#7: The Dialog of St. Catherine of Siena, Book 1: A Book of Divine Providence

This is from an abridged but public domain version of the Dialog of St. Catherine of Siena which I found over at CCEL. (There's a modern unabridged translation by Suzanne Noffke available from Paulist Press' Classics of Western Spirituality series, under the name Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue. I found it interesting to read in the Amazon reviews that all sorts of people were so enthused about this book.)

Book 1: A Book of Divine Providence, is pretty short -- only 45 minutes. Since the Dialog is pretty dense and chunky with thoughts, I've kept each track down to about fifteen minutes each. With a story, you don't want a break. With this, I think you might want to stop often and think about what you've heard. Also, thanks to the serious lack of paragraphing and sentence division in this translation, you might actually find it easier to hear than read! (And hey, it was dictated in the first place.)

The other thing to know is that the Dialog is continually circling back on itself. So whatever you hear about early on, you'll be hearing about later, too -- but with more depth and more applications.

Next book is when you get into all the famous stuff about Christ as a covered Bridge over a raging Italian-type mountain river of sin and death! (Sorta like you might find near Siena, I'm thinking....)

MANUAL DOWNLOAD HERE:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
44 min.