The Passion and death of Jesus reveals God’s love for us, according to Thomas
Aquinas: “We could thus see how much God loved us, and so would be aroused to love
Him. In this the perfection of our salvation consists.” 1
One scholar, Giacinto D’Urso, O.P., believes that this approach is very characteristic of
another Dominican, St. Catherine of Siena (d. 1380): “The entire Catherinian doctrine is
a commentary on these words.” 2
In proclaiming Catherine to be a doctor of the Church, Pope Paul VI stated: “Catherine
is the mystic of the Incarnate Word, above all of Jesus Crucified.” 3
For Catherine, the crucifixion is God’s ultimate demonstration of Jesus’ love for us in
order to draw us to Himself: “My goodness seeing that in another way you would not be
able to be drawn…. drew everything to Himself in this way to show the inexpressible
love that He had for you because the human heart is always drawn by love.” 4
While others in the fourteenth century presented the Passion in its details to arouse a
response of love, Catherine gives small attention to the details but calls attention to the
interior significance, God’s underlying desires for humanity. The sufferings of His body
were, as she explains “finite,” while the love with which He endured them was “infinite”:
It seems that this immaculate Lamb was not able to be satisfied. Crying out on
the Cross, saturated with shame, He says that He thirsts. Although He might
have had bodily thirst, the thirst of holy desire that He had for the salvation of
souls was greater. O inestimable sweetest Love, it doesn’t seem that giving
Yourself to such torments, You may give enough, for the desire You had for the
salvation of souls was even greater, wanting all the more to give everything. Love
is the reason. I do not marvel at it because Your love was infinite, and the pain
was finite. And so the cross of His desire was greater, than the cross of His
body. 5
Catherine is impressed that Jesus’ sufferings were for our good:
Making Yourself small, You have made humanity great. Saturated with shame,
You have filled us with happiness. Having suffered hunger, You have saturated
us in the affection of Your charity. Stripping Yourself of life, You have clothed us
1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, 46, 3.
2 “La dottrina cateriniana è tutta un commento a queste parole.” Giacinto D’Urso, O.P., “Il misterio
di Cristo nella verità del Padre,” Angelicum 64 (1987): 196, n. 5.
3 “Caterina sia la mistica del verbo Incarnato, e sopratutto di Cristo Crocifisso.” Paulus P.P. VI,
“Santa Caterina da Siena proclamata dottore,” 7.
4 The Dialogue, XXVI.
5 Letter 16. The numbering of the letters and prayers follows the Italian versions. Excellent
English translations of Catherine’s letters, prayers, and her book, The Dialogue, have been done by
Suzanne Noffke, O.P.

with grace. Filling Yourself with shame, You have restored honor to us. Being
hidden, You have restored to humanity the light. Being stretched out upon the
cross, You have embraced us. 6
Catherine repeatedly reflects on Jesus’ inexplicable love for humanity, exhausting all the
traditional descriptions and creating some unconventional ones. Since Jesus’ gratuitous
love seems to be irrational, she compares Jesus to one who is inebriated:
You showed this burning desire and You ran as one drunk and blind to the
shame of the cross. As someone blind does not see and as someone drunk
when he is well intoxicated, almost like one dead, loses himself….You have let
Yourself be blinded by love such that You did not let Yourself see our
wickedness, nor have You lost this sentiment, sweet Lord! 7
Since His generous love defies good sense, Catherine often uses the Italian word
pazzo, “crazy,” to describe God’s love: “You, abyss of charity, it seems that You are
crazy about Your creatures, as if You would not be able to live without them, although
You are our God who has no need of us….What moved You to give such mercy? Love,
and not an obligation nor need that You have of us because we are guilty and wicked
debtors.” 8
She recalls words that may have been spoken to her in a vision of Christ crucified:
“Look at Me, the Lamb, bleeding on the cross for you, totally, from head to feet, I didn’t
utter My cry expressing complaint. Nor do I look at your ignorance nor did your
ingratitude draw Me back from working your salvation as one crazy and transformed
through the hunger that I have for you.” 9
For Catherine, God’s generosity in giving Jesus manifests His intentions. The death of
Jesus is the proof that God desires to share eternal life with humanity:
Certainly we see it manifestly, that if in truth He had not created us to give us
eternal life, that we might enjoy His supreme and eternal good, He would not
have given us such a Redeemer, nor would Jesus have given Himself, wholly
God and wholly human. Then certainly it is the truth that the blood of Christ
shows us and makes clear this truth of His sweet will. 10
For Catherine, the blood also represents the continuous transmission of the effects of
Jesus’ death to individuals:
The blood shows His sweet will, that does not seek nor wish other than our
sanctification. And whatever He gives or permits, is given to us for this end, is

6 Prayer XII.
7 Letter 225.
8 The Dialogue XXV.
9 Letter 70.
10 Letter 227.

given for love, in order that we might be sanctified in Him. So His truth fulfills
itself. 11
In as much as we recognize the love of God in the blood, our love for God begins to
grow:
Because in the blood of Christ we see the ineffable love which God has for us,
since the blood reveals to us the love and the charity of God more manifestly
than any other thing, at once we opens ourselves to love Him with all our hearts,
with all our affection and with all our strength. For the condition of love is to love
as much as we feel loved and to love all those things that [the beloved] loves
who loves us. 12
To respond to God’s love, we must love our neighbors with similar gratuity, as the
Father explains in The Dialogue:
You ought to love with that pure love with which I love you. You cannot do this to
Me because I loved you without being loved and without any self-concern. For I
have loved you without being loved by you before you were. Indeed, love moved
Me to create you in My image and likeness. You are not able to give that back to
Me but you ought to give it to other people, loving them without being loved by
them and to love without any concern for your own spiritual or material benefit,
but only to love for the glory and praise of My name because they are loved by
Me. 13
Denis Vincent Wiseman, O.P.