using it in conjunction with the series.
For I told you in the beginning that one comes to knowledge of the truth through self knowledge. But self knowledge alone is not enough: it must be seasoned by and joined with knowledge of me within you. This is how you found humility and contempt for yourself along with the fire of my charity, and so came to love and affection for your neighbor, and gave them the service of your teaching and your holy and honorable living.
By any standard of any era thirteenth or twenty-first—Catherine of Siena was a remarkable woman. In fact. the twenty-first century finds much to praise her for, and in terms that it finds comfortable and familiar. She was successful and achieved a great deal. She enjoyed widespread fame and popularity. She was respected and had great influence. She thought and even lived outside the box in ways quite unlike other people, especially women of her time. She used the gifts and talents God gave her in heroic service to others.
Catherine had a lot to be proud of. She must have felt very good about herself!
But wait. What is this?
In the passage above, from Catherine’s Dialogue, she relays her experience of God’s word to her, recounting how she had found ‘humility and “contempt’ for herself.
Is this a good thing? Contempt for oneself? That sounds a lot like having a negative self-image, and we all know how important it is to avoid that.
Perhaps translating Catherine for my own time is not as simple as I thought. Perhaps she, like Francis—and every other Catholic saint—confounds my sense of what life is about, makes me suspect that I am formed more strongly by modernity than I thought, and plants me right in the middle of that paradox that comes directly from Christ himself:
He would save his life must lose it. The last shall be first.
The paradox, as it reaches me through Catherine’s experience. Is that of a fruitful, joyous, peaceful life built on a foundation of “contempt” for oneself. What does this mean?
It begins with the reality, so essential to Catherine, of truth. The fundamental truth, of course, is nor an idea, but God. The only real way to be is in relationship to the Truth that created us so that we can, indeed, know him. When we know who God is. we know who we are. When we know who we are—beloved, weak, tempted creatures made in God’s Image, in need of redemption lest we be lost—we can reach out to the only One who can, indeed, save us. And here rests the paradox: as we embrace Truth, we humbly accept our emptiness and dependence on God, and then we can finally be filled—to overflowing, even.
Here is the way, if you would come to perfect knowledge and enjoyment of me, eternal Life. Never leave the knowledge of yourself. Then, put down as you are in the valley of humility, you will know me in yourself, and from this knowledge you will draw all that you need.
So this denial of self, humility, and what Catherine calls “contempt” —these are not at all about hatred of one’s self as God’s creation (which would be blasphemous), a disparagement of one’s own existence or of human nature and qualities.
It is simply the only truthful way to live in the real world, the only honest way to walk on this earth permeated by the transcendent that brought it forth and sustains it still—to understand my place: a weak creature graced, if I say yes, with the chance to be filled to overflowing with infinite Love.
This helps us understand Catherine’s life and activity. We speak of-success” and “achievement,” but Catherine uses other language. She speaks of understanding her own smallness and weakness, accepting it, and only then being radically open to God’s grace at work in her. She would not claim credit, as we would give it, for her ‘abilities”: her boldness, courage and self-assurance, her willingness to stand out, her defiance of convention, her leadership, her spiritual insights.
The saints are a varied lot. They are extroverts. Introverts. rich, poor, young, old. artists, queens. beggars. scholars, and doorkeepers. But all of them, Catherine included, embody authentic humility. Their sense of a life well-lived challenges mine. Success? Achievement? Opportunity? Talents? I some-times wonder how to navigate all of those values, especially as a disciple of Jesus. I’m here on earth right now. I’m willing and able. What am I supposed to do and how am I supposed to figure it out? In Catherine. I get a glimpse of another landscape, one not that far away after all, one peopled by those who know the truth of who they are, how precious and yet how small; who know their own weaknesses; and who know that God’s infinite strength is as close as their own fiat.
By this gentle glorious light the soul sees and rightly despises her own weakness: and by so making a fool of herself she gains mastery of the world, treading it underfoot with her love, scorning it as worthless.
We like to say that Christian discipleship is characterized by paradox – and there you have it – right there, in Catherine’s call to nothingness for the sake of everything, for a world we are called to tread underfoot with our love, a world that we scorn as worthless.
Charlotte was Both 