September 15–St. Catherine of Genoa, Holy Woman

Saint Catherine of Genoa painted by artists Inna and Denys Savchenko. Church of St. Catherine, Genoa, Italy. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

What makes a saint a saint? Saints are saints because of their lives and the circumstances they face and the choices they make; and thus, the holiness derived from living their lives and giving their lives to God in love, worship, and service. St. Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510) was a noblewoman who, although attempting to enter a convent at a young age, agreed to marry a man from a rival political family to help bring about peace. However, her husband cheated on her and wasted their money to the point of bankruptcy. She suffered terribly due to this arrangement. Then, in 1473, she experienced the overwhelming love of God in her life, which revealed to her her own sinfulness. She stopped focusing on what she could not do and dedicated her life to what she could do: love, worship, and serve the poor. Her efforts had an impact on her husband Julian, who reformed his ways, and together they served the sick at the Pammatone Hospital in Genoa, the largest charity hospital in Europe. Catherine eventually became manager and treasurer of the hospital and Julian, who had become a Franciscan tertiary, became its religious director.

“After her change of heart, Catherine wrote: ‘Since I began to love, love has never forsaken me. It has ever grown to its own fullness within my innermost heart.’” Each of us has our own worries, difficulties, frustrations, and sufferings which afflict us. That is not what makes us saints! We become saints by how we respond to these trials with the love of Jesus. We each need to be converted each day to Jesus so he may transform us into saints. She also wrote: “We should not wish for anything but what comes to us from moment to moment exercising ourselves nonetheless for good.”

September 15: Our Lady of Sorrows

Mary has more feasts dedicated to her than any other saint. That is due to her perfection in loving and obeying the will of God in her role as Mother of God. But we must not forget that before her Assumption into Heaven, she dealt with the evils that beset her Son, and transformed them by the grace of God into gifts that she presented to God the Father. She is Our Lady of Sorrows. There are seven sorrows attributed to Mary: 1. The Prophecy of Simeon in Luke 2:34-35; 2. The Flight into Egypt in Matthew 2:13; 3. The Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem in Luke 2:43-45; 4. The meeting of Mary and Jesus on the road to Calvary (not in Scripture); 5. The Crucifixion of Jesus in John 19:25; 6. The Descent from the Cross in Matthew 27:57-59; and 7. The Burial of Jesus in John 19:40-42.

Each of these events caused great suffering to Mary, but she bore it uniting it to the suffering that her Son would, and did, undergo. At the visit of the shepherds Luke comments: “And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart” (Lk 1:19). Suffering happens to us all. But Jesus transformed suffering into joy; his Passion and Death into Resurrection and Ascension. And just as the Mother of God joined her suffering to her Son, so too may “we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears” to her and through her to her Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ. We suffer pain, turmoil, rejection, illness, abandonment, separation, misunderstanding, fear, and eventually death. But these do not have the final say! Jesus Christ is our salvation! Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.