TO MONNA GIOVANNA DI CORRADO MACONI

Monna Lapa was evidently not the only mother in Siena who fretted over the long absence from home of Catherine and her spiritual children. Monna Giovanna, of the noble family of the Maconi, longed for the presence of Catherine's secretary, her beloved son Stefano. This is the second letter which Catherine wrote in the effort to reconcile her. We cannot be surprised if she murmured. Stefano had known Catherine for a few months only when she bore him off with her to Avignon. Their relations dated from January, 1376, when at his entreaty she healed a feud of long standing between the Maconi and the rival house of the Tolomei. From this time he attached himself to her person, and his devotion to her made him an object of ridicule to his bewildered former friends. He was, by all accounts, a singularly attractive and lovable young man--sunny, light-hearted, and popular wherever he went. Catherine from the first loved him, as she avows in this letter, with especial tenderness. She made him her trusted intimate, and from now until shortly before her death he was in almost constant attendance upon her, or when away was still occupied in her affairs. Catherine was evidently on intimate and affectionate terms with the rest of the Maconi family also; but it is not strange if Monna Giovanna developed a little motherly jealousy, as she saw her brilliant son not only absorbed by this new friendship, but borne away to distant lands. Catherine's letter is as applicable to-day as then, to all parents whose misguided tenderness would seek to hinder their children in a high vocation.

In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

To you, dearest sister and daughter in Christ Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write in His precious Blood, with desire to see you clothed in the wedding garment. For I consider that without this garment the soul cannot please its Creator, nor take its place at the Marriage Feast in the enduring life. I wish you, therefore, to be clothed in it; and in order that you may clothe you the better, I wish you to divest yourself of all self-love according to nature and the senses, which you feel for yourself, your children, and any other created thing. You ought to love neither yourself nor anything else apart from God; for it is impossible that a man can serve two masters; if he serve the one, he does not give satisfaction to the other. And there is no one who can serve both God and the world, for they have no harmony with each other. The world seeks honour, rank, wealth, sons in high place, good birth, sensuous pleasure and indulgence, all rooted in perverted pride; but God seeks and wants exactly the opposite. He wants voluntary poverty, a humbled heart, disparagement of self and of every worldly joy and grace; that personal honour be not sought, but the honour of God and the salvation of one's neighbour. Let a man seek only in what way he may clothe him in the fire of most ardent charity with the ornament of sweet and sincere virtue, with true and holy patience; let him take no revenge on another for any injury his neighbour may show him, but endure all in patience, seeking only to pass sentence on himself, because he sees that he has wronged the Sweet Primal Truth. And what he loves, let him love in God, and apart from God love nothing.

And did you say to me, "In what way should I love?" I answer you that children and everything else should be loved for love of Him who created them, and not for love of one's self or the children; and that God should never be wronged for their sake or any other. That is, do not love through regard to any utility, nor as your own thing, but as a thing lent to you: since whatever is given us in this life is given for use, as a loan, and is left to us so long only as pleases the Divine Goodness which gave it us. You should use everything, then, as a steward of Christ crucified, spending your temporal substance so far as is possible to you for the poor, who stand in the place of God; and so you ought to spend your children, nourishing and educating them ever in the fear of God, and wishing that they should die rather than wrong their Creator. Oh, make a sacrifice of yourself and them to God! And if you see that God is calling them, offer no resistance to His sweet will: but if they welcome it with one hand, do you reach out both like a true loving mother, who loves their salvation; do not desire to shape their lives to suit yourself--for this would be a sign that you loved them apart from God--but with any state to which God calls them, with that be you content. For a mother who loves her children according to the wickedness of the world, says many a time: "It pleases me well that my children should please God; they can serve Him in the world as well as anywhere else." But it happens often to these simple mothers, who want to plunge their children in the world, that later they possess those children neither in the world nor in God. And it is a just thing that they should be deprived of them, spirit and body, since such ignorance and pride reigns in them that they want to lay down law and rule to the Holy Spirit, who is calling them. Such people do not love their children in God, but with sensuous self-love apart from God, for they love their bodies more than their souls. Never, dearest sister and daughter in Christ sweet Jesus, could he clothe himself in Christ crucified who had not first divested him of this. I hope by the goodness of God that all this will not apply to you, but that you will give yourself and them to the honour and glory of the Name of God, like a true good mother, and so shall you be clothed in the Wedding Garment. But in order that you may clothe you the better, I want that you should lift your desire and heart above the world and all its doings, and that you should open the eye of the mind to know what love God bears to you, who has given you, for love, the Word, His Only-Begotten Son; and the Son in burning love has given you life, and has sacrificed His Body that He might cleanse us with His Blood. Ignorant are we and wretched who nor know nor love so great a benefit! But all this is because our eyes are closed; for were they open, and had they fastened themselves on Christ crucified, they would not be ignorant nor ungrateful in presence of so great grace. Therefore I say to you, keep your eyes ever open, and fasten them fixedly on the Lamb that was slain, in order that you may never fall into ignorance.

Up, sweetest daughter, let us delay no more! Let us recover the time we have lost, with true and perfect love; so that, clothing ourselves in this life with the garment I spoke of, we may joy and exult at the Marriage Feast in the enduring life--you and your husband and your children together. And comfort you sweetly, and be patient, and do not grow disturbed because I have kept Stefano so long: for I have taken good care of him, for by love and tenderness I have become one thing with him, therefore I have treated your things as if they were my own. I think you have not taken this in bad part. I wish to do whatever I can for him and for you, even to death. You, mother, bore him once; and I wish to bear him and you and all your family, in tears and sweats, by continual prayers and desire for your salvation.

I say no more. Commend me to Currado, and bless all the rest of the family, and especially my little new plant, that has just been planted anew in the Garden of Holy Church. Be it commended to you, and do you bring it up for me virtuously, so that it may shed fragrance among the other flowers. God fill you with His most sweet favour. Remain in the holy and sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.