Catholic Saint Stories: St. Catherine of Siena's Contagious Spiritual Fire

If you’ve ever wondered whether one person can actually change the Church… meet St. Catherine of Siena.

In this episode of Rebel Saints: A Catholic Podcast for Restless Hearts, Nicole Olea dives into the life of one of the most bold, unexpected, and spiritually powerful saints in Catholic history. Catherine wasn’t a nun, a theologian by training, or someone with formal authority. She was a laywoman who couldn’t even read or write, yet she advised popes, reformed hearts, and helped bring the papacy back to Rome.

From mystical visions of Christ to caring for plague victims no one else would touch, her life was anything but ordinary.

We unpack:

• Her radical devotion to Christ
• Her role in ending the Avignon Papacy
• Why she was named a Doctor of the Church
• What her teachings on love, virtue, and truth mean for Catholics today
• How YOU can live with the same bold, fearless faith right where you are

If your heart feels restless… this episode is your invitation to something deeper.

Support the Journey: Help other restless hearts find us!

Follow: Hit the "+" or "Follow" button 

Review: If you enjoyed this show, please leave a review. It’s the best way to help us grow.

Connect with Rebel Saints:

• Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/rebelsaintspodcast
• Reflections: https://substack.com/@rebelsaints
• Instagram: @rebelsaintspodcast
• TikTok: @RebelSaintsPodcast
• For exclusive content find us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/RebelSaintsPodcast
• Write us: rebelsaintspodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

E: 29 - Rebel Saints Podcast - St. Catherine of Siena

00:00:00 Nicole Olea: Hey there, restless hearts. Welcome back or welcome for the very first time to the Rebel Saints podcast. I am your host, Nicole Olea. And oh my friends, I have been itching to tell you this story. Today we are stepping into the world of one of the most, boldest, most luminous souls the church has ever known, a woman who never held an official title in the hierarchy, who couldn't even read or write in the formal sense, yet who dictated letters that moved popes, brokered peace in warring city states, and left behind teachings so profound that a pope named her a doctor of the church. She's Saint Catherine of Siena. She's the mystic who saw Christ face to face. The lay woman who nursed the plague ridden when everyone else fled. The fiery Italian who told a hesitant pope, essentially, get your butt back home where you belong. She lived only thirty three years, coincidentally the same span as our Lord. And in that short time she set not just Italy, but the whole church ablaze with love. We're gonna walk through her life together. We're going to talk about where she came from, what she did, what she taught, what she means to the church even now, and I think, most importantly, How her wild, radical example can shake up our ordinary days in twenty twenty six. Because if Catherine teaches us anything, it's that holiness isn't reserved for monks and monasteries. It's for restless hearts like yours. Like mine. Right where we are. This is Rebel Saints. Let's dive in.

00:01:56 Nicole Olea: All right, so we're in Italy, in Siena, Italy. Hence Catherine of Siena. Hahaha. Um, in thirteen forty seven. So a long time ago. And the Black Death is kind of already whispering at the edges of Europe, but in a modest house belonging to a fabric dyer named Giacomo di Benincasa and his wife Lapa, a baby girl, a twin, no less. Number twenty four or twenty five. Yeah, I was gonna like, skip right over that, but I just can't even do that. So yes, Katherine Caterina Benincasa was either the twenty fourth or twenty fifth child her mother birthed.  Yes, Ladies, just let that sit in for a second. Baby Katerina had a communion of siblings already in heaven, when she was born, As only a child who's twenty fourth or twenty fifth in line could be, Catherine, Katerina was, different from her, her siblings. At age six or seven, while walking home with an older brother, she visited her sister who was married, and she had her first vision there on a hill overlooking the city, she saw Christ seated in glory, surrounded by the apostles Peter and Paul and John. And he raised his hand and blessed her, and something in her little baby soul caught fire. And so she consecrated her virginity to him right then and there. She did it. There was no big ceremony or anything. She just said, okay, Jesus, I am yours forever and ever and ever. Like this little thing a little six year old little, you know, baby child, right? She was already so wise, like she already knew who claimed her heart. The thing all of our hearts long for, right? And that's Jesus.

00:04:10 Nicole Olea: let's, fast forward maybe a decade, she's a teenager and, you know, her family wants that usual path for a bright, pretty girl. Marriage, babies, a good alliance for the family business, yada yada yada. But Homegirl Katerina, has other plans. She, cuts her hair short, refused fancy clothes, and, legit starts living like a hermit inside her own house. So she basically called it her cell, right. She, um, went into this tiny room and basically would pray fast and, and slept on the floor and ate like almost nothing. Her parents were like, WTF? Like, what do we do with her? Um, you know, and after a while they realized like their will was not going to be impressed upon their child. They had to let her go and do her thing. At sixteen they did. And she joined the Dominican Third Order, the mantellate. This was a group of lay women who wear the habit, but they live in the world. So they would serve the sick and the poor. And she became Sister Catherine. So those early years in the cell were what she called her, her desert. She called it her inner cell of self-knowledge and knowledge of God, a phrase that, she returns to over and over again.

00:05:51 Nicole olea: During this time, Catherine of Siena described having visions of Christ, of Saints visiting her. She even, said she had this espousal of herself to the body of Christ. Uh, during carnival.

00:06:09 Nicole Olea: Which is like right before lent, um, in thirteen sixty six, where essentially, she says our Lord placed a ring on her finger that only she could see.

00:06:21 Nicole olea: Around the age of twenty,

00:06:24 Nicole Olea: after the series of like profound mystical experiences, um, including a mystical death where she saw hell, purgatory, and heaven in like one long trance. Christ told her that it was time to leave this cell that she was in and to go out, go out into the world. So she starts tending like, to the sickest of the sick in the hospitals in Siena. The plague by now is raging. People are dying, these horrible deaths. But Katherine is nursing these people. They've got the open sores. I mean, you can imagine it, right? Um, people that, like, no one else would touch. She kisses their wounds, washes their bodies, feeds them with her own hands. And in doing this, she's converting sinners on their deathbeds, hardened mercenaries, sex workers, people who are just in despair. She's also gathering like a spiritual family around her, right? Because they're there and they're witnessing all of this. So she's got priests, nobles, artisans, mothers, even like a few wayward knights. Okay. And they're calling her "Mama", even though like legit, she's young enough to be some of their daughters. Right? Um, and her confessor is this Dominican named Raymund of Capua. And he also becomes her biographer. And honestly, like a lifelong friend. So she's dictating letters to secretaries because remember, she never learned to read or write in like the conventional way. Um, but if you read her prose, some of it's so beautiful and theologically rich. Um, of that time. So like fourteenth century, right? Like if you go and you read other folks now. Anyway, um, let's talk about what she actually taught and wrote because this is like the, the, where she actually became the doctor of the church, right? So her masterpiece like book is called like the dialogue. Um, you can find that like, actually I'll link to free copies, like free PDF versions I found online. You can buy it. You know, I think even if you have like Amazon, um, Kindle, I'll link to that. There's like a free couple free ones if you subscribe to like, uh, the service, I forget what it's called. Anyway. Um, so in my Substack, I'll, I'll link to those books so you can, you can find them there. Okay. if you want to read this, it's not that long. It's like, I think under two hundred pages, but, uh, it's a lot to go through. So I'm going to try to break through this, um, as best I can. Um, but no, like, I'm not like a Catherine of Siena expert or anything. Okay. So if I get something wrong, don't come for me if you are one. Okay. What you need to know about this book is that she dictated this in what was described as a profound state of ecstasy or union with God in thirteen seventy eight. And the way it's structured, it's like as a conversation between the soul, like her soul and God. And there are four big treaties, um, in the book, right? So they're the divine providence, discretion, prayer, and obedience. And the central image of her book is kind of like Christ as the bridge. He's the road to heaven, and that's broken by sin. So the father builds a bridge, his only Son, crucified and risen. And the bridge has three steps, the feet-- detachment from sin, the side-- love of virtue and neighbor and the mouth-- holy peace and union with God. And she says, the stones that pave the bridge are true virtues held together by the mortar of love, which I freaking love. So, uh, charity is queen. Humility is her wet nurse. Patience is her marrow and self-knowledge and knowledge of God's goodness. Go hand in hand.

00:10:51 Nicole Olea: And so she writes about like also five kinds of tears, everything from like selfish weeping to the sweet tears of those who love God for his own sake. She talks about discretion as the light that keeps virtue from becoming a vice. Penance without love. Worthless ness. Fasting that makes you cranky and proud.

00:11:14 Nicole olea: And the point of all of this that she makes is that we can do none of these things without love. That love is the point of it all.

00:11:30 Nicole Olea: And she's telling us that our souls cannot live without love, like God tells her in the dialogue. This stuff, she always wants to love something because love is the stuff she is made of. Like, oh my gosh, I just I mean, oh my God, I love it so much. So her letters, and there are over three hundred and eighty of them, are just as fiery. I haven't read through all of them. But she writes to kings, queens, cardinals like the Pope himself. She scolded with this motherly tenderness we all can, take lessons from. She encourages with blazing confidence. And like, woven through all of these pages is essentially the same refrain reform the church from within, by holiness, by truth, by truth spoken in love and by clinging to Christ crucified. Because again, at the time, we have to think the Church, She was not um, not the greatest of people were in the Church, like leading the church at that time. Okay. Um, there was some corruption. I think we could, we could all like just come out and say. Speaking of the church, Catherine's public life exploded during this time, like we're thirteen seventies now, okay? Italy as a country is a mess of warring republics. So as a result, the papacy has actually not been in in Rome, in, in the Vatican. It's been in Avignon, France for seventy years. Popes, they're surrounded by, you know, French cardinals and like, they're far from Rome. And so to her, the whole thing is like, it just feels wrong. She's like saying corruption and simony neglect, um, are all part of this problem. And so Catherine became convinced that the Pope had to return to Rome. She writes this, amazing letter to Pope Gregory the fourteenth. And in it, she says to the Pope, like, gosh, the balls on her. Oh my gosh. She says, be a man, not a timid child. Like she tells him, open your mouth and swallow the bitter for the sweet. So she even goes so far as to travel to Avignon herself in thirteen seventy six as a, like, unofficial ambassador. Yeah. Like again, you had to think of the time she was a woman in the thirteen in like the fourteenth century. Okay. She had no rights. She was illiterate. Okay. And she's going leaving her home country, traveling all the way to France to essentially pull a pope by his ear and say, get your butt home. She spoke through interpreters, and. in the conversations they had through her prayer, her persistence and honestly, that I think her sheer charisma and her holiness, and the Holy Spirit helped convince him. So on January seventeenth, thirteen seventy seven, Gregory the fourteenth entered Rome and the period of the Avignon papacy came to a close. Maybe like a year later, in thirteen seventy eight, the Great Schism occurs. And this is when we essentially had two popes, right? We had one in Rome, and then we had one in Avignon again. And Catherine, I mean, she throws herself into the fray for urban the sixth. He was the Roman claimant. She writes, she pleads, she even offers herself as a victim for the unity of the church. And, in her last years in Rome, she's half paralyzed. She's in constant pain, yet she's still dictating letters, feeding the poor, begging God to let her carry the weight of the bark of Peter on her shoulders. She's like, yeah, Lord, just let me carry this cross. I will sacrifice myself so that we can have a united Church. I think we all can take a little bit of Catherine's desire to like to just leave herself for the church.

00:16:13 Nicole Olea: I mean, oh my gosh, it's so beautiful. It really is. Then on April twenty ninth, thirteen eighty, at the age of thirty three, she died in Rome. She was surrounded by her children, spiritual children, not actual children, because remember, she consecrated her virginity to Jesus, and her last political act from her deathbed. Yep. You're right. She reconciled the Roman Republic with Pope Urban the sixth. She offered everything, her body, her suffering for the church she loved with a passion that I mean, it takes my breath away. Pope Pius II canonized Catherine of Siena in fourteen sixty one, and in nineteen thirty nine she was named Co-patron of Italy with Saint Francis. And then in nineteen seventy, Pope Paul VI declared her a doctor of the church. She's the second woman ever Alongside Teresa of Avila to um, have been given this title. Her feast day is April twenty ninth, and you can actually see her relics in Rome. Her heart, legend says, is still incorrupt. And, uh, those are in Siena. But again, what is what is her real legacy, right? I mean, we're still talking about her. She's still influenced the church and its teachings and what we believe. Right. Like the tradition. What can we learn from Saint Catherine of Siena, this beautiful, fiery saint who lived in the fourteenth century. What can we learn from her? Today, in the twenty first. What does she mean to our church today? Well, I think first and foremost, she's proof that laypeople, especially women, have always had a massive role in reform and renewal of the church.

00:18:21 Nicole Olea: She shows us that mysticism and action are not opposites, that they actually fuel each other. And she's a model for how to love the Church when it's messy, not just when it's like shiny and perfect. She suffered. She spoke out, and she sacrificed for her because she saw the Church as the bride of Christ. Wounded? Yes, but still his. And you know, that's the amazing thing, right? So how can how can we do this? well, let's start with what she did. She built this inner cell, right? Katherine's secret was this hidden life of prayer. So in the noise of our phones and deadlines, can we carve out even ten minutes a day to

00:19:09 Nicole olea: sit in prayer?

00:19:11 Nicole Olea: Can we ask, Lord, who are you? Who am I in you? This knowledge it births in us humility. And I think love, right? Love is one of those things that comes from it. I suck at this. Like I don't have as good of a prayer life as I should as I would like to. Um, and, and she's, she's really inspiring me to like, kind of do this. I think I know I would benefit from this a lot. So if you're like me, hey, friends, maybe this is your sign. Second, be who God meant you to be and watch the fire spread. Okay, this is a popular version of her quote, right? Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire. Amen. The original quote is actually from a letter to a disciple of hers named Stefano Maconi. And she was a little bit more specific. In it she said, if you are what you ought to be, you will set fire to all Italy, not only yonder. Obviously this was said like in Italian. Um, but yes, essentially the same, right. She wasn't talking about fame, productivity. She was speaking about being radically loyal to your vocation, whatever that is being a parent, a worker, a student, a single married priest, none. But she's saying in that is do what God intended to do. Do. Do that with all you do, with all your love. And and you're going to be this inspiration. The world is going to be caught up on fire for Christ because of your

00:21:02 Nicole Olea: light. And you know, the other thing of that is, is speak, speak truth gently, But clearly when our culture is like, uh, yeah, no, sh we're not going to talk about those things because those things are really hard to talk about. Right? No, we've got to speak truth with love always. Um, third, love your neighbor. Amen. Amen, Amen, Amen. Love your neighbor through the wounds. Obviously, Catherine kissed plague sores. She's our model for loving our neighbor as we would love ourselves. And so what is the modern equivalent of that? Maybe it's sitting with a lonely elderly person in your parish. Maybe it's mentoring a struggling teen. Maybe it's choosing mercy when, like social media is just making us so mad. love is the concrete thing here. Love is the thing that is going to be the foundation of all of these actions. Um. Fourth, I guess, pray again. Pray like the church depends on it because it does. Katherine offered her life for unity. I'm obviously, I'm not encouraging you to go and martyr your martyr yourself. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is we live our times. Our world is very divided right now inside the church and out. So what can we do? We can fast. We can pray. We can offer small sacrifices for healing and reform, and we can be. The example of what a joyful Catholic Christian looks like. What a joyful Christian who has joy in the Lord looks like for others. And by doing this, we're not tearing things down, we're building them up through the Holy Spirit. Okay. Fifth, I think, speak boldly. Hello. Hi, everyone out there. But with clarity. Yeah. I may not do the clarity part good, but I'm working on it. Friends. So, she, remember she told Pope, uh, the be a man.

00:23:06 Nicole Olea: We can speak truth to our culture, to injustice, to complacency, but without, like, doing it meanly or or with, like, bitterness. remember the bridge that I mentioned, right? What did she say? Who the bridge was? Yeah. When you fall, get back up. Remembering the way to the father is still through that bridge. Who is Christ crucified? His blood is still the wine that saves. Gosh, our world is so noisy right now, right? But, Catherine, she is not whispering to us from across six centuries. No, no, she is yelling at us. Okay, above all this noise and we can hear her. And all we need to do is use her example. Okay. She is telling us that we are called to be the saints of our generation. And she is telling us the world needs saints like us who are on fire because they know they are loved. No, we don't have to be perfect. All we have to do is say yes, like she did every single day. You are loved. You are loved beyond measure by our Lord and Savior. You are loved by a God who knows you, knows your soul, and loves you despite all of those things. And I love you too. I'm Nicole and this is Rebel Saints. It's a podcast for restless hearts called to be saints. Restless hearts. You are welcome here.