TO THE VENERABLE RELIGIOUS, BROTHER ANTONIO OF NIZZA,
OF THE ORDER OF THE HERMIT BROTHERS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE
AT THE WOOD OF THE LAKE


It is in her letters to persons leading the dedicated life that one can
most clearly study Catherine's own inner experience. When warning and
consoling them, she is speaking to herself. This obscure girl had a way of
writing to the great of this earth--and indeed to the very Fathers of
Christendom--with the straightforward simplicity of a teacher instructing
childish minds in the evident rudiments of virtue. Often the sanctified
common sense of her letters to dignitaries is the most noticeable thing
about them. But when she turns to a holy hermit, the tone changes. The
commonplaces of the moral life are assumed or left behind; she speaks to a
soul that has presumably already brought its will into accord with the
divine will in regard to all outward happenings, and she takes calmly for
granted that this is a light and little thing. We proceed to the analysis
of temptations more subtle and more alluring. Catherine has few superiors
among religious thinkers in the power to trace self-will to its remotest
lairs, in the deeper reaches of personality. In letters to such
correspondents as Frate Antonio she often gives us, as here, precious
records of her intercourse with her Lord.


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

To you, most beloved and dearest father and brother in Christ Jesus: I
Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write and
commend me in the Precious Blood of the Son of God, with desire to see you