St. Catherine of Genoa and the Fire of God's Love--Part 1

     “I believe no happiness can be found worthy to be compared with that of a soul in Purgatory except that of the saints in Paradise. And day by day this happiness grows as God flows into these souls, more and more as the hindrance to His entrance is consumed.  Sin’s rust is the hindrance, and the fire burns the rust away so that more and more the soul opens itself up to the divine inflowing.”

     This quote is from a book entitled “Fire of Love” by St. Catherine of Genoa, who was a fifteenth century mystic. Caterinetta Adorna was born to an aristocratic family and at age thirteen, she was denied entrance to the convent because of her young age.  After the death of her father, her eldest brother for political and financial reasons arranged a marriage for Caterinetta. The marriage was a disaster. Catherine’s husband was unfaithful to the point of having a mistress and child and squandered his fortune. The first five years of her marriage, Catherine withdrew from society. Her family pleaded with her to get involved with the social life of Genoa, thinking this would help. After another five years, Catherine instead fell into a deep depression.


     Catherine’s depression was so deep that while making her Lenten confession, she was incapable of confessing her sins and could only ask for a blessing. She experienced an abrupt and profound love of God and contrition for her sins and experienced a total conversion.  “No more world for me!  No more sin.”

       Catherine practiced penance and mortification, while at the same time, ministering to the sick and poor of Genoa. Catherine’s husband also experienced a conversion and the couple agreed to living celibately in a little house near the Pammatone Hospital. They spent the remainder of their lives caring for the sick and ministering to their needs. Catherine was administrator of the hospital from 1490-1496.

    Sometime in the late 1470’s, Catherine began to undergo spiritual ecstasies which she eventually shared with her disciples toward the end of her life. This particular work became known as her treatise “On Purgation and Purgatory.”

     Although the Church’s teaching on Purgatory had deep roots in biblical and patristic tradition and had been defined at the councils in Lyons in 1245 and 1274, and again Florence in 1439-1444, because of the scandal of selling indulgences, many doubted the doctrine on Purgatory. Shortly after Catherine’s death in 1510, the Church’s teaching on Purgatory would be totally rejected by the Protestant reformers.

     But our good God raises up men and women in His Church to counteract untruth with truth and that is what He did with St. Catherine. Catherine’s treatise on Purgatory was a remarkable teaching that focused on God’s love and mercy and the willingness of a soul to be purged of “all rust” in order to spend eternity with God in heaven.

     “So intimate with God are the souls in Purgatory and so conformed to His will, that in all things they are content with His most holy ordinance,” she wrote.

    “And if a soul were brought to see God when it still had the smallest thing of which to purge itself, a great injury would be done to it. For since pure love and supreme justice could not brook that stained soul, and to bear with its presence would not befit God, that soul would suffer a torment worse than ten Purgatories. To see God when full satisfaction had not yet been given to Him, even if the time of purgation lacked but the twinkling of an eye, would be unbearable to the soul. It would sooner go to a thousand Hells to rid itself of the little rust still clinging to it, than stand in the divine presence when it was not yet wholly cleansed.”