Thursday, May 22, 2014

Homily: May 22 - St. Rita of Cascia - Patron of Difficult Marriages


Like Elizabeth Ann Seton, Rita of Cascia was a wife, mother, widow who became a member of a religious community. 

Born at Roccaporena in central Italy in 1377, Rita desired at a young age to become a nun.  However, her parents had promised her in marriage despite her strongly expressed desire to enter religious life.  Their choice proved disastrous: her husband was abusive and unfaithful.  During her 18-year marriage Rita struggled to keep the family together and focused on raising her sons to know God. 

After 18 years of unhappy married life, her husband was killed in a brawl, and a short time later, both sons died as well of natural causes. 

Though deeply pained from this serious of losses, Rita was now free to enter the religious life.  Yet she was rejected three times by the local Augustinian nuns of Cascia who typically only permitted virgins to enter their order. Eventually, she succeeded.

Over the years, her prayerfulness and charity became legendary.  In fact, she meditated often on the passion of Christ, and when she developed a thorn-like wound on her forehead, people quickly associated it with the wounds from Christ’s crown of thorns. 

St. Rita suffered much, yet God brought great goodness and beauty and the sanctification of her soul through her sufferings.  Like St. Jude, she is known as a patron saint of difficult or impossible cases and six hundred years after her death, people still visit her tomb, seeking her prayerful intercession.  She is a also a patron of difficult marriages.

Many of the saints manifest the glory of Christ’s Paschal mystery.  Particularly during the Easter season we focus on the great power of the Paschal Mystery, that God can transform suffering and death into something beautiful.  When Christians are united to Christ in their suffering, they are also united to him in his victory over sin and death.  and God can transform even our  little deaths, our daily sufferings into instruments of his grace.  Through the heavenly intercession of St. Rita may all that we suffer today bear fruit for the glory of God and salvation of souls.


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