St Catherine Reveals the ONE THING God Wants Most from EVERY SOUL

The rain over upstate New York did not fall; it blew sideways, slapping against the high, narrow stained-glass windows of St. Jude’s Priory like handfuls of gravel. Inside the small, stone-walled sacristy, the air was heavy with the smell of old beeswax, damp wool, and cold incense.

Father Thomas sat at his small oak desk, his large, calloused hands resting flat on an open copy of The Dialogue of Saint Catherine of Siena. At sixty-two, Thomas possessed the weathered face of a man who had spent three decades listening to the hidden machinery of human sorrow. He had heard the weeping of a thousand different souls—the sharp, defensive sobs of corporate executives caught in a scandal; the desperate, fragile wailing of young mothers beside ICU cribs; and the silent, dry-eyed shaking of old men who had forgotten how to feel anything at all.

Across from him sat Julian, a twenty-four-year-old seminarian whose brilliant academic record at the theological institute had done absolutely nothing to soften the rigid, nervous perfectionism that seemed to tighten his jawline every time he spoke. Julian looked down at his own pristine, unblemished notebook, his pen hovering with intense, almost aggressive readiness.

“Father,” Julian began, his voice echoing slightly against the low stone ceiling. “I’ve cataloged the traditional patristic references to compunction. I understand the mechanics of emotional release during prayer. But when I read Catherine of Siena’s treatise on the gift of tears, the structure feels… counterintuitive. She talks about weeping as if it’s a form of currency—some kinds are completely worthless, some are dangerous, and others are pure gold. I don’t want to make a mistake in my thesis, or in my own interior direction.”

Thomas let out a slow, rumbling breath, his gray eyes crinkling at the corners with a mixture of warmth and quiet gravity. He leaned forward, closing the heavy book, favoring the younger man with a look that stripped away any illusion of academic abstraction.

“Julian, you aren’t trying to pass a test here,” Thomas said, his voice a low, gravelly baritone that carried the immense weight of experience. “You are dealing with the anatomy of the soul. What God the Father revealed to Saint Catherine isn’t a classification system for a library. It is one of the most vital, dangerous, and beautiful truths of the spiritual life. It is the secret of what God actually wants from you.”

He leaned back, intertwining his long fingers over his chest. “Tears are the thermometer of the spirit. Think about it. Our Lord wept over Jerusalem, and He wept at the tomb of Lazarus. Our Lady of Sorrows stands at the foot of the Cross, her heart pierced, her face washed in grief. And Saint Francis of Assisi wept with such ferocious, unbridled intensity over the Passion of Christ that he went nearly blind before his death, his optic nerves ruined by the constant flood of his love.”

Thomas leaned in, his gaze locking onto the young seminarian. “Yet, go out into the parishes today. Look at our modern culture. People know nothing about this gift. They treat crying as a psychological glitch to be medicated away, or an embarrassing loss of control. But Catherine details five distinct types of spiritual tears. Two of them are necessary stages of growth. Two of them belong to the heights of holiness. And one of them… one of them will drag a man straight to hell.”

Julian’s pen stopped vibrating. He looked up, his academic detachment slipping away, replaced by a sudden, sharp focus. “To hell? For weeping?”

The Bitter Rivers

“Let’s put the formal 14th-century prose into plain terms so you can see the psychology behind it,” Thomas said, tapping the desk with a thick finger. “The first type is what Catherine calls the Tears of Death or Hell. These are the tears of the wicked, the damned, and those well on their way to damnation.”

Thomas leaned forward, his face turning solemn. “Picture a man who has built his entire existence around his own ego, his own pleasure, his own malice. When his life collapses—when he is caught, when he is punished, or when he faces the absolute, terrifying void of death—he weeps. The tears pour down his face. But if you look into his heart, there isn’t a single milligram of repentance. He isn’t sorry for offending the Infinite Goodness of God. He is weeping because he can no longer sin. He is weeping because his power has been stripped away, or because he hates the penalty he is forced to endure.”

Thomas shook his head gently. “It’s the criminal in a jail cell who cries bitterly during sentencing, but the moment you grant him a pardon, he walks right back out to commit the exact same atrocity. Those tears produce absolutely no spiritual fruit. They are completely dry of grace. They are condemnable because they are born from an absolute, locked-in love of self that refuses to bend even under the hand of God. It is a weeping of pure, unadulterated selfishness.”

Julian nodded slowly, his pen flying across the page. “And the second type?”

“The Tears of Fear,” Thomas continued. “This is where the spiritual journey actually begins for many. These are the tears of a soul that has lived in wickedness but suddenly encounters the reality of judgment. They look at their sins, they look at the terrifying prospect of hell or the loss of their life, and the heart begins to break under the sheer weight of terror. They abandon their sin because they are afraid of the fire.”

Thomas paused, watching the young man carefully. “Now, God wants us to have these tears. He wants us to have types two, three, four, and five. But type two is profoundly imperfect. Fear is a necessary starting point—it breaks the initial hard crust of the soul—but it is entirely insufficient for an actual relationship. You cannot truly love someone if your entire interaction with them is based on the fear that they will destroy you. A child cannot grow properly if they only obey their father out of fear of the belt. The soul must advance.”

“How does it advance?” Julian asked, his voice dropping an octave.

“Through self-knowledge,” Thomas said softly. “As the soul sits in that fear, it begins to look closer. It realizes its own profound misery, yes, but it also begins to notice something incredible—God’s unmerited goodness. It sees that despite its wickedness, it hasn’t been destroyed. It begins to take hope in His mercy. And that hope shifts the soul into the third category: the Tears of the Imperfect.”

The Trap of Consolation

Thomas stood up from his desk, his joints popping slightly in the cold room. He walked over to the narrow window, looking out at the rain-soaked courtyard before continuing.

“The third type belongs to those who have successfully abandoned mortal sin. They serve God. They pray, they go to the sacraments, they do good works. But they do it imperfectly. And why is it imperfect, Julian? This is the part that trips up almost every single enthusiastic young seminarian, every devout parishioner, every professional religious worker.”

Thomas turned around, the dim light casting long shadows across his face. “It is imperfect because of a hidden, subtle self-love. They love God for the prizes. They desire internal consolation—that warm, fuzzy feeling in prayer, the emotional high of a retreat, the sense of peace that makes them feel holy. Or, they desire external consolation—the honor of being seen as a deeply spiritual person, the respect of the community, the prizes of reputation.”

Julian’s posture stiffened slightly. He looked down at his immaculate notebook, his knuckles tightening on his pen.

“We do this in human relationships all the time, don’t we?” Thomas asked, his voice filled with a piercing but gentle candor. “We claim we love a friend, but we actually love how that friend makes us feel. We love the pleasure of their company, their beauty, or the status their friendship grants us. The moment that friend enters a season of profound depression, the moment they can no longer provide us with that emotional reward, we vanish. The self-will is not yet crushed. We are still in it for ourselves.”

Thomas stepped back toward the desk, leaning his hands on the worn wood. “If you only love God because of the sweetness He pours into your heart during adoration, you aren’t loving God; you are loving the gift. You are loving yourself through God. If He withdraws that feeling to test you—if He plunges you into a dark night of the spirit where prayer feels like chewing dry sand—the imperfect soul stops praying. They complain. They assume God has abandoned them, because their love was never truly pure.”

“So how does one cross that chasm?” Julian asked, his eyes wide. “How do you move past the need for prizes?”

“By standing in the light of true self-knowledge,” Thomas answered with intense conviction. “By realizing that you are nothing, and God is everything. When you truly realize that your own efforts are dust, a holy, perfect self-hatred blooms. Not a psychological self-loathing that destroys your dignity—no, Catherine means an absolute displacement of the ego. A state where there is absolutely no room left for ‘me.’ All is for God, all is for the neighbor. Nothing for myself.”

Thomas leaned down, his eyes boring into Julian’s. “And once that ego is crushed, the soul becomes capable of sustaining immense suffering. Not the heroic, dramatic sufferings that we choose for ourselves to look good—but the raw, agonizing, unglamorous trials that God permits to break us. And the advanced soul doesn’t just endure them bravely; they welcome them with an incredible, transcendent joy. They look at the cross and say, ‘What a magnificent reward, to be allowed to suffer alongside my Lord.’ That is where we enter the fourth and fifth types: the Tears of Purgatory and the Tears of Heaven.”

The Table of the Holy Cross

Thomas opened The Dialogue once more, flipping to a heavily underlined passage near the center of the text. His finger traced the ancient lines.

“Listen to Saint Catherine in her own words, Julian. This is God the Father speaking to her about the soul that has passed into the fourth stage—the tears of perfect love:”

“Immediately her eye, wishing to satisfy the heart, cries with hearty love for me and for her neighbor, grieving solely for my offense and her neighbor’s loss, and not for any penalty or loss due to herself. For she does not think of herself, but only of rendering glory and praise to my name, and in an ecstasy of desire, she joyfully takes the fruit prepared for her on the table of the holy cross…”

Thomas looked up from the page. “Do you see the absolute shift? The fourth type—the tears of purgatory—are wept by those who have a perfect, burning love of God and neighbor without a single shred of regard for self-preservation. They aren’t crying because they are hurting. They are crying because God’s love is being offended by the world. They are weeping because their neighbor is lost in darkness. They have taken their place at the table of the Holy Cross, conforming themselves entirely to the humble, patient, and immaculate Lamb.”

He turned the page, his voice taking on a softer, almost reverent tone. “And from there, they arrive at the fifth type: the Tears of Heaven. These are tears of pure, unadulterated sweetness and peace. They are the tears of a soul that has sweetly traveled across the bridge which is Jesus, having sustained every pain and trouble with delight and tranquility. It is the weeping of a soul that has finally arrived at the destination, where the tears gush out not from pain, but from the overwhelming, breathless joy of perfect union.”

Julian sat in silence for a moment, the steady drumming of the rain outside filling the pause. “It sounds beautiful, Father. But it feels out of reach. What about those who want to love like that, but their eyes are dry? What about the times when you feel the fire inside, but the physical tears just won’t come?”

Thomas smiled, a bright, knowing expression that seemed to warm the cold sacristy. “That is exactly what Catherine asked. And the answer the Father gave her is the absolute core of the entire spiritual life. It is the mystery of the Tears of Fire.”

The Only Infinite Thing

Thomas turned to the final marked section of the text, his voice dropping to an intense, focused whisper. “Read this with your heart, Julian. This is the gold:”

“Thus is your desire infinite, otherwise it would be worth nothing, nor would any virtue of yours have any life if you served me with anything finite. For I, who am the infinite God, wish to be served by you with infinite service, and the only infinite thing you possess is the affection and the desire of your souls.”

Thomas closed the book with a firm, deliberate thud.

“Think about what He is saying there,” Thomas said, leaning forward. “God is infinite. A finite action—a perfect theological paper, a millions-of-dollars donation, an hour spent kneeling on a hard floor out of mere duty—is worth absolutely nothing to Him on its own. It is like dust. God doesn’t want dust; He wants gold. And the only infinite thing you own, the only piece of divinity tucked inside your human nature, is the capacity of your soul to desire. Your love, your longing, your infinite affection.”

He pointed to the book. “The Father told Catherine that when a soul arrives at this state of burning charity, when it passes through this life wrapped in love for God and neighbor, its tears do not cease. But the physical, watery tears—the ones that rely on eyes and tear ducts—they evaporate. They are completely consumed in the furnace of the heart. They become the Tears of Fire of the Holy Spirit.”

“A constant desire,” Julian whispered, his pen resting completely flat on his paper now.

“Yes,” Thomas said, his voice thick with emotion. “A continuous, unquenchable desire to love, to serve, and to belong entirely to God. It is a weeping of the spirit that never stops, a perpetual offering of the soul’s infinite affection. That is why tears are infinite—because they are joined to a holy, boundless desire.”

Thomas stood over the young seminarian, placing a heavy, warm hand on his shoulder. The rigidity in Julian’s posture had completely melted away; his eyes were bright, fixed on the old priest with a vulnerability he had never shown in the lecture halls.

“Julian, do not make the mistake of treating the spiritual life as a corporate ladder or an intellectual puzzle to be solved,” Thomas whispered advisorily. “Go to the chapel. Drop your notes. Drop your thesis. And ask God for the gift of tears. Ask Him to break your heart out of fear, to move you past the trap of selfish rewards, and to plunge you into the furnace of perfect desire. Trust me, do not throw away this incredible gift. We need it if we are ever going to cross that bridge.”

The wind outside suddenly died down, leaving the sacristy in a profound, heavy silence. Julian looked down at his empty pages, then slowly closed his notebook. For the first time in his life, he didn’t feel the need to write anything down. He stood up, nodded silently to his mentor with a maturity born of sudden understanding, and walked out the heavy oak door toward the dim, silent chapel.

Thomas watched him go, a single, quiet tear tracking down his own weathered cheek—a tear of pure, sweet peace that sparkled softly in the dying candlelight.

St Catherine Reveals the ONE THING God Wants Most ...