GUIDED HOLY HOUR: Praying with St. Catherine of Siena

This is your place of prayerful refuge, a sacred private time set apart to spend with Jesus of Gethsemane. The Agony in the Garden is also known as the Passion of the Sacred Heart. Imagine what joy you have brought His Sacred Heart… choosing to be with Him here and now.

St. Catherine of Siena is the perfect saint to accompany us as we continue to celebrate Eastertide and focus on the gift of the Eucharist.

April is a month filled with great graces, as the Catholic Church dedicates this month every year to the Holy Eucharist. Since this month is drawing near its close, it is worth pausing to be reminded of the joy and gratitude inspired in a life lived close to the Eucharist, which is the source and summit of our lives as Catholics.

It’s also the month in which the church celebrates the feast of St. Catherine of Siena, the Third Order Dominican and Doctor of the Church. This is a perfect connection, because St. Catherine received the Eucharist daily, and was known for her gratitude, total love of God, and her pure joy. Her feast day is April 29.

O inestimable Love! You enlighten us with your wisdom so that we may know your truth and the subtle deceptions of the devil.

With the fire of your love, set our hearts alight with desire to love you and to follow you in the truth.

You alone are Love, alone worthy of being loved!

Amen.

We know that St. Catherine of Siena wanted to rouse the world from the sleep of sin to be replaced with many prayer vigils.

After all, St. Catherine of Siena wrote to her sisters, “Ah me, sweetest daughters, I summon you on behalf of the Sweet Primal Truth to awaken from the sleep of negligence and selfish love of yourselves, and to offer humble and continual prayers, with many vigils, and with knowledge of yourselves, because the world is perishing through the crowding multitude of iniquities, and the irreverence shown to the sweet Bride of Christ.”

And so… we pause to ask for the intercession of St. Catherine of Siena for our apostolate here at Catholic Holy Hour, spreading devotion to Jesus of Gethsemane one Holy Hour at a time. We ask her intercession on each of the thousands of Prayer Gardeners who prays and keeps vigil with our Holy Hours each sacred Thursday, the day of the week set apart for devotion to Our Lord in the Garden.

St. Catherine of Siena gave her heart to Jesus. We ask that Our Lord will accept each of our hearts, too… and in exchange give us a new heart, more filled with love for God than ever before.

St. Catherine of Siena, pray for us!

Read, Meditate, Pray, and Contemplate this passage of Scripture. Which verse moves you the most spiritually, or speaks to you about something you are going through at this time? Which word calls to you to take new action in your life?

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekial 36:26)

Make a brief examination of conscience.

Dearest sister in Jesus…

Who possesses God’s love, finds so much joy that every bitterness transforms itself into sweetness, and that every great weight becomes light. One must not be astonished because living in charity you live in God:

“God is love, and he who abides in love, abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4:16)

Thus, living in God you can have no bitterness because God is delight, gentleness and never-ending joy!

This is why God’s friends are always happy! Even if we are sick, poor, grieved, troubled, persecuted, we are always joyful.

Even if all the gossiping tongues were to set us in a bad light we would not worry; we rejoice and are delighted by all things because we live in God, our rest… We, in love with God, draw love from Jesus crucified, always following His footsteps and walking with Him on the path of humiliation, pain and insults.

We do not seek joy elsewhere than in Jesus and we avoid any glory which is not that of the Cross.

Embrace, then, Jesus crucified, raising to Him the eyes of your desire! Consider His burning love for you, which made Jesus pour out His blood from every part of His body!

Embrace Jesus crucified, loving and beloved, and in him you will find true life because He is God made man. Let your heart and your soul burn with the fire of love drawn from Jesus on the Cross!

You must, then, become love, looking at God’s love who loved you so much not because He had any obligation towards you but out of pure gift, urged only by His ineffable love.

You will have no other desire than to follow Jesus! As if you were drunken with Love, it will no longer matter whether you are alone or in company: do not think about many things, but only about finding Jesus and following Him!

Run, Bartolomea, do not stay asleep, because time flies and does not wait one moment!

Dwell in God’s sweet love.

Sweet Jesus, Jesus love.”

—From the “Letters” of St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) (letter no. 165 to Bartolomea, wife of Salviato of Lucca).

As a little girl, Catherine was known as “Euphrosyne,” which is Greek for “joy.” Catherine was one of the last of 22 children, and at only 7 years old she dedicated her life to God. Later, when her parents wanted her to marry the widower of her sister, she protested by cutting off her long hair and fasting until the family accepted that she was set apart for God. She lived in solitude within her family home, and did many works of mercy for the people of Siena.

Catherine experienced a “mystical marriage” with Christ. She advised popes and even convinced Pope Gregory XI to leave Avignon and return to Rome.

One image of her shows the bark of Peter, the Church, resting on her shoulders as she bore the weight of its challenges. She also preached brilliantly and wrote a great spiritual classic, the Dialogue.

Catherine tenderly comforted an executed prisoner as he died and had a vision of his soul entering heaven. This prisoner was named Niccolo di Toldo and he asked Catherine to promise to be with him as he died. Catherine wrote this about the experience:

“I waited for him at the place of execution … He laid himself down with great meekness; then I stretched out his neck and bent over him, speaking to him of the Blood of the Lamb. His lips murmured only, ‘Jesus,’ and ‘Catherine,’ and he was still murmuring when I received his head into my hands.”

When an American poet visited Italy and toured the Basilica of San Domenico in Siena, where the relic of St. Catherine’s head is kept, she was moved to write this reflection to explain the holiness she found there:

I stood before the relic of Saint Catherine,
her head, small and delicate, in a blue and white habit,
was held behind the gold grating of an elaborate reliquary.
I didn’t expect such an exchange as I gazed at her closed eyes
smiling cheeks, skin neatly stretched over bone,
remnants of her thirty-three years
tucked inside the folds of her face, behind her lips,
in the crevices of her cranium—
the host of her humanity still residing
in the tabernacle of her skull.
I didn’t expect more than curiosity as I met her sealed gaze.
How can I explain what it was that made me want to linger as the tour group walked on?
Why did I want to keep watch over that fragile skull, and lidded stare?
In the days Catherine’s eyes shone,
a young man sentenced to die asked her to walk at his side.
She stroked his face as it lay on the block—
When the axe fell—she took his head into her hands,
received the fragrance of his blood,
honored the liquid of his life and death
as though it were red roses staining her lap.
How could I not, then, be moved to remain?
How could I not want to cradle the thought-holder of Catherine?
To mourn and honor such eyes that saw beauty in blood,
lips that murmured comfort in death,
nostrils that breathed sweetness in stench?
Why would I not want to stay even as the tour group — as the frenzied pace of the world — kept on?

—Annabelle Moseley

Ponder and Pray:

What makes you want to stay, to pause, to pray… even as the frenzied pace of the world keeps on? What motivates you to dedicate this time set apart for Jesus in Gethsemane? Have you ever considered the special graces that your decision brings?

Catherine’s confessor was Blessed Raymond of Capua, who also wrote her biography. Let us listen to the advice of the beautiful St. Catherine of Siena in her own words.

The first tip for life based on the wise advice of St. Catherine of Siena is this: follow God’s will for your life, be faithful to His plans for you and you will not only become the saint you were made to be, but spread the fire of God’s love in ways that shine forth to many.

To live this tip from St. Catherine, pause during this Holy Hour to ask God what He wants from your life; ask Him who He meant you to be. Offer Him your whole heart and ask for His in return. Then, sit in trusting silence, and allow the Divine Surgeon to go to work on your heart, making Him with each Eucharistic visit more and more after His own Heart. Also, while praying the Our Father each day, ask God to show you how to courageously do His will in your life. Pay special attention to the words, “thy will be done.”

St. Catherine had to speak up when others wouldn’t. These words encourage us to always respond to what is true and just, rather than sitting on the sidelines, like most do. It takes courage to choose courage.

Add your signature to a petition for a worthy cause. Let your money “talk” by giving your alms to a charity that defends the voiceless, the innocent, or the downtrodden. Speak the truth of the Catholic faith with family and friends; not cowering if they disagree.

The best way to honor this advice from Catherine is to respond to the love and sacrifice of Jesus through going to frequent Confession. Pope John Paul II went every week and he was a saint … which do you think came first?

You need not have any mortal sins to go to Confession, but if you do have mortal sins it is imperative that you get to Confession as soon as possible. If your sins are venial only, the Church teaches us that confessing them brings great graces. Repeated, frequent confession can really help us to live out an understanding of our value to God as we respond to that value by our humility.

• St. Catherine recommends you have an inner cell. Do you have one? How can you cultivate this?
• Have you become, do you think, the person God intended you to be? How can you bring this to prayer?
• Do you realize your precious worth in the eyes of God? What can you do to pay more attention to this?
• How can you challenge yourself to love God more this month?

As you contemplate the words and images, recall the words of St Catherine:

We are of such value to God that He came to live among us … and to guide us home. He will go to any length to seek us, even to being lifted up high on the cross to draw us back to Himself. We can only respond by loving God for His love.”