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Catherine of Siena (The Classics of Western Spirituality)
Product ID: CWS4504
Description: This is the crowning spiritual work of the only woman other than Teresa of Avila to be granted the title of Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church. This volume was simply called "my book" by the fourteenth-century Italian saint.
The aim of her book (one of the first books to see print in Spain, Germany, Italy and England), says Dr. Noffke in her Forward, was "the instruction and encouragement of all those whose spiritual welfare was her concern."
Catherine was "a mystic whose plunge into God plunged her deep into the affairs of society, Church and the souls of all who came under her influence.... The Dialogue is a great tapestry to which Catherine adds stitch upon stitch until she is satisfied that she has communicated all she can of what she has learned of the way of God."
In this, the sixth centenary of the great Dominican's death, we live in a time so badly in need of her sense of institutional reform as flowing from Divine truth, love and charity.
Dr. Noffke says: "In the opening pages of The Dialogue Catherine presents a series of questions or petitions to God the Father, each of which receives a response and amplification. There is the magnificent symbolic portrayal of Christ as the bridge. There are specific discussions of discernment, tears (true and false spiritual emotion), truth, the sacramental heart ('mystic body') of the Church, divine providence, obedience.... It is not so much a treatise to be read as it is a conversation to be entered into with earnest leisure and leisurely earnest."
About The Classics of Western Spirituality: In one series, the original writings of the universally acknowledged teachers of the Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish and Islamic traditions have been critically selected, translated and introduced by internationally recognized scholars and spiritual leaders.
Translation and Introduction by Suzanne Noffke, O.P. Preface by Giuliana Cavallini. 398 pages. Softcover.
Published by Paulist Press.
$24.95
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