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Friends of the Rosary,
Today is the Memorial of St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), Doctor of the Church and one of the leading figures of the fourteenth century.
She influenced the pope to return to Rome from Avignon and had extraordinary influence over popes, kings, sovereign cities, and crowds of disciples.
This Italian saint gained significant influence through her life of prayer, extraordinary mortifications, spiritual writings, and her continual appeals for civil peace and the reform of the Church.
“I have placed you in the midst of your brothers,” Christ told her, “so that you can do for them what you cannot do for Me.
Since her first vision at the age of six, Catherine had entirely belonged to God.
One day, while she was praying in her room, Christ and our Blessed Lady appeared to her. Taking Catherine’s hand, our Lady held it up to her Son, who placed on it a ring that was visible to Catherine but never to other people.
Catherine received an invisible stigmata, which became visible after her death, and through which she accepted the physical agonies of the crucifixion.
Though always suffering terrible physical pain, living for long intervals with practically no food except the Blessed Sacrament, she was full of practical wisdom and spiritual insight.
After a prolonged and mysterious agony, during which she was paralyzed from the waist downward, Catherine died, at the age of thirty-three, on April 29, 1380.
She famously said, “All the way to heaven is heaven because He said, ‘I am the Way.'”
Ave Maria!
Jesus, I Trust In You!
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
To Jesus through Mary!
Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will. Please give us the grace to respond with joy!
+ Mikel Amigot w/ María Blanca | RosaryNetwork.com, New York
