Saint Augustine and Catherine of Siena went through distinctive spiritual journeys in order to reach and experience true love. Confessions, by Saint Augustine, and The Dialogue, by Catherine of Siena, reveal these journeys faced by both authors. To begin with, each author discusses that people must love their neighbors before true love for God can exist. But Augustine emphasizes that the individual pleasures of the body and the soul must be overcome in order to reach divine love for God; Catherine on the other hand, presents the different spiritual stages that the soul must endure to experience love. Therefore, both Augustine and Catherine stress that the senses of the body and the emotions of the soul need to be used as a stepping-stone, but can also act as a barrier for love.
             Saint Augustine believes that love is triggered by the desire to reach the beauty, truth, and good of God. Yet, it must be recognized that God "is the Life of the life of my soul," and that He created the form and spirit of the human body. Consequently, God "assigned its own place and its own function" (Augustine 213) for the body and the soul, and using the senses for enjoyment rather than for the objective of further glorifying God would be considered sinful since it is a distortion of love. It is necessary to direct the senses with the purpose of serving and loving God virtuously. Hence, the body and soul must be controlled to experience love.
             The Confessions initiates this distortion of love through the pleasures of the body. To begin with, Augustine shows the positive and negative aspects of taste. Food is essential for nourishment and life, but when one eats too much the action becomes gluttonous. Augustine reveals this as he proclaims, "Good Father ... you have taught me that all is good that God has made, nothing is to be rejected; only we must be thankful to him when we partake of it ... In the midst of thes...