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I know you're going to ask me, since I talk so much about agape love, "But what if I have no such unconditional love in me and no great tenderness (and I don't), and yet you say without such love I'm powerless; so then, how can I get it?" I'll tell you how. Love is only had by loving. So be up and doing. Remember—there's nothing so difficult and no stronghold so impregnable that it can't be broken down (and you built up) by Love.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher is associate professor of English and scholar-in-residence at Shorter College in Rome, Georgia.

Read more wise advice by Catherine of Siena and other women mystics in A Little Daily Wisdom by Carmen Acevedo Butcher (Paraclete Press, 2008). For more background information, see Carol Lee Flinders's excellent Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics (HarperCollins Publishers, 1993, p. 104) and Thomas McDermott's Catherine of Siena: Spiritual Development in Her Life and Teaching (Paulist Press, 2008) and his splendid website, Drawn by Love.

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