Meditation

IMAGES OF THREE OF CATHERINE’S METAPHORS – FOR MEDITATION

These depictions of three of Catherine of Siena’s metaphors aim to stimulate our imagination and help us meditate on God’s love for us, which is ultimately an unfathomable mystery difficult to render only in words. As we focus on each image with the intention of praying, the Holy Spirit can bless our exercise, assisting us in penetrating into the layers of meaning.

I include the texts from Catherine’s letters that inspired the images which were created by Paula A. Gomez and are found in my book, Growing in Love with Catherine of Siena, Paulist Press, Mahwah, NJ, 2025.

Page numbers below the images refer to the foregoing book. There you can find my meditations on each.
The translations of passages from Catherine’s Letters are mine from Selected Letters of Catherine of Siena, Classics of Western Spirituality, Paulist Press, Mahwah, NJ, 2025.

Click images to enlarge them.

For through love you were birthed from the womb of my Father who created you with his wisdom, and so through love you are held together for you are made of nothing else but love.

Letter 16

p. 25

I wish to see you a fruitful tree full of sweet, ripe fruit, planted in rich soil—the soil of true knowledge of self. (Letter 185) Then the tree will produce fragrant flowers, namely, the virtues, and, most specially, it will produce the greatest flower, the glory and praise of God’s name. And then all her acts and virtues will become sweet fruit and flowers perfumed with this scent [of the glory and praise of God’s name].

Letter 363

p. 69

And so I ask you, my dear sons in Christ tender Jesus, never fear but trust in the blood of Christ crucified. (Letter 36) You must pay attention and seek to know this love and drown yourself in the blood and allow yourself to burn in its fire, so that your selfish self-will is consumed. One must not settle for just saying the right number of Our Fathers.

Letter 213

The blood will make you drunk; it will burn and consume all your selfish self-love. . . If you, or anyone else, is submerged in the blood of the immaculate Lamb, you would be protected from such deceptions; and even if such deceptions should come to you, they will not take hold. They will be driven away by the living faith and hope you have placed in the blood . . . I want to see you immersed and bathed in the blood of the Son of God.

Letter 73

pp. 123-124