Catherine of Siena

Christian Mystic, Saint, and Doctor of the Catholic Church

The feast day of Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) is April 29.

Jesus taught the fourteenth-century saint Catherine of Siena that the secret of developing a mystical and intimate relationship with God was forgetting the self—becoming, as the Hasidic leader Dov Baer says, “nothingness.”

“One day Jesus appeared to Catherine as she was praying and said:

“Do you know, daughter, who you are and who I am?  If you knew these two things, you would be blessed. You are that which is not; I am He who is. If you have this knowledge in your soul, the enemy can never deceive you; you will escape all his snares; you will never consent to anything contrary to my commandments; and without difficulty you will acquire every grace, every truth, every light.

‘With that lesson Catherine became fundamentally learned,' writes her biographer Igino Giordani.  ‘She was founded upon a rock; there were no more shadows. I, nothing; God, All. I, nonbeing; God, Being.'

Forgetting one's self through supreme humility is the essence of the mystic's path.

It is what allowed the ancient prophets to be infused with tremendous power as they delivered the messages of God in the “Spirit of the Lord.”

It is what empowered mystics like Catherine of Siena to change the course of the Church and leaders like Gandhi to change the course of history.

And it is what can empower you to change the world.

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Quoted from Kabbalah: Key to Your Inner Power by Elizabeth Clare Prophet. Available in eBook for Kindle.

Saint Catherine of Siena was an previous lifetime of Elizabeth Clare Prophet.

Image: Catherine of Siena by Rutilio Manetti (1571–1639)