Catherine of Siena

Savonarola's memorial in Florence

The highlights to me when I went to Tuscany was my visit to Florence, probably the art capital of the world, a medieval city gifted with more talent per head of the population than any other city in history, and to see what I could find out about Catherine of Siena.

In the main square of Florence is a round grey stone (see above) that shows the spot where that amazing Christian, Girolamo Savonarola, was burnt to death in 1498. He was a flaming prophet and the Florentines could not stand any longer his sermons condemning their vain lives and classical idolatries.

These are a few shots I took when I visited Siena a few days later It was a cold autumn Tuscan day when we drove to the town. For me the most important reason to visit this fascinating medieval town was to visit any sites associated with Catherine of Sienna, a Catholic saint virtually unheard-of in the protestant circles I grew up in. Yet I feel strongly that her moral and spiritual teaching has a timeless relevance. Her teaching about our neighbour has a relevance for everyone of us.

"Your neighbour is the medium through which you can serve me..... you can perform all virtues by means of you neighbour. Love with no consideration of your own advantage, whether spiritual or temporal."

But the classic passage in her dialogues is as follows:

I ask you to love Me with the same love with which I love you. But for Me you cannot do this, for I loved you without being loved. Whatever love you have for Me you owe Me, so you love Me, not gratuitously but out of duty, while I love you not out of duty, but gratuitously. So you cannot give me the kind of love I ask of you. This is why I have put you among your neighbours: so that you can do for them what you cannot do for Me - that is, love them without any concern for thanks and without looking for any profit for yourself. And whatever you do for them I will consider done for me.

This teaching, so simple, so profound, can solve a multitude of problems. I remember sitting in a counselling session at Spring Harvest listening to a you mother weeping bitterly over her twenty years of "undistinguished service." She had probably sat in challenging meetings where the needs of heathen lands were vividly portrayed and had probably read books giving details of heroic deeds in distant lands. Her own homely domestic virtues, the loving or her children and husband, seemed very small and almost worthless. She felt condemned and second rate. The words of Catherine could have lifted her from this pit of introspective despair.

Catherine was born in 1347, the twenty-fifth child of a cloth dyer. From an early age she strongly attracted to the Lord but intensity of her devotion irritated her parents, who were hoping that she would have a fashionable marriage. Her father relented, however, and allowed to live the way she wanted. She lived in solitude and practised the most extreme austerities. Then, in 1366, she had a vision of the Lord, who told her enter the world and do His will in normal life. For the rest of her short life she was governed by two aims; loving her neighbour, especially the sick and the poor, and the conversion of sinners. She once stood with a condemned nobleman, who was being executed for treason, all the way to the gallows. She had pleaded with him about the needs of his soul. As he died he cried out ,"Jesus and Catherine"

Although she suffered a lot of ill-health those she met and influenced were deeply impressed by her radiant cheerfulness. Another trait that deeply impressed those near her was her amazing ability to point out their deepest needs of their hearts by saying a few words.

She died in 1380 of a stroke. She was only thirty-three

Afew more photos of Tuscany