Catherine De‘ Ricci and the Will of God: Part II

Extract

If everyone lived the love of God as fully as it is often talked about, it would not be a pious exaggeration to say that this world would be paradise. Unfortunately, in reality nothing is more rare than a pure, total love of God, and the proof of this is that there are so few saints, who are, by definition, people who do live this love to a heroic degree. It is also only too easy to draw up theories about the love of God and its various stages and degrees, but between word and deed there lies the will. Because Catherine was serious about living the love of God, we can sum up all her sanctity and the whole way she followed in one simple sentence, which she wrote in a letter to her bishop on 15 February 1552: ‘This is what my Lord pleases ... I want it to be pleasing to me too’ [CRE I 248], Or in what she wrote to Giovambattista de’ Servi on 20 May 1552, ‘Please pray that his most holy Majesty will, if it pleases him, grant me holiness enough to be able to fulfil my office [of prioress] to his honour; if not, then his will be done in me always, in this and in everything else’ [CRE I 266].