A Song: Any Place, Any Time

Never had known of the person named Catherine of Siena before a few weeks ago but after reading Mary O’Driscoll’s book, I  can say I do. Turning in often to the Catholic Religious channel, in keeping up with the catholic laity's view of these most recent discoveries of decades old clergy issues of abuse, I am thankful to have stubbled on to a keynote address given at the 9th World Meeting of Families, where the book was mentioned.

I have learned that at the age of seven, Catherine claimed to her parents that she had had an encounter with Jesus and some of His close disciples, proclaiming, unequivocally, that she would immediately give herself to complete religious life. I have some sense of her experience, in that; at age nine is when I had my first encounter with Christ. Her parents responded by making her a hermitage in the basement of their home. From that day forward in the mid thirteenth century until her death twenty six years later Catherine lived in a world of extreme fear, war economic distress, filth, terrorizing disease, and blatant corruption within the Catholic church. Her short thirty three years were an amazing journey, marked by passion for the truth, intense care for humanity, and a fervent life of prayer. Well documented accounts describe her emphatic declaration of the Word, whether it was administering care at the bedsides of plague victims or writing letters to feuding church leaders, or visiting the pope. She pointed her finger at the pope on her visit and insisted: “The way has been made. It is the doctrine of Christ crucified. Whoever walks along this way…reaches the most perfect light.” Catherine prayed with a similar intensity: “O eternal God, I have nothing to give except what you have given me, so take my heart and squeeze it out over the face of the Bride.” Through the extreme frailty of her own body, racked with great pain of illness and living in constant sorrow, her severe desire was that God would take her life as an offering, using her in whatever way to mend the brokenness she saw all around her.

When crossing her recorded prayers and letter which have been collected, I was struck by a phrase the editor used to describe her. In her prayers, the editor notes, “her theology becomes doxology.” Namely, what Catherine professed to be true about God became in her prayers—and arguably in her life—an expression of praise to God. Then this past week I have, again, been stricken with the same beautiful notion presented in my new copy of Keith and Kristyn Getty’s book: Sing!—what I know of God being something that moves me to sing to God.

I ask myself at this point: doesn’t all theology, by its nature lead me to doxology? Or does it?

I’ve read many a testimony of persons professing they are persons swallowed up by the Christian story. Not one can I find that their life has not been touched by God’s goodness, moved by God’s mercy, and transformed by God’s mighty presence. In these souls I find a profound correlation between profession and praise. This was certainly true of Catherine, beginning at age seven, not unlike the teenaged peasant girl who was used by God to bring into the world the child who would be named Jesus and called ‘God with us.’ In the Gospel of Luke, I witness the thoughts of Mary actually erupting into song. In the midst of the uncertainty that must have been running through her young, innocent mind, she nonetheless praises God for the things she knows to be true, for the promises that have touched her life, and the very character of the one to whom she sings:

My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Almighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
God’s mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm…
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
even as he said to our fathers.    Luke 1:46-55

This is my proof that’s Mary’s theology is intertwined in her doxology: God is a God who has acted in the story of, not limited to Mary and Catharine of Siena but throughout history and is present today. God has  kept every promise and has indeed promised great things. Holy is the name of the One who sent every person on earth. 

As I come closer and closer in knowing You, Father of heaven, as my eyes are opened wider, I see Your reach, longing to gather every person unto Yourself. Every time I catch a glimpse of the goodness of the Son, His human hand in my life, His giving  the gift of the Spirit, I realize I’ve been given a song. It makes no difference as to my location, there bubbles up within me a need to praise You as a creature in my very createdness, to sing of all that I see and all that I know because of You the Creator who wants to be known. Is this all behind my passion for singing?

Father, I would like to think that it is the reason behind my earthly father's, unsolicited, in any place, at any time, calling out, “Praise Christ.”  Might my theology become a song worth singing. In my limited knowledge of You and in my knowing of Christ, might I find in word and deed, in prayer and song, my life a doxology to the goodness of a Creator who wants to be known.  Amen