Catherine of Siena: Servant as Pointer-State
Introduction
In Catherine of Siena’s The Dialogue, Catherine discusses the importance of the pursuit of union with God for His servants. Catherine instructs servants to achieve union. Firstly, she argues that self-knowledge leads to Truth. Then, she details how virtues are obtained and the hierarchy of these virtues. Further, she describes a metaphorical three-step bridge, which brings a soul from imperfection to perfect union with God. Ultimately, I will argue that this union is not defined by absorption but is instead an empathetic union. I will further argue that, for Catherine, a servant is a pointer-state for Christ – a specific state within a union that maintains the completeness of the union and the distinct identity of each state within the union.
Self-Knowledge
For Catherine, self-knowledge is the starting point as servants seek to know God. She writes, “A soul rises up, restless with tremendous desire for God’s honor and the salvation of souls. She has for some time exercised herself in virtue and has become accustomed to dwelling in the cell of self-knowledge in order to know better God’s goodness toward her, since upon knowledge follows love. And loving, she seeks to pursue truth and clothe herself in it.”[1] Catherine desires two things: the glorification of God and the bringing of others and herself to a salvific union with God. She has herself heartily pursued virtue. She seeks to know herself as a method by which she can learn - at greater and greater depth - how much God loves her because truth exposes the love God has for His servants. By showing love, she wraps herself in truth as an adornment. Although virtues are an important facet of union with God, the starting point for achieving the glorification of God and union with God is self-knowledge.
Further, Catherine argues that self-knowledge enables us to know God in us. She writes, “Here is the way if you would come to perfect knowledge and enjoyment of me, eternal Life: Never leave the knowledge of yourself. Then put down as you are in the valley of humility you will know me in yourself, and from this knowledge you will draw all that you need.”[2] Catherine states that self-knowledge is a starting point to root servants in their journey towards God. Once we know His unfathomable love and our inability to pay for our sins, we can know God in us - rather than seek Him externally. Self-knowledge is not only the ever-available space to seek and know God, it is the place where the servant should continually abide.
Truth also stems from self-knowledge. Catherine states that Christ’s blood, “gives you knowledge of the truth when knowledge of yourself leads you to shed the cloud of selfish love. There is no other way to know the truth.”[3] Through our understanding of Jesus’ sacrificial love we are transformed and pruned of selfish love. This yields knowledge of the truth and, as Catherine states, is the only way to the Truth.
Virtues
So, what of virtues? I hesitate to push toward her discussion of virtues without briefly grappling with her consideration of suffering (as this is a contentious and notable element of The Dialogue). However, for Catherine, suffering and virtues require a certain qualification in order to be of value. I will address suffering by focusing on their mutual qualifier.
Catherine writes, “The value is not in the suffering but in the soul’s desire. Likewise, neither desire nor any other virtue has value or life except through my only-begotten Son, Christ crucified, since the soul has drawn love from Him and in virtue follows His footsteps.”[4] Catherine’s qualifier of both virtue and suffering is that desire of union with God through Christ - and not of self-glorification, purification, or any other desire. It is through self-knowledge that we learn the love of Christ: whose suffering alone satisfies sin. Through virtue we can learn to respond to Love and follow His footsteps.
Catherine argues that virtue is born of humility. God tells Catherine, “No virtue can have life in it except from charity, and charity is nursed and mothered by humility. You will find humility in the knowledge of yourself when you see that even your own existence comes ... from me, for I loved you before you came into being.”[5] For Catherine, all other virtues stem from charity, which is born and raised in humility. Humility is gleaned in self-knowledge, which shows us His unfathomable love and our inability to pay for our sins. Therefor, self-knowledge leads to humility, which leads to charity, which gives life to all other virtues.
The Bridge
God describes a bridge to Catherine. This bridge spans heaven to earth[6], is Christ Himself[7], and joins, “the most high with the most lowly.”[8] It has three stairs or “three spiritual stages”[9]. It was erected when Christ was hung on the cross.[10] God tells Catherine that the bridge remains via the teaching of Jesus and is, “held together by my power and my Son’s wisdom and the mercy of the Holy Spirit.”[11] The bridge is a metaphor for the spiritual pathway toward union with God.
This bridge functions in a non-linear sense. God says to Catherine, “These are three stages of which many have the capacity, and all three can be present in one and the same person.”[12] A soul’s progress is not measured by their singular location along the path but, rather, the many facets of a person’s soul can be at any point along the bridge – moving forward or backward. A person cannot be fully through the gate except in death because the bridge passes a soul, “from imperfection to perfection”[13] and full perfection cannot be complete until a soul comes into perfect and sustained union with God in Heaven.
The three steps along the bridge are His feet, His side, and His mouth. Catherine writes:
“The first stair is the feet, which symbolize the affections. My Son’s nailed feet are a stair by which you can climb to his side, where you will see revealed his inmost heart. For when the soul has climbed up on the feet of affection and looked with her mind’s eye into my Son’s opened heart, she begins to feel the love of her own heart in his consummate and unspeakable love…Then the soul, seeing how tremendously she is loved, is herself filled to overflowing with love. ..the third…is his mouth, where she finds peace from the terrible war she has had to wage because of her sins.”[14]
Along the bridge, we start with what Jesus has offered: His affection. From there, we can see His heart and empathize. Once she experiences how loved she truly is, she is herself overflowing with love. Finally, she finds refuge from her sins in the words Jesus spoke. The metaphor of the bridge does not simply show us how love covers and consumes us but calls us to display a sort of sameness with Jesus; an empathy with the love He has. We are not in a unity through consumption, where Christ ingests the self of the servant. Rather, Catherine states, we are to engage in a unity marked by empathy – necessitating a response in which we are called to become more and more similar until we are both perfectly distinct and perfectly united: a pointer-state.
Pointer-State
American cartoonist William Ely Hill drew the image above. It is titled “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law”. This is an example of an image that contains pointer-states: one of two or more options of being. In the image above you can see the wife[16] or the mother-in-law[17]. The wife and mother-in-law are each pointer-states - both present, distinct, and united. One exists in the other and vice versa. They exist as themselves, in union.
A pointer-state exists within an empathetic union - a union that maintains distinctions of separate states while resonating together - rather than a consumptive union - a union in which one state gives way to the other and is consumed or incorporated within the other.
Union with God as Pointer-States
Firstly, I will detail how Catherine describes union with God. Union is an option made available through God’s love[18]. Union is achieved by ascending the bridge. She writes, “he drew everything to himself: for he proved his unspeakable love, and the human heart is always drawn by love. He could not have shown you greater love than by giving his life for you. You can hardly resist being drawn by love, then, unless you foolishly refuse to be drawn.”[19] God made the bridge to draw everything to union with himself through His most desirable and selfless love. The bridge is a pathway of response to His love toward union with Him.
Catherine writes of God’s definition of His servants. God says, “‘they are another me: for they have lost and drowned their own will and have clothed themselves and united themselves and conformed themselves with mine.’”[20] God defines His servant as, momentarily, another Jesus. They have rid themselves of their own will and have so closely mimicked Jesus as to become a separate union with Him – a pointer-state. If we refer back to “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law”, Jesus is one pointer-state, the servant is another, and they exist within the whole picture: the will of God. One might argue that this conformity suggests a consumptive union. However, for Catherine, this is dispelled when we consider another passage.
Catherine writes, “For by such prayer the soul is united with God, following in the footsteps of Christ crucified, and through desire and affection and the union of love he makes of her another[21] himself …we can see it is the truth that by love’s affection the soul becomes another himself.”[22] Catherine explains that this union - through the knowledge of self and God - is a pointer-state for Christ through love. The action is initiated by the love of Christ who makes another of himself, not “who incorporates into himself”. This is a separate union inspired by and made possible through Christ’s sacrificial love and resurrection.
Conclusion
For Catherine, frequently achieving an empathetic union, inspired by Christ’s sacrificial love and resurrection, is the ultimate goal for servants of God this side of Heaven. It is knowledge of the self that inspires love for Christ, which beckons the servant along the bridge and toward union with God. This union does not rid one of the self, as others may argue, but conforms the servant’s will to the will of God. This conforming of the will make one a pointer-state for Christ. If the servant were to lose the self, Catherine might retort, they would lose the place where love of God is found and continually re-found and the place upon which virtues are built. These virtues are integral because they enable the servant to extend goodness to the self, God, and neighbor. The self is an integral part of love of God, which is why the self must be maintained in union with God.
[1] Noffke, Suzanne. Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue. (New York: Paulist Press, 1980). 25.
[2] Noffke, The Dialogue, 29.
[3] Noffke, The Dialogue, 30.
[4] Noffke, The Dialogue, 29.
[5] Noffke, The Dialogue, 29.
[6] Noffke, The Dialogue, 64.
[7] Noffke, The Dialogue, 64.
[8] Noffke, The Dialogue, 68.
[9] Noffke, The Dialogue, 64.
[10] Noffke, The Dialogue, 65.
[11] Noffke, The Dialogue, 70.
[12] Noffke, The Dialogue, 111.
[13] Noffke, The Dialogue, 159.
[14] Noffke, The Dialogue, 64.
[15] "My wife and my mother-in-law. They are both in this picture – find them". Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. Library of Congress. Retrieved 9 October 2011
[16] Note the jaw-line starting at the top of the left edge of the fur coat. She is turned away.
[17] Note the mouth as the stark horizontal line. The wife’s jaw-line is her nose.
[18] Noffke, The Dialogue, 26.
[19] Noffke, The Dialogue, 65.
[20] Noffke, The Dialogue, 26.
[21] Italics added for emphasis.
[22] Noffke, The Dialogue, 25.