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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