Everyone likes a smackdown

"What made you do this? You are flowers who shed no perfume, but stench that makes the whole world reek." St. Catherine of Siena, writing to three Italian cardinals who supported the anti-pope during the Great Western Schism.

Ah, St. Catherine of Siena. I love her. She knew when to let people have it, even the pope. And they asked for it. The pope and bishops of her time asked her for her advice and she didn't sugar-coat it. She just told you. Sometimes she told them, even when they didn't ask. She made change happen. She got the pope to come back to Rome after fleeing for France (of course, after she died, he left again. I guess he needed her to keep kicking him in the pants.)

I think of how I'd like to tell some bishops off. Especially with all of the horrible crimes that some priests and bishops have committed that are all over the press now. The temptation is to vent all of one's justified anger toward these weak, weak men in an email and to just hit "send."

The main difference between Catherine and me is this: she understood that she wasn't equal to God. She understood humility. She understood that she wasn't better than those foul-smelling Italian bishops to whom that quote above is addressed.

I don't understand humility. Other people's mistakes make me feel, even for a second, better than they are. Don't you try to say that you never feel the same way. "If I were a priest, this would never have happened. If I were a bishop, I would have defrocked that priest instead of covering the abuse up! If I were that child's mother, I would have just called the cops; the bishop would have found out from the DA, not from me!"

I try to give myself a pass, thinking, maybe Catherine understood it better because she had visions and personal, face-to-face conversations with God. I think to myself, if God showed up in my room when I was praying, I'd get it too.

Catherine recorded that in one of her visions God told her: "I am who am; you are she who is not."

"I am who am; you are she who is not."

I am she who is not.

Y'know, Lord, that really kind of takes the fun out of the whole righteous indignation thing. You're really busting my flow.

See, thing is, it's all over the Bible how we're supposed to behave, how we're supposed to treat one another and how we dare not play God. I don't get a pass because Jesus isn't tapping me on the shoulder, reminding me to be humble as He is. I have the Scriptures to do that, I have good preaching to remind me. I have Jesus in the Eucharist to remind me how I am supposed to be.

And I have the writings of St. Catherine of Siena to prick my conscience when it needs it, when I need to be reminded.

I am she who is not.

St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!

Today is the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas. I have always loved this saint, even before I knew he was a Dominican.

One of the things I like about him is that when he was in seminary, everybody called him "The Dumb Ox" because he was fat and didn't talk a lot. Their teacher, St. Albert the Great (even better in Latin: Albertus Magnus!), said about him: "We call this young man a dumb ox, but his bellowing in doctrine will one day resound throughout the world."

His parents were wealthy, influential Italians who wanted him to become a Benedictine, thinking that they could probably arrange for him to become the abbot of Monte Cassino, the original monastery that St. Benedict founded. But when Thomas heard about St. Dominic's upstart Order of Preachers, he wanted to join them.

But Thomas really wanted to join the Dominicans. He tried to run away from home, but his mom and dad sent his brothers after him and locked him in one of their palaces. Mom and Dad sent one of their daughters to talk some sense into him, but he talked her into becoming a nun. They tried to send a woman of ill repute to tempt him, but he chased her out of the room with the poker from the fireplace! After 2 years, his parents gave in and let him join the Dominicans.

He was really smart. How smart was he? They say he could dictate 5 books on 5 different subjects at once! He wrote songs that we still sing in church (mostly at Adoration: Pane Lingua). His philosophy is still studied by Catholic and non-Catholic scholars alike!

This is his deathbed prayer (from the Catholic Encyclopedia):

The end was near; extreme unction was administered. When the Sacred Viaticum was brought into the room he pronounced the following act of faith:

If in this world there be any knowledge of this sacrament stronger than that of faith, I wish now to use it in affirming that I firmly believe and know as certain that Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, Son of God and Son of the Virgin Mary, is in this Sacrament . . . I receive Thee, the price of my redemption, for Whose love I have watched, studied, and laboured. Thee have I preached; Thee have I taught. Never have I said anything against Thee: if anything was not well said, that is to be attributed to my ignorance. Neither do I wish to be obstinate in my opinions, but if I have written anything erroneous concerning this sacrament or other matters, I submit all to the judgment and correction of the Holy Roman Church, in whose obedience I now pass from this life.

A Prayer for Guidance by St. Thomas Aquinas:

O creator past all telling,
you have appointed from the treasures of your wisdom
the hierarchies of angels,
disposing them in wondrous order
above the bright heavens,
and have so beautifully set out all parts of the universe.

You we call the true fount of wisdom
and the noble origin of all things.
Be pleased to shed
on the darkness of mind in which I was born,
The twofold beam of your light
and warmth to dispel my ignorance and sin.

You make eloquent the tongues of children.
Then instruct my speech
and touch my lips with graciousness.
Make me keen to understand, quick to learn,
able to remember;
make me delicate to interpret and ready to speak.

Guide my going in and going forward,
lead home my going forth.
You are true God and true man,
and live for ever and ever.

--St Thomas Aquinas, 1225-74

Feast of St. Dominic

Happy feast day to my Dominican friends:
Fra. Lawrence Lew
The Cloistered Dominican Nuns in Summit
Joe, the Dominican Inquirer
Tom at Disputations



Find out more about St. Dominic here.

Prayer to St. Dominic

God of Truth you gave your church a new light in the life and preaching of our Father Dominic. Give us the help we need to support our preaching by holy and simple lives. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.