Saint Rita of Cascia

A soul so mortified and obedient could not fail to be very pleasing to God, and to receive from Him precious favors. Rita soon possessed the gift of prayer and gave herself unceasingly to this holy exercise. The Passion of Our Lord and the torments He suffered were the habitual object of her meditation, from midnight until sunrise. She occupied herself with such attention that she would melt into tears and appear near to succumbing to the intensity of her sorrow. It is reported that one day, after hearing a sermon on the sufferings of Jesus Christ, preached by James of the Marches, a famous Franciscan missiona Jacques de la Marche Franciscan missionary whose sermon inspired the stigmatization of Rita. ry, Rita, having retired to her cell to occupy her mind with it and asking the Savior for the grace to share in His pains, felt the points of a crown which caused an incurable wound, from which issued a pus of foul odor, and which she had to endure for the rest of her days. There was only one circumstance where this holy woman was momentarily delivered from her painful infirmity. It concerned the journey to Rome, which the other nuns were to make on the occ Rome Birthplace of Maximian. asion of the universal jubilee. The prioress, for this reason, did not want her to go; but Rita was immediately healed and was thus able to satisfy her pious desire. Upon returning to the monastery, the wound reappeared again and in such a frightful manner that worms came out of it. In order not to inconvenience her companions with her presence, she kept to herself, lived in solitude, and sometimes spent fifteen days in a row without speaking to anyone, conversing only with God. Her patience in this state, as painful as it was humiliating, made her more and more pleasing to the Lord, who granted her the gift of miracles. A woman from Cascia, who had a sick daughter, having addressed the Blessed one to recommend her to her prayers, found this child healed when she returned home. This prodigy and others that Rita performed made her famous, and people came to visit her from even the most distant lands. She received all these visits with charity, and none of those who saw her left her presence without having been consoled and edified.

A sickness that lasted four years came to complete the purification of the servant of God, through the resignation she showed in the midst of her sufferings; she took almost no food, and her sisters, who were surprised by this, believed that it was the holy Eucharist rather than material food that sustained her. When she felt her end was near, she asked for the last Sacraments; after receiving them, she exhorted her sisters to the faithful observance of their Rule; then, having placed her hands in the form of a cross and the abbess having given her her blessing, she expired peacefully on May 22, 1445. Her body became beautiful at the moment of her blessed passing, and the wound on her forehead, which until then had been horrible, appeared brilliant at the same moment. A great multitude attended her funeral, and soon people began to invoke her. Several miracles having proven Rita's power before God, Po pe Urban VI Urbain VIII Pope who beatified Josaphat. II placed her in the rank of the Blessed on October 11, 1627.

An old painting, which was once in the church of the Augustinian n uns of Cas Augustines Religious order occupying the priory during the Middle Ages. cia, recalled the main circumstances of her life: her introduction into the convent by the three Saints her protectors; her taking of the habit; the part she had in the passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by means of the wound that marked her forehead in the shape of a crown: rays departed from a crucifix and ended at her head; her death: the nuns, her sisters, are in prayer around her bed; her tomb and the gathering of pilgrims who visit it. — But the principal attribute of Saint Rita, along with the rays of the crucifix that go to mark her forehead, are the flowers and fruits that God miraculously granted to his servant in her final illness. One of her relatives, who had come to see her, asked her if it would not be possible to bring her something that would please her. — "Yes," replied the Blessed one, "figs and roses." Now, it was the month of January, and this request was taken for an effect of delirium. The relative, having returned home, was very astonished to find figs and roses in her garden: she hastened to pick them and come and bring them to the blessed Rita. It has also been claimed that bees came to flutter around her head while she was in the cradle; but these bees must be the symbol of the stings that the rays of the crucifix left on her flesh.

Blessed Rita of Cascia is the patroness of a small church in Rome, located at the foot of the Capitoline Hill. On the day of the patronal feast, at Mass, the young girls endowed by the guild of the pizz icaroli, or pizzicaroli Roman corporation dedicated to Saint Rita. pork butchers, receive communion. Visitors receive blessed rosebuds, in memory of the blooming of roses that God miraculously granted in winter at the prayers of the Saint.

This Blessed one is invoked against smallpox. This patronage undoubtedly has its reason for being in the malignant wound that afflicted the servant of God and marked her forehead during the latter part of her life.

See the Life written in Italian by Augustin Cavalozzi, and inserted in the collection of the Bollandists, vol. 2, of May, and the P roper of the Hermits of S Ermites de Saint-Augustin Religious order occupying the priory during the Middle Ages. aint Augustine, printed in Paris in 1771. — Alban and Charles Butler, Brussels edition, Parfums de Rome, etc.

See the Life written in Italian by Augustin Cavalozzi, and inserted in the collection of the Bollandists, vol. 2, of May, and the Proper of the Hermits of Saint Augustine, printed in Paris in 1771. — Alban and Charles Butler, Brussels edition, Parfums de Rome, etc.