Wisdom of St. Catherine of Siena

St. Catherine of Siena (March 25, 1347–29 April 29, 1380) was an Italian mystic and author who greatly influenced Italian literature and the Church. Pope Gregory XI sent her to negotiate peace with Florence and she was canonized in 1461.

Below we list some words of wisdom from St. Catherine of Siena.

“You are rewarded not according to your work or your time but according to the measure of your love.”

“Obedience shows whether you are grateful.”

“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”

“One who knows more, loves more.”

“Let us enter into the house of knowledge of ourselves.”

“From self-knowledge flows the stream of humility, which never seizes on mere report, nor takes offense at anything, but bears every insult, every loss of consolation, and every sorry, from whatever direction they may come, patiently, with joy.”

“We've been deceived by the thought that we would be more pleasing to God in our own way than in the way God has given us.”

“Strange that so much suffering is caused because of the misunderstandings of God's true nature. God's heart is more gentle than the Virgin's first kiss upon the Christ. And God's forgiveness to all, to any thought or act, is more certain than our own being.”

“What is it you want to change? Your hair, your face, your body? Why? For God is in love with all those things and he might weep when they are gone.”

“This my goodness does to endow the souls of the just more fully with spiritual riches when for my love they are stripped of material goods because they have renounced the world and all its pleasures and even their own will. These are the ones who fatten their souls, enlarging them in the abyss of my charity. Then I become their spiritual provider. The Holy Spirit becomes their servant.”

“It is only through shadows that one comes to know the light.”

“When it seems that God shows us the faults of others, keep on the safer side-it may be that your judgment is false. On your lips let silence abide. And any vice that you may ascribe to others, ascribe at once to them and yourself, in true humility. If that vice really exists in a person, he will correct himself better, seeing himself so gently understood, and will say of his own accord the thing that you would have said to him.”

“The strongest and purest love is not the one that starts from impressions, but the one that comes from admiration.”

“There is no sin nor wrong that gives man such a foretaste of Hell in this life as anger and impatience.”

“The soul is in God and God in the soul, just as the fish is in the sea and the sea in the fish.”

“God is closer to us than water is to a fish.”

“No one should judge that he has greater perfection because he performs great penances and gives himself in excess to the staying of the body than he who does less, inasmuch as neither virtue nor merit consists therein; for otherwise he would be an evil case, who for some legitimate reason was unable to do actual penance. Merit consists in the virtue of love alone, flavored with the light of true discretion without which the soul is worth nothing.”

“To a brave man, good and bad luck are like his left and right hand. He uses both.”

Copyright © Scott Petullo, Stephen Petullo