St. Catherine of Siena

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We're told in the First Letter of St. John, “This is what we have heard from him and are declaring to you: God is light and there is no darkness in him at all. If we say that we share in God's life while we are living in darkness, we are lying, because we are not living the truth. But if we live in light, as he is in light, we have to share in another's life, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:5-7).

Today is the Feast of St. Catherine of Siena, who is an Intercessor in our supernatural family, for Public Opinion.

Her feast day began to be celebrated in the Work on the 30th of April

1. St. Josemaría had great foresight about the importance of the media, which at that time was growing, but had not yet reached anything like it is today.

He had a great love and respect for St. Catherine. On her reliquary in Villa Tevere, he had written: Dilexit opere et veritate Ecclesiam Dei ac Romanum Pontificem–“She loved the Church and the Roman Pontiff in deed and in truth.”

There is a biography of St. Catherine of Siena written by a lady called Alice Curtayne. It’s very good some time in the course of your life to try and read the biographies of the Intercessors.

It’s not exactly front-line reading for us, but at some stage, it's very good to get to know a little bit more about them.

St. Catherine lived from 1347 to 1380. She was one of the most influential saints in history. She was a great Christian feminist and one of the great women in Church history.

It’s interesting to remind ourselves that there have been some incredible women in the history of the Church who have done great things in education, in health care. They've changed the face of the earth.

Don't ever let anyone tell you that the Church puts down women. If you look at history, you've got a very different story.

She was the 23rd of 25 children and a twin. Through her personal influence, thousands of people returned to the faith—which also means they went away from it.

Her crowning achievement was the return of the papacy of Gregory XI to Rome to end the great Western schism. At the time, there were two or three popes, one of them living in Avignon, France.

She died at the age of 33. So all the great things she achieved, she achieved while she was young. She had no formal education and was practically illiterate.

But in spite of that, she dictated 400 letters to political leaders of high and low estate, to religious leaders, and to popes. This is what St. Josemaría liked to call “the letter-writing apostolate.”

She wrote to many people of great importance, and therefore had a great influence. I was rather impressed one morning talking to an elderly Irish nun in Singapore who had been there for fifty years and had set up one of the most important schools in the country.

I happened to mention that I had written a short little article to the local Catholic newspaper, and then she just made a comment. She said, “Have an influence.”

I found those rather interesting words. We all have to try and have an influence. Part of the role and vocation of the laity is to influence the temporal affairs of the world.

St. Catherine of Siena had a great influence. St. Josemaría, in making her an Intercessor in the area of public opinion, was also stating that all of us have to have an influence on public opinion. Public opinion can be very important.

At one stage, St. Catherine wrote to the King of England. Her biographer, Curtayne, says, “She flung in against the balance of evil all her power of prayer, every ounce of her physical energy, all the fasting and vigil and penance of which any human being was capable, all her eloquence, all her organizing ability, all the force of her magnetic personality. … She exploited every gift of hers to the utmost” (Alice Curtayne, Saint Catherine of Siena).

It said that when she wrote to Pope Gregory XI, she said, “If you don't use your authority for God's honor and the good of souls, resign” (cf. Vida D. Scudder, editor, Letters of Saint Catherine Benincasa of Siena).

So she called a spade a spade. She didn't hold back.

She had many enemies. If you talk like that, you develop many enemies. She was accused of every sin. Many wanted her imprisoned, beaten, or dead.

You find some of the great women saints in the history of the Church underwent similar things. St. Teresa of Ávila was also accused of every possible sin.

But she was a lady of great mettle. She was canonized in 1461 and she was declared a doctor of the Church by Pope St. Paul VI in 1970. She was a woman of great fortitude, of daring, of courage.

She had great faith, great love for the Church expressed in deeds. She had great love for the Pope, whom she called the “sweet Christ on earth” (Ibid.).

She had great love for the truth. At the same time, she had great humility.

St. Teresa of Ávila said that after God, she was most indebted to St. Catherine of Siena.

We could invoke her very much today, asking for that whole area, “the apostolate of public opinion,” and to see how could I have more influence, how could I make more of a splash in writing to the newspaper, in getting involved in social media, in transmitting doctrine, in transmitting good ideas, in passing on all the formation that we have received over years and years and years.

God has given us all of this to sow seeds all over the world in every way we can.

Social media and print media are among the greatest means we have in the world today to have that influence. That also means that we try and use certain opportunities.

A pharmacist in Ireland many years ago attended a meeting of pharmacists where they were going to try and encourage every pharmacist in the country to stock the contraceptive pill.

This was in the early 1970s when the pill was not legal. There was a panel of experts there to try and persuade these pharmacists that this was okay.

One of them was a prominent moral theologian in a prominent Catholic seminary. He was also in favor of contraception, a dissident in that particular teaching. He tried to make it seem very acceptable: “follow your conscience.”

This pharmacist who had a certain amount of formation, a young guy, felt very uncomfortable. He felt this wasn't the right message to be transmitting. He had never spoken in public before. But he realized he had to do something.

As a Christian, in conversations and in meetings, sometimes the least we must do is to disagree, to raise our voices in disagreement, to plant good ideas, to lift up the tone of the conversation.

Very often, this is the apostolate of public opinion: expressing an opinion that possibly clashes with our environment, that is politically incorrect. But yes, it is the truth.

So he invoked the Holy Spirit and he went to the microphone. He had never spoken in public before. He said his teeth were chattering and his knees were knocking.

He said very clearly, very politely, and very briefly to this moral theologian, “I'd just like to say, Father, that I think the teaching of the Church is more along these lines: one, two, and three.”

Very clearly, very politely, he said what he had to say and then he sat down. People came to him afterwards and said, That was marvelous. You should speak more frequently.

The following year, they elected him the president of the Association of Pharmacists of the country and they were able to keep the contraceptive pill out of Ireland for many years.

Sometimes we have to be that voice, that voice that registers its disapproval.

A colleague of mine told me he was sitting in the medical residence of the hospital where he worked. One day after lunch, he was taking coffee.

There were fifteen or twenty other young doctors in the medical residence. An older doctor came in, a surgeon, a registrar, a senior person, and began to talk about all the ligation operations that he had performed.

This friend of mine felt rather uncomfortable. He knew that was wrong. He felt he had to say something. So again, he invoked the Holy Spirit.

He just said to this person, out loud in the company of everybody else, “I'd just like to say, I don't agree with what you're saying.”

As soon as he said it, one person leaned over—there was a person beside him—and said, I couldn't agree with you more. Another lady who was beside him leaned over and said, Terrible idiot.

He realized the whole room was with him. All that was needed was one voice.

As ordinary lay people in the middle of the world, God has placed us where we are, in that circle of friends, in that profession, in that environment, in that club, on that golf course, playing that game of tennis, in that conversation, in the ordinary situations that make them up, God has called us to be that voice.

In his Encyclical called Redemptoris Missio (The Mission of the Redeemer), John Paul II in the early 1990s said, “The first Areopagus of the modern age is the world of communications…”

Notice how forty, fifty years ago, the popes and the saints were pointing to the world of communications as the means of evangelization.

“…which is unifying humanity,” he said, “and turning it into what is known as a ‘global village.’ The means of social communication have become so important as to be for many the chief means of information and education, of guidance and inspiration in their behavior as individuals, families, and within society at large.”

We have to try and help every family at the breakfast table that may have their radio on, or in the car some place, to receive good ideas, family values.

A man told me recently that he was listening to a program on a radio, and surprisingly this program was very pro-family, and he was very impressed. The program gave a certain number you could call if you had any questions or comments to make.

He called the program and said, “Look, I'd just like to congratulate you on this marvelous program. It's very wonderful to hear such things.”

The following day, the compère of the show called him back personally to thank him for making that call.

The compère said, “I had to push in my radio organization to put out this program, to transmit these values. It was a battle. It wasn't easy, and your call meant an awful lot to me. It was a voice from the consumer of encouragement and of vindication, that we were doing the right thing.”

Sometimes a phone call can have a very big influence. We can think that everybody from the whole country is calling into these programs, but very often nobody is calling.

But if a journalist in a newspaper has a good article, try and see the email of that journalist if it's there at the end of the article, and send him a one-line email congratulating him.

Encourage people to do more. Even if we're sick in bed and we can't move around very much, we can make phone calls. We can have an influence.

This business of the apostolate of public opinion is not just in promoting or defending Opus Dei, our supernatural family, in the international realm of public opinion, but also in putting Christ in the middle of society, of placing values there, of helping people to control their whims for food or for cars or for housing or whatever.

This is not just the job of numeraries and priests. Everybody must be involved.

In The Forge, St. Josemariá says, “The following comment, which caused me great sorrow, will also make you reflect: ‘I see very clearly why there is a lack of resistance, and why what resistance there is to iniquitous laws is so ineffective, for above, below, and in the middle there are many people—so very many!—who just follow the crowd” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, Point 465).

We're called to clash with our environment, not to follow the crowd, to be leaders, to make a splash, to transmit truth.

We need to be aware of a siege mentality that the media are against us. We are the media.

We are ordinary Christians in the middle of the world. We're called to influence, we're called to shape society, to shape laws, to shape the way people think in accordance with the truth, to “drown evil in an abundance of good” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 182).

St. Josemaría drew great importance to the media in the early 60s. He encouraged one particular person, Joaquín Navarro-Valls, to specialize in that whole area.

He became a journalist. He had been a medical graduate before that, a psychiatrist. Eventually, he became the papal spokesman and had an enormous influence over twenty years.

We don't all need specialization. We don't all need special preparation in this area, but we all need to know how to do the basic things: to have a dominant passion in order to spread the light of Christ in public opinion. There are immense apostolic opportunities.

St. Josemaría used to say that in matters of education and marriage, we have to go the whole way. We have to stop at nothing.

We have to fight to make the truth of Christ be recognized in those areas, because so many laws and customs of society and family formation depend on those ideas.

One phrase from “The Gospel of Life”–Evangelium Vitae–of John Paul II that stands out is that we have to be “unconditionally pro-life.”

This is a good day to ask yourself: In the last twelve months, in the last ten years, what have I done to be unconditionally pro-life?

There are forces all over the world that are trying to influence the doctrine of life, the sanctity of life; that are trying to take away that statement of John Paul II whereby he says, “the family is the sanctuary of life” (John Paul II, Encyclical, Centesimus Annus, May 1, 1991).

What have we done to protect all that, defend those values?

In The Forge we're told, “To think of Christ's death means to be invited to face up to our everyday tasks with complete sincerity, and to take the faith that we profess seriously. It has to be an opportunity to go deeper in the depths of God's love, so as to be able to show that love to men with our words and deeds” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 575).

St. Catherine of Siena went all out in a culture that possibly did not give too much importance to women. She wasn't held back by those things. She had an Italian fire about her.

He says in The Forge, “Make sure that your lips, the lips of a Christian—for that is what you are and should be at all times—speak those compelling supernatural words which will move and encourage, and will show your committed attitude to life” (Ibid., Point 576).

We can ask the Holy Spirit for the gift of writing and of speaking, and perhaps spend a few minutes every day writing a few ideas or a few words in response to an article in a newspaper, so that we create a river of truth.

In these areas where we learn to swim by swimming, there are many talents that we can pick up in the course of our life that possibly we won't get to use fully until the latter stages of our life. But we can all work at that.

We can read good newspapers, read good articles, read good novels, improve our vocabulary, improve our grammar, improve our English or the way we say things.

Whenever St. Josemaría heard a catchy phrase, he would write it down because words, he said, are the vehicle for transmitting doctrine. He’s always had an antenna up to catch useful words or phrases.

We may have little time to read, so we have to make sure that what we read is good. Get advice. If you read something, don't just read anything.

Often we become what we read. If we read rubbish, we may end up with our mind full of rubbish. Our ideas may be rubbish.

Try and use all your reading for apostolic purposes. Have this in mind when you're choosing something to read.

How can I use what I'm going to read to spread truth and doctrine? And if what I'm reading can't be useful for that purpose, then why am I reading it?

We may not be good writers now, but it's a talent and an influence that we can acquire with the passage of time.

We also need to move other people to read, to get involved in influencing. In The Forge, we're told, “My child, your job is not just to save souls, but to bring them to holiness, day after day, giving to each moment—even to apparently ordinary moments—the dynamic echo of eternity (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 917).

In every conversation, in every letter we write, in every response we make to try and influence public opinion, somehow we're giving to each moment “the dynamic echo of eternity.”

We're bringing a change in society and in the world, in our environment. We're creating an environment for the future saints that have to change the world, which are our children, in our schools, in our homes.

A good thing to try and think about is apostolate with journalists. People who may be in those neuralgic positions in society may have many readers, or many watchers if they're a TV program.

Or, to try and foster citizens, a vigilating group, that watch media. There was a campaign in Ireland many years ago called the Truth in the Media campaign, set up by ordinary citizens, a very interesting initiative.

It's good to try and establish personal contact with journalists, photographers, filmmakers, because of the importance of media in a world that is more globalized all the time.

Some people may need to be more prepared in this area, but we all need to be aware and have some preparation.

It's very good that we know how to explain what a Prelature is, to at least have a few sentences ready, to listen carefully every time it's explained.

We should be able to talk at short notice about. St. Josemaría, or some other current issue that is important.

We should have slogans ready. “What we need is smart sex, not safe sex.” “No sex before you get married and after you get married, only sex with one person. That's smart.”

Clever people are smart. To remind people there's no such thing as safe abortion. To answer the social discredit of chastity in all sorts of ways. To remind people that someone always dies in an abortion.

We could try to have ambition in this area, an ambition to influence. “Don't let your life be barren,” we're told in the first line of The Way. “Be useful. Make yourself felt. Shine forth with the torch of your faith and your love” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 1).

We shouldn't worry if good values, family values, or the Church gets a bad press. Christ got a bad press. But we're here to influence.

We're told in The Forge, “I insist: ask God to grant us, his children, the ‘gift of tongues’, the gift of making ourselves understood by all. You can find the reason why I want this ‘gift of tongues’ in the pages of the Gospel, which abound in parables, in examples which materialize the doctrine and illustrate spiritual truths, without debasing or degrading the word of God” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 895).

Everyone, both the learned and the less learned, finds it easier to reflect on and understand God's message through these human images.

In this world of communication, the 21st century, where everything related to communication is important, we have to try and work at being better communicators.

How do I transmit the message? Is it reflected in the environment around me? Can I transmit those family values a little more, a little better?

I was at a lecture once in Singapore for the Catholic Medical Guild of Asia. The speaker was Professor Robert Walley, perhaps one of the greatest Catholic obstetricians in the world.

He held up two documents. One was the United Nations Declaration on Women. The other was the “Gospel of Life” from the Holy See. He said, “Here are two documents talking about the same thing but saying completely different things. The United Nations talks about women, women, women. The Catholic Church talks about mothers, mothers, mothers.”

Mothers tend to be forgotten in this world. That same professor has written articles saying, Who cares about mothers?

The maternal mortality rate in many third-world countries is one of the greatest scandals of modern medicine. But who cares? Nobody cares. The Catholic Church cares.

We have to try and promote that message a lot. After the death of John Paul II, a journalist stated there were 3,500 different articles written in different newspapers and magazines around the world.

It was a world record in journalism. The next closest was President Bush after his election, which was 3,000 articles.

We have a great message, a message the world is hungry to hear.

We can improve our standards of communication when we answer emails quickly, when we use social media for the good.

“Drown bad ideas in an abundance of good” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 864). When we use our email, or WhatsApp, or Telegram, or Snapchat, or whatever it may be, to spread good news about our Prelature.

Keep people around us informed, in order to serve for quick and easy transmission of good news and of doctrine.

Think about the public relations value of the June 26th masses, or other activities in the center, to keep our contact with people that have passed through our life. Even if we haven't seen them for decades, we keep in contact. We keep the contact warm.

The Apostolate of Public Opinion has many forms and expressions, and we have a message for every last person in society: every opportunity is important.

We're in the business of the evangelization of culture.

One time I was entertaining the Archbishop of Singapore, the deceased Archbishop, in the center of the Women of the Prelature.

We'd had a benediction in the Oratory. He was going to give a get-together in the living room. We retired to the study to give him a cup of tea. He was diabetic.

The people who were in the center had prepared a little trolley with a nice cup of tea and some fruits, nicely prepared. He took one look at the trolley, and he said, This is culture.

I looked again at the trolley. I was wondering, was I missing something? It looked very ordinary to me. I would never have associated the trolley with culture.

But then I realized he was referring to the definition of the Second Vatican Council on culture. It said that culture is everything that humanizes people.

It's a very useful definition of culture. He was talking about the cup and the saucer and the spoon and the nice way this thing was prepared.

It was very simple. It was an ordinary trolley. You wouldn't look at it twice. But for him, this was culture. We eat like human beings. We take care of details. There's a big message there.

There's “something divine hidden in the most ordinary human reality” (J. Escrivá, Conversations: Passionately Loving the World, Point 114).

We're involved in the evangelization of culture. St. Josemaría used to say, We have to fill the world with little pieces of paper, so that people, when they pick up something to read, can pick up something good. We should try and carry a supply of prayer cards with us, or brochures.

Spread the message to every person we meet. Try and do the Apostolate of Public Opinion in your parish.

Be friends with your parish priest. Don't be distant and cold. Foster good relations. Remember his birthday. Give him something at Christmas. Invite him for dinner.

Very often the parish priest understands of Opus Dei whatever he sees in the supernumeraries and the cooperators.

Find ways of helping the parish that is according to our spirit. Live well your duty as parishioners, for example, giving catechism classes, being involved in finance committees, taking care of flowers on the altar. Low key, but effective. Having an influence.

In other areas, we should take care of our appearance. Dress well, as Christ did. His garment was woven without seam from top to bottom (John 19:23). He used the methods that any PR person in the 21st century would use.

In our century, everything to do with presentation and communication is important. We do this apostolate at home with our family, with our children, with our relatives.

Be aware of small local media: a village newsletter, a parish bulletin, a local radio.

We're told in The Forge, “The Master has said it all already: if only we, children of light, were to put at least as much effort and obstinacy into doing good as the children of darkness put into their activities! Don't complain. Work instead to drown evil in an abundance of good!” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 848).

“God wants his children to be on the offensive,” he says. “We cannot stay on the defensive. Our business is to fight, wherever we may be, as an army in battle array” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 790).

“Loving souls, for God's sake, will make us love everyone: understanding, excusing, forgiving all. We should have a love that can cover the multitude of failings contrived by human wretchedness. We have to have a wonderful charity, defending the truth, but without hurting anyone” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 559).

There's no communication without values being communicated. There's no value-free social communication. The world is molded by ideas. We carry our atmosphere with us. Knowledge is power.

The moral fiber of the character in a movie transmits a message. If the hero gets away with crime, there's something wrong with that book or that movie.

Literature is a mirror of society. Don't break the mirror. They could be the sewer of society.

What society are we living in? There are three people who are said to have influenced the 20th century most: Freud, Marx, and Malthus—Freud with his sexual evolution, Marx with socialism and communism, and Malthus with the population theory.

We have to try and see who is going to influence the 21st century most. We have the ideas. We have the truth.

Catherine of Siena said, “I beg you also to hate and despise the sin of impurity and every other sin. For it would be unbecoming to serve in impurity Mary, who is supreme purity.”

St. Catherine invites us to turn to Our Lady, so that she may help us in that spreading of the truth and help us to influence our environment and to carry that environment with us, so that like St. Catherine of Siena, we may truly have a great influence in the environment that God has called us to live.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW