Catherine of Genoa Quotes on God
Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) — laywoman, mystic, and superintendent of the Pammatone hospital — composed (or had recorded by her circle) the Spiritual Dialogue and the Treatise on Purgatory that form the principal extant works of her teaching. The treatise on purgatory presents an unusually positive theological vision: the souls in purgatory are joyful in the very fire that purifies them, since they understand themselves to be drawing closer to the God who is the source of their being and the object of their love. The framework integrates Catherine's vivid mystical experiences with a broader theological vision of God as the pure love whose self-communication constitutes the deepest reality of the human soul, and shaped the post-Tridentine Catholic spiritual tradition through Francis de Sales and the broader Italian and French schools that drew on her teaching.
Quotes
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Attributed to Catherine of Genoa:
“My deepest me is God.”
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“The fire of divine love consumes all that is not love.”
Ch. IX -
Attributed to Catherine of Genoa:
“Pure love alone purifies the soul.”
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Attributed to Catherine of Genoa:
“I cannot bear that the soul should fail to find its true repose in God.”
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“In God is my being, my I, my strength, my bliss, my desire. But this I that I often call so...in truth I no longer know what the I is, or the Mine, or desire, or the good, or bliss.”
P.108. -
“I find in myself by the grace of God a satisfaction without nourishment, love without fear”
Wikiquote -
“Faith seems to me wholly lost, and hope dead; for it seems to me that I have and hold in the certainty that which I believed and hoped at other times. 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.”
Wikiquote -
“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.”
Wikiquote -
“Many are astonished at this, and since they do not know the reason, they are offended. And truly, if it were not that God stands by me, the world would often consider me mad, and that is because I almost always live outside myself.”
Wikiquote -
“God became man in order to make me God; therefore I want to be changed completely into pure God”
Ibid., P.109.