Random thoughts from a seeker of Truth.

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

July 14, 2008

Just another young girl running around the streets of her Catholic neighborhood, Catherine presented herself to her leaders and priests and requested that she be made a nun. It wasn’t an unusual for a dedicated Catholic girl, even at her tender age, although it must have raised a few eyebrows when she asked to also be a recluse, shut out from the life she had known, cut off from family and friends. Had she had a difficult life she wanted to escape? A life of wealth and ease that pricked her conscience? We know little of her background.

Perhaps her interviewers were struck by her passion to separate herself from all things worldly in order to devote her life to prayer. Accepted to a particular institution, she would have contact with none but those within the walls of the convent.

Locked away with the Lord, however, something happened that neither the priests, the nuns, nor Catherine expected or foresaw. Praying and speaking to her God, apparently he spoke back.
Without benefit of a Bible to consult or study, Catherine began to question doctrinal points she’d previously been taught. Why should confession be only made to a priest? Wouldn’t another believer be capable of listening to her heart and offering counsel and encouragement? Wasn’t infant baptism largely ineffective, since the infant could not possibly know what he or she believed at the time? And surely, when she took communion bread into her mouth, it was still bread, not the actual body of Christ. It tasted like ordinary bread, smelled like ordinary bread, chewed and swallowed like ordinary bread—perhaps it symbolized his broken body. Perhaps the simple obedience of remembering his death through communion was a worthy goal, without there being something mystical and magic about it.

Had Catherine kept her new-found beliefs to herself, she might have died of old age at the convent. As it was, she shared with the other nuns and someone—as so often happens—must have squealed. Can’t you just hear it? “You’ll never guess what Catherine just said!”

Today, she might be hauled before a review committee, put on kitchen duty, kicked out of the convent. Unfortunately for her, it wasn’t 2008, but 1417. France was part of the Holy Roman Empire, and the HRE did not take kindly to independent thinkers, cute little girl or not.

In 1417, the Catholic Church’s method for nipping controversy in the bud was as drastic as they come. Catherine Saube, just another passionate young believer, was burned at the stake. Not only did she give her life for her beliefs, she had taught so well that the entire convent was assessed as “infected.” The sisters all….all…burned together. Maybe even the “squealer.”

Something to think about, the next time we’re tempted to complain about this doctrine or that rule, or boast of our “convictions.” It has been said that a conviction isn’t just something you believe—it’s something you’ll suffer for, whether by going to prison or facing death. That might narrow the list considerably.

Something else to consider? Catherine Saube’s revelations predated Martin Luther’s by many years. Is it possible that this story of “just” a young girl in France reached his ears? We may never know the full impact of choices, words, and actions during this life, but I have no doubt at all that Catherine Saube and her sisters are among that rest under the altar of God:

When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given; [10] they cried out with a loud voice, "Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?" [11] They were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number would be complete both of their fellow servants and of their brothers and sisters, who were soon to be killed as they themselves had been killed.
Revelation 6:9-11 (New Revised Standard Version)
P.S. Read about Catherine and a multitude of the faithful who gave their lives for the Lord in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

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