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So, on one March day in 1473, a miserable, 26-year-old Catherine knelt in the confessional. Something remarkable happened: a ray of light burst in from who knows where. A medieval biography (Life and Doctrine of Saint Catherine of Genoa) describes what happened to Catherine, whom is called "the Soul" here:

Touched by this ray, the Soul saw and felt a certain flame of love proceeding from that divine source, which, for the moment, left her like one bereft of sense, without understanding, without speech, without feeling. In that pure and simple love, as God manifested it to her, she remained at that moment wholly absorbed, and never more did this sight depart from her memory; always she beheld that pure, divine love turned toward her.

All well and good, except that ray of light and drink of pure, divine love revealed something ugly in her. But she did not flinch:

She was then shown how she had lived without the knowledge of this great love, and how great were the faults in which she saw herself, and what she could do to correspond to this pure love; and so humbled was she in her own eyes that she would have publicly proclaimed her sins through the whole city, and could do nothing but incessantly repeat these words: "O Lord! no more world, no more sin," with a cry of inward anguish which came from the depths of her heart.

Instead of running from the extraordinary encounter — "No more light, no more glory!" — Catherine submitted to the painful light of purification. She had a saint's instinct to know that all love comes wrapped in pain, and all pain, when accepted in faith, delivers the gift of love. One cannot have the love of God without pain any more than one can have the sun's light without the sun's heat.

Catherine realized that not only the Cross but also the Resurrection comes with two beams.

Mark Galli is senior managing editor of Christianity Today. He is author of A Great and Terrible Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Attributes of God (Baker) explores a variety of spiritual themes on his blog.

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April (Web-only) 2009, Vol. 53