Revisiting St. Catherine of Siena at Work Today

Last time we posted a selection of comments from St. Catherine of Siena. If you're not familiar with her, consider getting up to speed. She's one of the most remarkable saints for both her personal holiness and her influence on our Catholic Church. 

St. Catherine was born into an age when Holy Mother Church had been in crisis, divided and weakened by her leaders. The words and actions taken by St. Catherine were instrumental in restoring the unity and glory of the Church. 

How appropriate to our own age, when our Church is undergoing another of its crises.

But our focus today will on how St. Catherine's words can help us to sanctify our work. We will look at the comments posted last time and apply them to specific circumstances we might face on the job.

As a general rule, the following can and should be applied each and every day as we head off to work - if we really want all our thoughts, words, and deed to sanctify each and every task and personal interaction:

Build an inner cell in your soul and never leave it.

We've all been given different natural talents by God. We all are called to acquire and enhance our skills to perform our work as best we can:

Let all do the work which God has given them, and not bury their talent, for that is also a sin deserving severe punishment. It is necessary to work always and everywhere for all God’s creatures.

While these words were addressed specifically to the current Pope Pope Gregory XI, we can all benefit when we need to be decisive on the job:

You can do what he (Pope Gregory the Great) did, for he was a man as you are, and God is always the same as he was. The only thing we lack is hunger for the salvation of our neighbour, and courage.

We have all faced occasions where we had to gin up courage to do or say something at work that caused us to pause with inordinate concern for ourselves, depending on our specific work. While a soldier or a police officer may face personal danger that an office worker does not, we all still need a boost of courage from time to time:

A soul which is full of slavish fear cannot achieve anything which is right, whatever the circumstances may be, whether it concern small or great things. It will always be shipwrecked and never complete what it has begun. How dangerous this fear is! It makes holy desire powerless, it blinds a man so that he can neither see not understand the truth. This fear is born of the blindness of self-love, for as soon as a man loves himself with the self-love of the senses he learns fear, and the reason for this fear is that it has given its hope and love to fragile things which have neither substance or being and vanish like the wind.

More on courage, this directed at - of all people - her own spiritual director. Reading these words you won't find even a hint of criticism or judgement. Just a sincere concern for the well-being of the man assigned to care for her well-being:

(I long) to see you grow out of your childhood and become a grown man…For an infant who lives on milk is not able to fight on the battlefield; he only wants to play with other children. So a man who is wrapped in love for himself only wishes to taste the milk of spiritual and temporal consolation; like a child he wants to be with others of its kind. But when he becomes a grown man he leaves behind this sensitive self love…He has become strong, he is firm, serious and thoughtful, he hastens to the battlefield and his only wish is to fight for the truth.

Reminding ourselves that St. Catherine was born into a time of crisis for our Holy Church, just as we have in our own time. Noting too how - depending on individual experiences - the Church's crisis can more or less become a distraction to us, even when we're chugging away at our jobs. Not that we ought not be concerned, but perhaps we may not need to worry so much:

If you reply that it looks as though the Church must surrender, for it is impossible for it to save itself and its children, I say to you that it is not so. The outward appearance deceives, but look at the inward, and you will find that it possesses a power that its enemies can never possess.

Each of us in his own way will not pass through this life without leaving some sort of mark on this world. St. Catherine thinks we can make that mark something special:

If you are what you are meant to be, you will set the world on fire.

I think it was worth revisiting these words of St. Catherine of Siena. I hope you did too.