Just lately there was an interesting, and sometimes entertaining, discussion in the Sydney Morning Herald: If Jesus wrote to the Herald, what would he say? Whatever about that, I guess you have some time said to yourself, when conventional wisdom – or the official line – dictates one course of action and a voice within you suggests something else, “What would Jesus do?” Or more tellingly, have you ever had tossed to you, someone saying: What would Jesus do? Like when you’re arranging a Baptism, and the family wants four non-Catholic godparents. Or you’re assisting with the liturgy for a wedding, and the couple want “Love me baby” as they enter the church. What would Jesus do? The reality is, of course, that we don’t really know what Jesus would do or say. We might conjecture, but Jesus was a man of surprises. He never quite did what people expected him to do. When they lowered the paralysed man through the ceiling to be cured, Jesus said that conversion of life was more important than physical mobility. When they brought him a man with a withered hand, Jesus took the opportunity to explain what Sabbath was really about. When they dragged before him a woman taken in adultery, he looked around and said, in effect, “Yes, but what about you people?” And when they challenged him whether it was more important to serve God or the emperor, he said well, actually, there’s a place for both. The disciples were for ever expecting Jesus to take one course of action and he took another. Today, we might consider a related question. What would Catherine make of our Church today? Would she rail against the misuse of power, the pomp, the discrimination against women, the protection of the institution above the needs of the victims of sexual abuse? Would she demand, as Hans Kung has of the bishops of the world, that they keep silent no longer, that they would set about urgently needed reform? That they would act for the everyday men and women who make up the Church? That they should call for a Council? Would Catherine ask whatever happened to the promise of Vatican II? To collegiality? To reading the signs of the times? Would she go to Rome to speak up at the highest level? And what would she make of our Order? Of our Congregation? Would she say, You speak up so well against all that is unjust? You’re holy women. And you’re compassionate women........ We don’t know, really. We can only conjecture. There are many qualities about Catherine however that we do know, qualities which always determined her course of action. Let’s take just three. The first was an acute awareness of her own sinfulness. Catherine saw her own lack of holiness as part of the sinful situation in the Church of her day. “I have sinned, O Lord, have mercy on me” she would say, over and over. She pictured sin as “the flood of a stormy river that beats against us constantly with its waves, bringing weariness and troubles.” We’re less inclined to talk about sin today. Or we may use different words. Someone recently defined sin as the damage we do to others. Catherine would surely call us to acknowledge our own sinfulness before we point the finger at the institutional Church. The second was her passionate love of God. “O eternal Father! O fiery abyss of charity! O eternal beauty, O eternal wisdom, O eternal goodness, O eternal mercy! O hope and refuge of sinners! O immeasurable generosity! O eternal, infinite Good! O mad lover!” She was such a mad lover too, passionate in her loving. Passionate in every way actually. Elizabeth reminded us recently of one telling detail: she could talk for so long that Raymond of Capua occasionally went to sleep from sheer exhaustion listening to her. Well, we mightn’t be of that kind of temperament – we heard John in the Reading just now express his passionate love in a very different form. But Catherine would expect us to be passionate in our love of God in our own way, especially when life becomes routine and a careless cool replaces our fervour. The third was her vision for herself, the Church and all of humanity. She uses dozens of images. She talks for example of the light of faith. “In the light of faith I am strong, constant, persevering; in the light of faith I have hope: it does not let me faint along the way...Truly this light is a sea, for it nourishes the soul in you, peaceful sea, eternal Trinity. Its water is not sluggish... This water is a mirror in which you, eternal God, grant me knowledge, for when I look into this mirror, holding it in the hand of love, it shows me myself, as your creation, in you, and you in me through the union you have brought about of yourself with our humanity...” Elsewhere she says to God: “I plead with you: have mercy on the world and restore the warmth of charity and peace and unity to holy Church. I wish you would delay no longer...” So Catherine’s awareness of her sinfulness, her passionate love of God, and her vision for herself, the Church and humanity, might help us ponder what she would make of our Church today. Those qualities will also help us to move beyond frustration and disappointment, to dream of a different Church. More importantly they will help us to delve into our own humanity, where we will find, as Catherine said, that “the one who comes to know herself in God will find greatness wherever she turns, even in tiniest things, in people, and in all created things.” And even, we might add, in our battered and wounded Church. Margaret M Brown OP
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