God so desires her (our) salvation

In these days following the feast of Saint Catherine of Siena, I thought I would post this rather beautiful extract from one of the saint’s Dialogues. It shows the depth of love that Catherine knew she had with her Savior, her lover.


Jesus exchanges his  heart with Catherine's.jpg

“O eternal, infinite Good! O mad lover! And you have need of your creature? It seems so to me, for you act as if you could not live without her, in spite of the fact that you are Life itself, and everything has life from you and nothing can have life without you. Why then are you so mad? Because you have fallen in love with what you have made! You are pleased and delighted over her within yourself, as if you were drunk with desire for her salvation. She runs away from you and you go looking for her. She strays and you draw closer to her. You clothed yourself in our humanity, and nearer than that you could not have come.”

Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, tr. Suzanne Noffke (New York: Paulist Press 1980) 325.