Daily Reading for April 29 • Catherine of Siena, 1380

We were enclosed,
O eternal Father,
within the garden of your breast.
You drew us out of your holy mind
like a flower
petaled with our soul's three powers,
and into each power
you put the whole plant,
so that they might bear fruit in your garden,
might come back to you
with the fruit you gave them.
And you would come back to the soul,
to fill her with your blessedness.
There the soul dwells—
like the fish in the sea
and the sea in the fish.

A prayer by Catherine of Siena, translated by Suzanne Noffke, O.P. and quoted in Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, edited by Jane Hirshfield (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995).