More than six hundred years ago, a young Italian girl sent into a dark world a quiet but reverberating voice. Catherine of Siena lived within a century marked by insecurity and fear, war and economic distress, terrorizing disease, and corruption within the church. Yet, her short life was one marked by a passion for the truth, intense care for humanity, and a fervent life of prayer. Whether administering care at the bedsides of plague victims or writing letters to feuding church leaders, she emphatically declared in word and deed: “The way has been made. It is the doctrine of Christ crucified. Whoever walks along this way…reaches the most perfect light.”(1) Catherine prayed with a similar intensity: “O eternal God, I have nothing to give except what you have given me, so take my heart and squeeze it out over the face of the Bride.”(2) In the frailty of her own life, which was racked with great illness and sorrow, Catherine’s severe desire was that God would take her life as an offering, using her in whatever way to mend the brokenness she saw all around her.

Reading through a book of her collected prayers and letters recently, I was struck by a phrase the editor used to describe her. In Catherine’s prayers, the editor notes, “her theology becomes doxology.”(3) Namely, what Catherine professed to be true about God became in her prayers—and arguably in her life—an expression of praise to God. It struck me as a beautiful notion—what we know of God being something that moves us to sing to God.

But shouldn’t all theology naturally lead us to doxology?

Throughout Christian story and verse we find lives touched by God’s goodness, moved by God’s mercy, transformed by God’s mighty presence. In these souls we find a profound correlation between profession and praise. This was certainly true of the young peasant girl who was used by God to bring into the world the child who would be named Jesus and called ‘God with us.’ In the Gospel of Luke we witness the thoughts of Mary actually erupting into song. In the midst of the uncertainty that must have been running through her mind, she nonetheless praises God for the things she knows to be true, for the promises that have touched her life, and the very character of the one to whom she sings:

My soul glorifies the Lord

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has been mindful

of the humble state of his servant.

From now on all generations will call me blessed,

for the Almighty One has done great things for me—

holy is his name.

God’s mercy extends to those who fear him,

from generation to generation.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm…

He has helped his servant Israel,

remembering to be merciful

to Abraham and his descendants forever,

even as he said to our fathers (Luke 1:46-55).

Mary’s theology is intertwined in her doxology: God is a God who has acted in history and is present today. God is one who keeps promises and has indeed promised great things. Holy is the name of the one who sends us this child.

When we come to know the God of heaven, when we see the reach of the one who longs to gather us, when we glimpse the goodness of the Son, his human hand in our lives, his giving of the gift of the Spirit, we find we have been given a song. There becomes within us a need to praise God as creatures in our very createdness, to sing of all that we see and all that we know because of this Creator who wants to be known.

What do you know about God? What have you seen of God’s character and known of God’s goodness? Might your theology become a song worth singing. In your knowledge of God and in your knowing of Christ, might you find in word and deed, in prayer and song, your life a doxology to the goodness of a Creator who wants to be known.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Mary O’Driscoll, Ed., Catherine of Siena (New City Press: Hype Park, NY, 1993), 13.

(2) Ibid., 11.

(3) Ibid., ii.