My Two Cents Adjusted For Inflation
Tom of Disputations has an interesting post on St. Catherine of Sienna and how it was her zeal for God that set her apart, not her asceticism.
Many of the saints seem to have a fondness for asceticism and suffering, but that fondness is only that those things provided a means to God, rather than as ends in themselves. And those means were God-appointed rather than self-appointed, meaning "your results may vary".
One thinks of the cruel nun in the '40s film "Song of Bernadette" as an example of someone who was ascetic with disastrous consequences. Better she'd been a lush. Perhaps she wanted to be holy for her own sake, not for Christ's, and that is unfortunately one of the many tedious traps in which we fall. I'm getting this secondhand but word on the street is that the during the '40s and '50s that cruel nun would not be unfamiliar figure in the Church.
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