Moved by Love, God becomes Man – Catherine of Siena

St. Catherine of Siena on the immeasurable love of God demonstrated in the incarnation of the Word, when, moved by love, God became man in the person of Jesus Christ.

My sweet Lord, look with mercy upon your people and especially upon the mystical body of your Church. Greater glory is given to your name for pardoning a multitude of your creatures than if I alone were pardoned for my great sins against your majesty. It would be no consolation for me to enjoy your life if your holy people stood in death. For I see that sin darkens the life of your bride the Church – my sin and the sins of others.

Moved by Love, God created Man

It is a special grace I ask for, this pardon for the creatures you have made in your image and likeness. When you created man, you were moved by love to make him in your own image. Surely only love could so dignify your creatures. But I know very well that man lost the dignity you gave him; he deserved to lose it, since he had committed sin.

Moved by Immeasurable Love – God became Man

Moved by love and wishing to reconcile the human race to yourself, you gave us your only-begotten Son. He became our mediator and our justice by taking on all our injustice and sin out of obedience to your will, eternal Father, just as you willed that he take on our human nature. What an immeasurably profound love! Your Son went down from the heights of his divinity to the depths of our humanity. Can anyone’s heart remain closed and hardened after this?

Divinity & Humanity of the New Adam

We image your divinity, but you image our humanity in that union of the two which you have worked in a man. You have veiled the Godhead in a cloud, in the clay of our humanity. Only your love could so dignify the flesh of Adam. And so by reason of this immeasurable love I beg, with all the strength of my soul, that you freely extend your mercy to all your lowly creatures.

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This post is an excerpt from the Dialogue (4, 13) of St. Catherine of Siena.  It treats of the bonds of love evident in the gift of the Incarnation.  This selection appears in the Roman Catholic Office of Readings for the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time.  The accompanying biblical reading is Hosea 11:1-11. St. Catherine of Siena, a third order Dominican, died in the 14th century and is one of the few women to be proclaimed a doctor of the church.