In a recent publication, the Irish poet-theologian, Paul Murray, suggests a theological affinity between Thomas Aquinas and Catherine of Siena when he describes Catherine’s writings as ‘a Summa set on fire’.Footnote 1 Murray’s remark invites inquiry into what precise similarities exist between the theology of Thomas and Catherine. This study proposes charity as a locus where the correspondences between Aquinas and Catherine are particularly pronounced. As a diligent reading of their respective corpora makes evident, charity holds a central place within the theological vision of both Dominican Doctors. By comparing these two accounts, we reap a rich harvest of insights into Aquinas’ and Catherine’s complementary perspectives on Christ’s charity and our own. Moreover, such a project allows us to appreciate the fundamental harmony between the high Scholasticism of Aquinas and the mystical spirituality of Catherine.
At the outset, the lack of scholarly engagement between the theology of Thomas and Catherine must be acknowledged, as well as the biographical contrasts between the two.Footnote 2 Reasons for the dearth of Thomistic–Catherinian scholarship include the challenges presented by the vast corpus of the former and the diffuse, mystical style of the latter. Whereas the opera of Aquinas comprise a veritable library, the output of the illiterate Catherine consists of a single major literary work, some twenty-six prayers, and over four hundred letters to an eclectic array of correspondents.Footnote 3 Additionally, Thomas and Catherine differ sharply in intellectual formation and influence, despite being separated by less than a century in a shared medieval Italian milieu. In contrast to Thomas’ rigorous Scholastic training, Catherine’s formal education was effectively nonexistent.Footnote 4
At the same time, Catherine assimilated a diverse range of theological influences, benefiting from ‘regular contact with nuns, hermits, preachers, and ascetics, and [the experience of] a variety of monastic and religious traditions in and around Siena’.Footnote 5 The spiritual heritage of Augustine and Bernard is particularly evident in Catherine’s emphasis on self-knowledge and her favored division of the soul’s powers into memory, understanding, and will.Footnote 6 Yet despite its mystical and Augustinian overtones, Catherine’s theology rests solidly on foundational principles formulated by Thomas.Footnote 7 While it is unlikely that she had direct contact with Aquinas’ writings, Catherine’s parish church in Siena was run by the Order of Preachers. As a recipient of regular Dominican preaching, Catherine would have benefited from the friars’ Scholastic formation, which almost certainly included exposure to Aquinas.Footnote 8 That she was familiar with the figure of St Thomas is indisputable; in the Dialogue, Catherine expresses her admiring regard for the Angelic Doctor both as a source of theological wisdom and as a brother in the Order to which Catherine herself belonged as a Dominican tertiary.Footnote 9 Another major Dominican influence was Raymond of Capua, Catherine’s confessor and biographer.Footnote 10
Given these differences between Thomas and Catherine, the substantial theological congruence in their treatments of charity is noteworthy. Drawing primarily from the Summa and Dialogue, this study traces the distinctive features of their respective accounts while placing parallel texts from each author side-by-side. In so doing, it seeks to demonstrate the profound correspondence between Thomas and Catherine in their consideration of Christ’s charity and ours.
1. Aquinas on Christ’s charity
Charity is no minor theme in the Summa, and Christ’s charity specifically resounds as a dominant chord within the masterful composition of the Tertia Pars.Footnote 11 As does Catherine, Thomas views Christ’s obedient charity to the Father as the formal cause of the Passion’s efficacy. At the same time, the operation of Christ’s charity in the divine economy extends beyond the Redemption; Aquinas treats its salvific effects as inseparable from the order of the dispensation of grace, particularly through the sacraments, and the communication of wisdom and charity to souls by the invisible missions of the Son and Spirit.
1.1. Christ’s salvific charity
Thomas presents Christ’s charity and obedience to the Father, enacted in his Passion, as the formal cause of salvation because of the perfect satisfaction and merit they procure: ‘By suffering out of love and obedience, Christ gave more to God than was required to compensate for the offense of the whole human race. First of all, because of the exceeding charity from which He suffered’.Footnote 12 As does Catherine, Thomas insists that the Passion’s efficacy does not derive solely from the magnitude of Christ’s sufferings.Footnote 13 Rather, he treats Christ’s voluntary enduring of the Passion as a true sacrifice ‘most acceptable to God’ because it proceeded from obedience to the Father commanded by charity.Footnote 14
Throughout his corpus, Thomas draws attention to the ‘devotion proceeding from charity’ with which Christ ‘humbly sustains’ his passion.Footnote 15 In the De Perfectione Spiritualis Vitae, he offers the religious state as the preeminent means to attain the perfection of charity because it is rooted in imitation of Christ’s own pattern of life.Footnote 16 He gives priority to the evangelical counsel of obedience as the constitutive element of the free and total sacrifice (holocaustum) offered by religious vows, on the view that it approximates most perfectly Christ’s obedient charity on the cross.Footnote 17 In the ninth chapter of her Dialogue, Catherine similarly lauds obedience, modeled by Christ and imitated by the faithful.Footnote 18 For Thomas and Catherine, Christ’s salvific charity, manifested by the obedient submission of his human will to the Father’s, informs the redemptive work of the Passion.Footnote 19
1.2. Christ’s charity in the divine economy
The place of Christ’s charity in the divine economy appears as early as question 20 of the Prima Pars, where Thomas treats love as a divine attribute. Refuting the objector who cites the Father’s handing Christ over to death to argue that ‘God does not always love more the better things’, Thomas states:
God loves Christ not only more than he loves the whole human race, but more than he loves the entire created universe … Nor did anything of his excellence diminish when God delivered him up to death for the salvation of the human race; rather did he become thereby a glorious conqueror.Footnote 20
Having established this principle, Thomas can maintain in the Tertia Pars that the Father truly handed Christ over to his Passion, without impugning the divine goodness.Footnote 21
The place of Christ’s charity in the divine economy is clarified with Thomas' insistence on the preordained nature of the Passion.Footnote 22 Insofar as it was eternally willed by God as the fitting means for our salvation, it was necessary for Christ to suffer for us.Footnote 23 Maintaining the unity of divine operation, Thomas assigns the first cause of the Redemption to the Trinity, ‘to whom Christ’s life belonged as to its first author, and from whom Christ received the inspiration of suffering for us’.Footnote 24 Conceived more broadly, the very Incarnation itself (as ordered toward the Redemption) may be attributed to charity, which Thomas does in question 1 of the Tertia Pars: ‘The work of the Incarnation proceeds from the immensity of Divine charity’.Footnote 25 Catherine likewise emphasizes this theme: the Incarnation as a proof of God’s charity for humanity.Footnote 26
1.3. The efficacy of Christ’s exemplary charity
Thomas uses exemplary, efficient, and moral causality to describe the various modes by which Christ’s charity operates. On Thomas’ account, the effects of Christ’s redemptive charity are applied principally through his capital grace, mediated by the sacraments and infused with theological charity. Question 1 of the Tertia Pars states one of the ways the Incarnation conduces to our ‘furtherance in good’ is ‘with regard to charity, which is greatly enkindled by this’.Footnote 27 Thomas returns to this theme when he treats the Passion, offering as the first of three ways Christ’s Passion causes remission of sins, its effect of ‘provoking [us] to charity’.Footnote 28 Thus, our charity is elicited by Christ’s exemplary charity manifested in the Passion and prompting us to imitate His example and to love in response.Footnote 29 Similarly, Catherine often observes that Christ’s loving sacrifice on the cross incites an answering charity in us.Footnote 30
The efficient causality of Christ’s charity may be seen in the invisible missions of the Son and Spirit to the soul in grace. On Aquinas’ account, the invisible missions of the Son and Spirit extend the eternal Trinitarian processions temporally and terminate in the created effects of charity and wisdom in the souls of the baptized.Footnote 31 The theological virtue of charity and its corresponding gift of wisdom assimilate us to Christ by applying the merits of Christ’s Passion to the soul through the sending of the Spirit.Footnote 32 Thus, Christ’s charity in the Passion is not merely exemplary in the moral sense but is efficaciously so, ultimately making possible the human creature’s ‘deification by grace of the image’ through the created habitus of charity and the Spirit’s gift of wisdom.Footnote 33 In his treatment of the sacraments, Thomas develops more fully the connection between grace and the Passion, noting: ‘Christ’s Passion works its effect in them to whom it is applied, through faith and charity and the sacraments of faith’.Footnote 34 Thus, Christ’s charity functions to facilitate the divine communicatio of grace, upon which the friendship of theological charity is founded and by which we are transformed into the imago gratiae as adopted sons in the Son.
2. Catherine on Christ’s charity
Catherine’s writings are dominated by the theme of God’s generous love for humanity, which she contemplates primarily in the charity of Christ.Footnote 35 In the Dialogue, she prays: ‘O immeasurably tender love! Who would not be set afire with such love? What heart could keep from breaking? You, deep well of charity, it seems you are so madly in love with your creatures that you could not live without us!’Footnote 36 In this section, we examine Christ’s charity according to three themes central to Catherine’s theological imagination: charity as operative in the Passion, the fire of Christ’s charity, and the Blood as a sign and instrument of Christ’s charity. We conclude by observing how the pedagogic power of Christ’s charity serves as a unifying thread binding together these diverse strands of Catherine’s reflections on the mystery of Redemption.
2.1. ‘The pedagogy of the cross’
Like St Thomas, who speaks of Christ ‘hanging on the cross as a teacher teaching from his chair’,Footnote 37 Catherine learns the lesson of Christ’s love as it is supremely manifested in the ‘pedagogy of the cross’.Footnote 38 In the Passion, she discerns Christ’s charity in a twofold light. On the one hand, Christ’s sufferings and death reveal his extravagant love for humanity; on the other hand, the obedience with which he undertakes his Passion reveals his human charity for the Father.Footnote 39 When Catherine asks rhetorically, ‘What held him nailed firm and fast to the cross?’ her response locates Christ’s obedient charity as the motive for the Passion: ‘Neither the nails nor the cross … but the bond of love for the Father’s honor and our salvation … What armed him? Love’.Footnote 40
In addition to manifesting Christ’s charity for humanity, the Passion reveals the Son’s charity for the Father. Christ’s obedience figures largely in Catherine’s typical account of Redemption, as given here:
Rebels that we were, we declared war on your mercy and became your enemies. But stirred by the same fire that made you create us you gave your only-begotten Son, your Word, to be mediator between us and you. He offered you the obedience you required of him … taking on our likeness and our human nature!Footnote 41
As does Thomas, Catherine’s point of emphasis is not primarily Christ’s physical suffering but the surpassing charity and obedience that inspired him to willingly endure the cross.
For Catherine (as for Thomas), the charity and obedience of the suffering Christ offer an instructive example for the souls whom he calls to imitate his virtue. The Dialogue characterizes Christ’s Body as a bridge ‘paved with the true and solid virtues of charity’s fire’,Footnote 42 which ‘bind heaven with earth’.Footnote 43 Christ’s Passion makes him the soul’s bridge of entry into the inner mysteries of divine life and love. Foster summarizes Catherine’s doctrine, stating: ‘From the cross, as from a master’s chair, he teaches the human race, with his blood, the lessons of love and obedience’.Footnote 44 Throughout the Dialogue, we find sustained this theme of the pedagogic nature of Christ’s charity.
2.2. The fire of divine charity
In the Dialogue, God describes the Incarnation to Catherine as ‘the fiery chariot of my only-begotten Son … bringing the fire of my charity to your humanity’.Footnote 45 Fire constitutes a prominent image in Catherine’s mystical vocabulary,Footnote 46 which she employs with typical lexical fluidity to describe both the ‘fire of divine charity’ and the soul being enflamed with fervent desire. For Catherine, the two concepts are intimately linked. As fire spreads and consumes, so contemplating the ‘blazing love’ revealed in ‘the blood of the spotless Lamb’ results in a corresponding conflagration in the soul.Footnote 47 So central is the theme of fire that Catherine concludes her Dialogue with a hymn to the ‘burning’ love revealed to her: ‘O eternal Trinity, fire and abyss of charity. You are a fire always burning but never consuming; you are a fire consuming in your heart all the soul’s selfish love … You who are the angels’ food are given to humans with burning love’.Footnote 48
Christ’s flaming charity enkindles an answering ‘fire of divine charity’ in the soul, as God tells Catherine: ‘In so knowing me, the soul catches fire with unspeakable love’.Footnote 49 Catherine’s letters reveal her confidence in the efficacy of this divine fire to elicit love, strength, and courage. Invoking the Blood, she urges a wavering correspondent: ‘Keep before your mind’s eye the blood shed with such blazing love, so that you may be inspired for battle, entirely free’.Footnote 50
Thomas likewise favors the metaphor of fire to speak about love, both divine and human. In language strikingly consonant with Catherine’s, Thomas utilizes fire imagery to evoke the lover’s implacable eagerness to suffer for the beloved: ‘[J]ust as fire cannot be restrained, except by violence, from the motion that suits it according to the requirements of its form, so neither can the lover be restrained from acting according to love.’Footnote 51 In a mystical reading of the post-Resurrection breakfast in John 21, Thomas attributes the ‘fire of charity’ to Christ, suggesting that ‘the cooking fish outspread over the hot coals is the suffering Christ who is spread over the hot coals when because of the fire of his love for us he is immolated on the cross’.Footnote 52
2.3. The efficacy of the blood
For Catherine, Christ’s Blood does not function merely as a sign of his charity; it also relates with an efficacious pedagogy to our own charity. In the Dialogue, God describes to Catherine the instructive role exercised by Christ’s Blood: ‘This blood gives you knowledge of the truth when knowledge of yourself leads you to shed the cloud of selfish love. There is no other way to know the truth’.Footnote 53 As we shall see, knowledge for Catherine (and Thomas) is requisite to love. If the Blood’s first effect is to reveal Christ’s s charity, the second effect necessarily follows: the soul’s enlightenment to knowledge of that love. This knowledge, in turn, stirs the soul’s affections to love God in response.
In addition to its revelatory power, the Blood is invoked frequently in Catherine’s letters as a vivifying remedy: ‘In Christ’s blood we are made strong, even though weakness persists in our sensuality’.Footnote 54 To capture the ecstatic effects of grace, Catherine occasionally resorts to the mystical language of inebriation. Drawing from her own experiences of drinking from Christ’s side,Footnote 55 she urges her spiritual protégés to ‘become drunk on the blood of Christ’ so that ‘freed from sensual love and fear … we [may] even find joy in suffering’.Footnote 56 At other times, Catherine characterizes the Blood of Christ as marriage bed, storeroom, ‘bath and medicine, as food and as garment, and as a bed where we can rest’.Footnote 57
Here we should note that St Thomas also found special significance in contemplating Christ’s blood, incorporating it into one of the stanzas of his hymn, ‘Adoro Te Devote’.Footnote 58 He cites a phrase attributed to Bernard, acclaiming the redemptive efficacy of Christ’s blood: ‘The smallest drop of Christ’s blood would have sufficed for the redemption of the human race’.Footnote 59 More will be said below on the virtue of charity as it operates in the redeemed. For now, we may appreciate Catherine’s and Thomas’ corresponding treatments of the pedagogic and salvific efficacy of Christ’s charity.Footnote 60 More will be said below on the theological virtue of charity as it operates in the redeemed. For now, we may appreciate Catherine’s and Thomas’ corresponding treatments of the salvific and pedagogic efficacy of Christ’s charity.Footnote 61
3. Aquinas on our charity
Thomas’ conception of charity is rich and nuanced, as indicated by the broad range of terms employed in the Summa’s first formal definition:
Charity signifies not only the love (amorem) of God but also a certain friendship (amicitiam quandam) with him, which adds above love a certain mutual return of love (mutuam redamationem) with a certain mutual communion (communicatione) … Now this fellowship (societas) of man with God, which is a certain familiar conversation with him, is inchoately present here in this present life through grace but will be perfected in the future life through glory.Footnote 62
Innovatively, Thomas builds his account of charity around Aristotle’s definition of friendship, from which he draws out two constitutive elements: ‘a certain mutual return of love, together with a certain mutual communion’.Footnote 63 While he maintains that charity is a supernatural virtue, infused by the graciousness of the divine initiative, Thomas insists that charity is also a habitus, actualized by free human acts.Footnote 64 For both Thomas and Catherine, charity is a multifaceted reality which encompasses and transcends human modes of love, elevating it into divine friendship.
3.1. Charity’s context and nature: human love and divine friendship
Prior to treating charity as a theological virtue, Thomas establishes that it is a kind of love.Footnote 65 However, where Catherine passes informally in her linguistic usage between loves of all kinds, Thomas carefully differentiates his terms. He relates charity to dilection, friendship, and love with the distinction that ‘charity denotes, in addition to love, a certain perfection of love, insofar as that which is loved is held to be of great price’.Footnote 66 Thomas then uses this distinction to ground charity’s relationship to the other virtues, all of which derive from love, ‘the root and cause of every affection’.Footnote 67 As we shall see below, Catherine holds a similar view as to the foundational quality of love in the movements of the soul, as well as charity’s centrality to the other virtues.
When Thomas discusses the right order of love, it is important to note that he does not think that charity disrupts or distorts the order of natural loves, but rather elevates and expands them to include all those whom God loves – a dynamic strikingly expressed in Catherine’s life and teachings.Footnote 68 Thomas says: ‘[For the friend’s] sake we love those who belong to him, even though they be not virtuous: in this way charity, which above all is friendship based on the virtuous, extends to sinners, whom, out of charity, we love for God’s sake.’Footnote 69
3.2. Charity’s origin and operation: created habitus and theological virtue
Despite its relation to human love, charity is not a passion but a virtue. In identifying charity as ‘the habit which perfects the will … by which we love God’,Footnote 70 Thomas distinguishes between the passion of love (belonging to the concupiscible power of the sensitive appetite) and the affection of love (a concupiscible act of the will, but not a separate power).Footnote 71 It is to this second category that charity belongs, perfecting the will simpliciter.Footnote 72 For Thomas, charity is not synonymous with human love (dilection); yet neither is it divorced from it.
Thomas explains the necessity of charity in reference to humanity’s final end. The supernatural beatitude to which humanity is ordained by the Divine Goodness exceeds his natural powers; human beings cannot know and love God as He is because the Divine Essence super-exceeds the highest created capacities.Footnote 73 Hence, the theological virtues are necessary to assist human beings’ intellect and will toward their supernatural end.Footnote 74 Charity, along with faith and hope, constitute the theological virtues; so called because they exceed the natural virtues due to their supernatural origin and effect, making human beings a ‘partaker of divine grace’.Footnote 75
Yet, even as he maintains charity’s divine origin, Thomas departs from the Lombard’s opinion that charity is identical to ‘the Holy Spirit himself inhabiting the mind … without a mediating habitus’. Rather, Thomas insists that charity’s active principle necessarily inheres within the soul as ‘a certain habitual form, superadded to the natural power’.Footnote 76 On this account, the graced acts of charity become connatural; while charity commands true human operations, its character as an infused habitus confers a participation in the very ‘charity of the divine essence itself’.Footnote 77 Upon these grounds, Thomas affirms charity’s preeminence among the virtues, citing the superiority of charity’s object (‘God, loved for himself’)Footnote 78 and term (union with God).Footnote 79 By maintaining the theological virtues as operative habitus, Thomas does not abstract the divinizing effects of grace from the natural structure of human operations; thus, charity’s object necessarily includes not only God but also self and neighbor.
With Catherine, Thomas places emphasis on the exercise of charity toward neighbor. Having established God as charity’s principal object, he devotes two questions to a consideration of charity’s material objects.Footnote 80 These he enumerates, following Augustine, as a human being’s own self, his neighbor, and his body.Footnote 81 The framework of friendship, established earlier as the foundation of charity, sustains Thomas’ treatment of its objects. For Thomas, charity must be expressed by external actions toward one’s neighbor because of its foundational character of friendship, compelling the soul to love those whom God loves.Footnote 82
3.3. Charity’s end and effects: union, joy, and peace
For Thomas, charity aims – as does natural human love – at union with the beloved: ‘Charity is that which, by loving, joins the soul immediately to God with a chain of spiritual union’.Footnote 83 Likewise, in Catherine’s Dialogue, God describes union as the ultimate effect of charity in perfected souls: ‘By love they have been made to be one thing with me and I with them’.Footnote 84
From union flows charity’s interior effects, which Thomas names as joy, peace, and mercy.Footnote 85 Regarding peace, he notes, ‘Peace implies a twofold union … and each of these unions is effected by charity – the first, insofar as man loves God with his whole heart, by referring all things to him, so that all his desires tend to one object – the second, insofar as we love our neighbor as ourselves, the result being that we wish to fulfill our neighbor’s will as though it were ours’.Footnote 86 Here, Thomas describes in technical terms what Catherine conveys with the immediacy of mystical imagery. For Catherine also, charity’s effect is peace. Commenting on the spiritual stages of Catherine’s Bridge, Foster notes its culmination in the unitive kiss of peace: ‘But one word expressing this final stage should be noted: pace, peace. The kiss of Christ’s mouth is a kiss of peace, expressing the fulness of charity’.Footnote 87 Similar parallels can be drawn concerning charity’s effects of joy and mercy.Footnote 88
4. Catherine on our charity
The three hundred occurrences of the word ‘charity’ in Catherine’s Dialogue indicate its centrality within her theological vision. Although Catherine treats the soul’s charity in a variety of diverse contexts, she develops a consistent account of its role, growth, and trajectory in the spiritual life. These will be considered briefly here, with a focus on charity’s relation to knowledge and to the virtues. This section concludes with an analysis of Catherine’s famed image of the bridge and charity’s operation in the spiritual stages therein.
4.1. ‘Upon knowledge follows love’: charity’s foundation
The first paragraph of the Dialogue contains one of Catherine’s foundational insights that ‘upon knowledge follows love’.Footnote 89 Catherine’s emphasis on the interrelation of love and knowledge informs her insistence on the necessity of self-knowledge for spiritual growth. By knowing itself truly, the soul is led to repentance for past sins and, by holding fast to the memory of God’s goodness, is incited to charity.Footnote 90 For Catherine, this knowledge is not self-acquired, but rather is a grace given through meritorious contemplation of Christ’s Blood.Footnote 91
Thomas’ treatment offers nuance to the relation of charity to knowledge. While he insists that a soul’s degree of charity is not limited by its necessarily imperfect knowledge of God,Footnote 92 he endorses Catherine’s claim that proper self-love, founded on true knowledge of self and one’s ultimate good, is necessary for authentic charity.Footnote 93
4.2. Root of all the virtues: charity’s growth
With the realism of a viator, Catherine frequently employs horticultural imagery to describe the laborious efforts required to cultivate virtue. She depicts the moral context for charity’s gradual growth with the metaphor of the ‘tree of charity’.Footnote 94 Only by being grounded in the soil of humility within the garden-plot of self-knowledge can ‘this tree bear many-fragranced blossoms of virtue’.Footnote 95 The necessary relation between charity and the other virtues is crucial to Catherine’s doctrine. God tells Catherine: ‘Charity gives life to all the virtues, nor can any virtue exist without charity’.Footnote 96 These virtues, by extension, must prove themselves in response to the needs of others. Charity for God must manifest itself in love of neighbor: ‘Every virtue of yours is put into action by means of your neighbors’.Footnote 97
Like Catherine, Thomas insists on the double precept of charity, as well as its integral place in the life of virtue. For Thomas, charity is the ‘mother and root of all virtues’ because it directs all acts of virtue toward their final end.Footnote 98 Love of God necessarily entails charity toward those whom he loves, as Thomas details in his catalog of charity’s objects.Footnote 99
One notable similarity may be found in the Doctors’ description of charity’s relation to contrition and penance. Thomas attributes the act of contrition to the virtue of penance, by which the penitent sorrows for ‘past sin, considered as an offense against God’ with ‘an affection proceeding from (or elicited by) charity’.Footnote 100 He further assigns a threefold efficacy to charity-informed contrition: forgiveness of sin’s guilt, remission of eternal punishment, and the revival of merit.Footnote 101 Catherine likewise insists on the necessity of charity to inspire and inform ‘holy sorrow’, which prompts the soul not only to grieve for sin but also to undertake satisfactory works of penance, whose efficacy derives from the creature’s union with Christ in charity.Footnote 102
4.3. The bridge: charity’s stages
Catherine describes the soul’s spiritual progress with her famed metaphor of the Bridge, an image which vividly depicts Christ’s indispensable role in the project of Christian sanctification. For Catherine, the stages of spiritual perfection consist of mounting three ‘stairs’ on the Bridge of Christ’s Body.Footnote 103 These stairs – consisting of Christ’s feet, side, and mouth – correspond to the soul’s deepening intimacy with God.
In his treatment of the theological virtue, Thomas also provides a threefold schema of charity’s growth, which he aligns with the traditional stages of spiritual progress (beginning, proficient, perfect).Footnote 104 He describes the characteristic activities for souls at each level, noting that for souls in the first two stages, ‘their solicitude is chiefly about other things, with the beginner, about avoiding sin, with the proficient, about progressing in virtue’. Having attained the maximal degree of charity, the perfect aim is principally toward ‘union with and enjoyment of God’.Footnote 105
Thomas’ three stages of charity map closely onto the three stairs of Catherine’s Bridge. Catherine speaks of the soul’s progress at each level: ‘At the first stair, lifting the feet of her affections from the earth, she stripped herself of sin. At the second she dressed herself in love for virtue. And at the third she tasted peace’.Footnote 106 Elsewhere, God speaks of the union enjoyed by the souls at the final stage: ‘They are like the burning coal that no one can put out once it is completely consumed in the furnace, because it has itself been turned into fire … They have been made one with me and I with them’.Footnote 107
5. Final thoughts
This study proposed that serious engagement with Catherine of Siena’s writings reveals a theological vision deeply consonant with that of Aquinas. Seeking to discover correspondences between their respective opera, we compared Thomas’ and Catherine’s treatments of charity. In so doing, we found a profound harmony, most notably in their nuanced accounts of Christ’s charity in relation to our own.
Thomas and Catherine each present Christ’s charity as both an exemplar and an efficacious cause of our charity. Accordingly, human charity (as informed by Christ’s charity) occupies a prominent place in the works of both. Thomas develops his definition of charity as friendship with God by considering its relation to the passion of love, its nature as an infused theological virtue, and its operation as a created habitus. Charity’s necessary expression in love of neighbor is a theme dynamically developed in Catherine’s theology and thoroughly coherent with the Thomistic account. Charity for Thomas and Catherine constitutes the perfection of Christian life. Elevating the soul into divine friendship, charity anticipates that perfect union with God to be enjoyed in the beatific visio where ‘his servants shall serve Him and they shall see His face’.Footnote 108
As we have heard, these truths are expressed with equivalent depth and emphasis, albeit within different registers, in the theological voices of Thomas and Catherine. Although dissimilar in many ways, these Dominican saints and Doctors offer, in their converging theological accounts, profound and mutually enriching insights into the sublime mystery of charity, both Christ’s and ours. Nor should we be surprised by this fact. Despite their many differences, Catherine and Thomas shared a common spiritual patrimony in the Dominican charism and drank from the one fountain of divine wisdom.Footnote 109 While the field of Thomistic–Catherinian scholarship remains, as yet, largely untouched, this study has sought to demonstrate how rich a harvest may be reaped by bringing the theological contributions of Aquinas and Catherine into fruitful conversation with each other.
