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Friends of the Rosary,

Today, April 29, is the Memorial of St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380). This fourteenth-century Italian saint, a tertiary of the Dominican Order, was favored with visions from the age of seven.

She was distinguished for a life of prayer, extraordinary mortifications, and compelling spiritual writings, such as Dialogue, the book of her meditations and revelations.

She addressed letters to cardinals and kings and led ongoing appeals for civil peace and Church reform.

In 1366, when all of Siena was celebrating the carnival, and Catherine was praying in her room, Christ and our Blessed Lady appeared to her.

Taking Catherine’s hand, our Lady held it up to her Son to place a ring on it, one visible to Catherine but not to others.

Later, Catherine received an invisible stigmata, which became visible after her death, and through which she accepted the physical agonies of the crucifixion.

Though always suffering terrible physical pain, living for long intervals with practically no food except the Blessed Sacrament, she was full of practical wisdom and the greatest spiritual insight.

She made such a profound impression on Pope Gregory XI that he left Avignon, despite the opposition of the French king and almost the entire Sacred College, and returned to Rome in 1377.

Catherine besought Christ to let her bear the punishment for the sins of the world and to receive the sacrifice of her body for the unity and renovation of the Church. This petition was answered by a vision in which the Bark of Peter was laid upon her shoulders, crushing her with its weight.

After a prolonged and mysterious agony, during which she was paralyzed from the waist downward, Catherine died on April 29, 1380.

She said, “All the way to heaven is heaven because He said, ‘I am the Way.”

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

Ave Maria!
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
To Jesus through Mary!

Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.
Please give us the grace to respond with joy!

+ Mikel Amigot w/ María Blanca | RosaryNetwork.com, New York

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Leo XIV