St. Catherine of Genoa’s mystical life testifies to the mystery of the Ascension.
One of the most obvious needs displayed on social media, indeed on across any media, is the need to be seen. We want to be recognized. This also may be an impetus behind our propensity for awards, honors, titles, offices, chic dress, fame, or, really, to stand out in any way. Sometimes this goes to the extreme with lone gunmen who want to be infamous, which is a perverse form of fame. The Gospel takes us in a different direction. This direction is symbolized by today’s feast: the Ascension.
The Ascension is about being fully drawn up into the mystery of God: “Then [Jesus] led them out as far as Bethany, raised his hands, and blessed them. As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven.” The ultimate beatitude is to disappear in the divine love. We can interpret the Ascension as Jesus disappearing into God. This goes against the grain of our cultural compulsion to be seen, to be recognized.
The feast of the Ascension is a summons to us: let yourselves be consumed by God, as fire consumes wood until nothing is left. St. Catherine of Genoa, a married saint (!), once wrote, “I cannot and do not desire and do not wish to be able to desire to be occupied save in God alone, who has taken my inner being and has so enclosed it in himself that he will not open it to anyone. Know that he does nothing else but to consume this humanity, his creature, within and without; and when it is entirely consumed in him, both will go out of this body and ascend, united, into our homeland. I can therefore see nothing within except him.” Catherine of Genoa confesses that whenever she had to speak of herself or listen to others speaking about her she immediately loses herself in God. She says, “when I mention myself or am mentioned by others – then I say, ‘My I is God, and I know no other I than this God.’” The self is what stands in the way of totally being consumed by the annihilating love of God.
Catherine continues, “I no longer see union, for I know nothing more and can see nothing more than him alone without me. I do not know where the I is, nor do I seek it, nor do I wish to know or be cognizant of it. I am so plunged and submerged in the source of his infinite love, as if I were quite under water in the sea and could not touch, see, feel anything on any side except water. I am so submerged in the sweet fire of love that I cannot grasp anything except the whole of love, which melts all the marrow of my soul and body.” She’s talking about the grace of the Ascension. Catherine invites us to follow the ascended Christ into total submersion in the divine unity.
Catherine lost herself and any self-awareness in the love of God. She chose to love God alone and to ignore herself, neither praising nor debasing herself. She simply didn’t talk to herself and so became fixated on divine love. With the spiritual practice of self-forgetfulness, she realized her deepest self is God. She says, “The soul, wrapped up in God, cannot but be oblivious to all else.” In prayer, Catherine reports she can “see nothing within except him.” Catherine is so submerged in the mystery; she cannot see anything except God. Her own self has disappeared, so she can say that her I is not herself but God. Her very existence is God. Her very self has dropped out and been replaced with the divine self. It’s nothing of Catherine and nothing but God. “I know nothing more and can see nothing more than him alone without me. I do not know where the I is, nor do I seek it, nor do I wish to know or be cognizant of it.” Her experience of God is one of pure nothingness. There is no self but only the mystery and nothingness of God.
This total unity and loss of self is not limited to Catherine. All of us can discover that the I is God. There are no barriers to this supreme realization except the ones we put there. On God’s end, it’s totally available. “As for paradise, God has placed no doors there. Whoever wishes to enter, does so. All-merciful God stands there with His arms open, waiting to receive us into His glory.” Paradise is knowing nothing but God with the human I replaced by the divine I. This heavenly paradise awaits us right here and right now. Our simple task is to lose ourselves in divine love: “Once stripped of all its imperfections, the soul rests in God, with no characteristics of its own, since its purification is the stripping away of the lower self in us. Our being is then God.” Catherine of Genoa’s mystical life testifies to the Ascension: until we are consumed by God totally, we won’t know who we are.