Episode III : The Bridegroom, the Body, and the Cross Mystical Marriage and Redemptive Suffering

Karen’s Voice

We have met the woman. We have seen that she was not a cloistered nun. Now we have to face the part that makes a modern listener flinch.

Raymond of Capua records practices that startle us: a hair shirt, later an iron chain, little sleep, deliberate bodily penances. That is his book. We say so.¹

Catherine also lives a nuptial language that startles us in another way. Christ is the Bridegroom. Raymond records a mystical betrothal, a ring others cannot see. And at the center of Catherine’s life is the Eucharist: Christ giving Himself to her, Catherine receiving Him with an intensity that will mark her entire spiritual life.²

Sara asked, in the first hour, what we do with a saint whose holiness looks like harm. Here is the question underneath that discomfort. Does the Bridegroom want the bride injured?

A good husband does not delight in his wife’s wounds. He delights in her life. That is not sentiment. It is how we already know love works when it is sane. Christ heals bodies. He feeds people. He restores. He suffers for His Bride. Her wounds are not the proof that she belongs to Him.³

Sara, hold that. If love wants the beloved whole, what do we do with Catherine’s severity, and with the Cross we are not allowed to erase?

Sara’s Voice

We’re not going to diagnose a 14th-century woman from this chair, and we will not baptize self-harm. The Church canonized Catherine, and that is not the same as canonizing every penance in the vita.

Karen’s Voice

Yeah, I think that what you have going on there is that the suffering is not for her husband. The suffering is for her children. Catherine takes on, and I think that mothers can understand that, right? If she is in a spiritual union and a spiritual marriage with Christ, it is because she has work to do with His children.

And we see that. There are many times in this story where she’ll talk about a particular saint, that she is really, I mean a particular sinner, that she is bound and determined. She is a mother to these, and many of these people that she is mothering are many years older than her, right? I mean, it’s not an age element. It’s a spiritual element.

And there’s no mother who has had children who does not understand that mother love is existentially a suffering love. So I don’t think that we should look at that as our Lord asking Catherine to suffer for Him. I think He has wed her. She is His spiritual bride, which means that through her He is going to beget spiritual children. And so her suffering is for the good of her children. She sees people who are sinning, and she wants their salvation. And so she suffers for them.

So the hair shirt, not worn because she likes to be itchy. No, she’s wearing the hair shirt because Joe down the street is sinning. He’s at the brothel every night, and she wants him to be saved, right?

So I think that if we stop looking at that as the suffering of a bride for her groom, and we start to see that Catherine does not only stay in that bridal state, but is very rapidly transformed through the Eucharist into the maternal state, where she is the spiritual mother. She’s called to be the spiritual mother, and not just of any children. Really, Catherine is called to be the spiritual mother of wayward children, terrible children.

And so, you know, we can all appreciate the excruciating spiritual and intellectual suffering of Saint Monica, right? We all love that. We’re all very attached to that. But for whatever reason, the physical suffering that Catherine endures for her children, we don’t like to see that, because honestly, we don’t like the physical consequences of sin.

We don’t want to see the physical consequences of sin, and I think that we see that even now, right? Like take the example of a young couple who is fornicating and gets pregnant. They don’t want to see the result of their sin. So they dispose of it, right? We don’t like to see the end results. We don’t like to see consequences.

And so Catherine is a graphic consequence. And I think that that’s the only way to look at the suffering that Catherine endured. Not as the suffering of just any woman, but as the suffering of a mother who sees her children sinning in very, very egregious ways.

Karen’s Voice

Canonizing a saint does not canonize every prudential choice, every ascetical practice of a saint’s life. The Church recognizes her holiness in the person. It does not turn an iron chain into a universal prescription.⁴

Francis of Assisi, near the end of his life, asked pardon of Brother Body for having burdened it too hard. And so really one witness is enough for us.⁵

Sara’s Voice

It actually is a common thing that the saints, and even with Catherine at the end, the reason she fasts is because she can’t eat.

Karen’s Voice

So it is not an anorexia situation here.

Sara’s Voice

Well, and she never looked unhealthy. I mean, she lived on the Eucharist. It was what she was being given that she required. I mean, our Lord is certainly capable of sustaining a miracle.

I just always think that any time that we look to these saints, we always have to ask ourselves, are we really willing to live the exact lives that they lived? If not, then you admire what they do. You may not understand what they do, but it does not mean that it becomes the prescription for you to follow.

And I don’t think it necessarily is, because each walk is an individual way.

Absolutely. Our Lord calls Catherine of Siena to a very particular role within the Church. And so all of the graces that were necessary for her to affect what she needed to do were given to her, and not many of us, thanks be to God, are called to either be the impetus for wayward sinners to come back, or really even to have the gravitas to be able to correct a Pope.

Karen’s Voice

Yes, that’s true.

Questions for Journaling

1. Where have you been tempted to manufacture a cross? And where have you been tempted to run from one that is already in your life?
2. What would it mean this week to treat your body as something Christ heals and feeds, not as an enemy?
3. When you think of Christ as Bridegroom rather than taskmaster, what changes in the way you understand His call to holiness?

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, Bridegroom and Healer, teach us to love you, not suffering for its own sake. Give us courage to receive the cross that comes, humility not to invent one that is not ours, and wisdom to care for the body you have given us.

Saint Catherine of Siena, pray for us.

Closing prayer composed for this episode, inspired by the life and witness of St. Catherine of Siena. It is not attributed to St. Catherine.

Notes

1. Blessed Raymond of Capua, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, trans. Conleth Kearns, O.P. Raymond records Catherine’s severe bodily penances.
2. Sigrid Undset, Catherine of Siena, trans. Kate Austin-Lund (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 49; Raymond of Capua, Legenda maior. The mystical betrothal, Bridegroom language, and Eucharistic life are related here without treating them as identical.
3. The spousal analogy is Karen’s. The Gospel pattern invoked is Christ healing, feeding, restoring, and suffering for His Bride.
4. Theological distinction used in the episode: canonization recognizes the holiness of the saint. It does not make every historically conditioned ascetical practice a universal prescription.
5. The early Franciscan biographical tradition preserves Francis’s late recognition that he had treated his body too harshly, expressed as asking pardon of “Brother Body” or “Brother Ass.” The wording varies across translations and retellings. The episode keeps the claim deliberately modest rather than making the later English phrasing do more historical work than it can bear.
6. Sigrid Undset, Catherine of Siena, 78. When directing others, Catherine warned against exaggerated physical self-discipline that could weaken health and urged sufficient food, drink, and sleep for the work required of one’s state in life.
7. Closing prayer composed for this episode, inspired by the life and witness of St. Catherine of Siena. It is not attributed to St. Catherine.