“What Was She Thinking?”

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Feast day of Catherine of Siena, April 29th

I humbly admit to my simple Catholic background; I went to public schools, Sunday and Holy day mass, and rudimentary catechism classes in our rural church on Saturday mornings.  I never opened a Bible until I went to a Catholic college – and even then I slept through a lot of that class!  So when I entered the Congregation I was in left field when it came to knowing my roots.  That was especially true when it came to learning about Catherine of Siena.  A) I’d never heard of her and B) after hearing of her all I could think was “What was she thinking?” – all that solitude and crazy fasting and extreme self-denial and dialogues with Jesus and…I could go on.  So here we are on her feast day all these years later and thanks to great contemporary scholarship by Dominican women and others, I have new and deeper insights into Catherine’s life of faith, her intense and loving service to the Church and compassion for the people of God.  She IS worth exploring!  I urge you to find out for yourself what she was thinking!

Priscilla Wood, OP
Dubuque, IA

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