MARRIED TO CHRIST WITH A RING OF FORESKIN

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St Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church, was mystically married to Jesus Christ our Lord in a ceremony commemorated by the customary wedding ring.

Well, not so customary as all that - and this I suspect is what my correspondent Leo Leitch is on about; legend says St Catherine's wedding ring was crafted from her mystical Spouse's foreskin, severed of course at His Presentation in the Temple for the traditional Jewish circumcision. 

Leo wants to know what I think of that.

For a start, mystical nuptials between Christ and the virgin saints are not as rare as you might think. If you narrow it down to virgin stigmatics (saints who receive the Wounds of Christ), three out of four have been granted mystical marriage, signifying the very high degree of their mystical union with Christ, and accordingly with His sufferings. 

According to one scholar, seventy-seven saints have been united in marriage with Christ, and I know that one such marriage, with the Italian mystic and Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta - a marriage attended and assisted by St Catherine of Siena - occurred as recently as the 20th century.

What do I think of the foreskin-as-ring idea? Well, since you asked (or Leo did), as Catherine herself put it in a letter to a nun, "He has espoused you - you and everyone else - and not with a ring of silver but with a ring of his own flesh. Look at the tender little child who … when he was circumcised, gave up just so much flesh as to make a tiny circlet of a ring!"

Admittedly, to our crass, vulgar, pagan 21st century ears that sounds crazy. But I submit that it's the 21st century that's deranged, and this 14th-century saint can teach those of us who want to stay sane that whole-hearted imitation of Christ in His suffering is the way to do it.