Today's saint: the fiery Catherine of Siena

(From the Shrine of St. Ignatius at Loyola, Spain. Photo by Ron McGuire)

In January and April of 2018, I posted St. Catherine of Siena pictures on this blog. Did you know that you can "search" this blog for items that interest you?

St. Catherine of Siena, whose feast is April 30, is the dynamic saint who famously said, "Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire."

I always think of her as the saint who told the pope what to do! A simple Third Order Dominican nun, not a queen of a country or a noblewoman but rather the youngest of many children of an Italian dyer, she was called by God to admonish the pope to return to Rome from exile in Avignon. God used her choleric temperament to make a difference in the world of her time.

Today, our words of encouragement were spoken by Our Lord to St. Catherine in a vision. They offer us hope that the Savior wants to forgive us, and is offended when we despair like Judas. Our sins can never be greater than His Infinite Mercy.

"To St. Catherine of Siena, God once said, 'Those sinners who despair of My Mercy in the hour of death, offend Me far more by that one sin, than by all the iniquities they have every committed. For he who despairs, openly despises My Mercy, and in his perversity imagines that his sins outweigh My Goodness and Mercy...Were he to grieve in all sincerity for having offended and condemned Me, and faithfully hope in My Mercy, he would, most certainly find it; since My Mercy is infinitely greater than all the sins that have ever been committed or can be committed by any creature.'"

~ Consoling Revelations collected by the Ven. Benedictine Abbot Blosius