Observations placeholder
St Catherine of Sienna - Receives the 'stigmata'
Identifier
013319
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
from Raymond of Capua's Life of St. Catherine of Siena (Lamb's translation)
Then the virgin sent for me and said quietly,
"You must know, Father that by the mercy of the Lord Jesus I now bear in my body His stigmato. "
I replied that while I had been watching the movements of her body when she was in ecstasy I had suspected something of the sort; I asked her how the Lord had done all this. She said,
"l saw the Lord fixed to the cross coming towards me in a great light, and such was the impulse of my soul to go and meet its Creator that it forced the body to rise up. Then from the scars of His most sacred wounds I saw five rays of blood coming down towards me, to my hands, my feet and my heart. Realizing what was to happen, I exclaimed, 'O Lord God, I beg you - do not let these scars show on the outside of my body! 'As I said this, before the rays reached me their colour changed from blood red to the colour of light, and in the form of pure light they arrived at the five points of my body, hands, feet and heart."
"So then," I said, no ray reached your right side?"
"No," she replied, "it came straight to my left side, over my heart; because that line of light from Jesus’s right side struck me directly, not aslant."