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"Why art thou proud, O dust and ashes? Dost thou forget that a God humiliated and annihilated Himself, stooping from Heaven to lift you thither?"

St. Rita of Cascia

Meditating on the Incarnation

She was born in 1381 to a couple that had prayed twelve years for a child. Despite her devotion to the Sacred Heart, the girl's life took a tragic turn when her parents determined that Rita would marry Paul de Ferdinand, a handsome but quarrelsome young man. In addition to his mean streak, Paul also drank and was known to seek out the company of immoral women. Rita objected to this marriage because of her dedication to the Lord, but her parents would not listen to her entreaties and prayers.

Their marriage from the beginning was an unhappy one. Rita's husband came home later and later at night, bruised and cut up from bouts of drunken brawling. The women of the neighborhood were amazed that Rita never spoke ill of Paul, even though she was visibly battered. Instead, Rita waited up to offer her husband late dinners. Paul responded with temper tantrums, throwing things around the house. Determined to help her husband reform, Rita persisted in turning the other cheek, praying for him, and doing penance for the salvation of his soul, especially by fasting.

Gradually Paul began to change, impressed by the goodness of his wife and also because she was expecting a child that turned out to be twin boys. Paul was changed by his fatherhood, but the boys evidently inherited their father's violent streak. When his sons were in their teens, Paul was ambushed and killed by an old enemy.

A friend told Rita that her husband forgave his assassin as he lay dying. But the sons, influenced by a pervasive culture of vengeance and their own fiery tempers, vowed to avenge their father's murder. Rita prayed that God would keep her sons from taking vengeance, and God answered that prayer. Her boys both died in an epidemic, despite her best efforts to save them.

As a widow as well as a grieving mother, Rita was grieved still further upon learning that she was not going to be received into Saint Mary Magdalene, the monastery she wished to enter. Even though she was well-known for her virtue and piety, in those days only young girls were being admitted to religious orders. Three times Rita applied; three times she was denied. Despite this, Rita remained convinced that God wanted her in this particular monastery, and increased her prayer. Meanwhile the forty-year-old widow stripped herself of her belongings so as to be ready to enter at a moment's notice.

The manner in which God chose to convince the mother superior and the sisters was totally miraculous. One night Rita heard a voice calling her name. A man who resembled pictures of John the Baptist was at the door. He led her out to a high mountain in the dark. There she met Saint Augustine and Saint Nicholas of Tolentino. She seems to have gone into a trance, and was discovered the next morning inside the closed and barred gates of the monastery of Saint Mary Magdalene; the sisters found her inside the chapel, seated in one of the stalls of the nuns.

The mother superior was furious when she realized it was Rita, the widow she had three times refused. The sisters as well as the superior finally had to see the hand of God in such a miraculous occurrence.

On the night before she professed her vows, the middle-aged nun had a dream. Christ appeared to her holding up an immense ladder reaching into heaven. When she awoke, Rita decided that she would need to climb the spiritual ladder to holiness step by step.

According to the Augustinian rule of that time, a cloistered sister could venture outside the enclosure to help the poor of the city. Saint Rita loved to wait on the steps of the monastery for the sick and poor to come so she could minister to them. In this way she became quite well known to the townspeople of Cascia.

One of the first recorded miracles attributed to God's grace working through the widow-saint concerned an old, barren twig of deadwood. The superior insisted that Rita drag buckets of water each day to make a dry twig grow. This was to be a test of her obedience. To the amazement of sisters in the convent, who doubted the older woman's holiness, after many days the twig began to turn green. Eventually delicious grapes grew on the vine that sprouted from the twig.

After Rita's death, many came for the last time to see the body of a woman they already revered as a saint. A relative with a paralyzed arm was instantly healed, as was a woodworker whose disabled hand had prevented him from making her coffin. Healed immediately, he was able to make the required wooden coffin. Soon the line of pilgrims increased as the people begged the intercession of Saint Rita, called the Saint of the Impossible.

In 1628, after the institution of a scrupulous investigation of claims regarding "so-called saints," Saint Rita was beatified following a two-year study; she was canonized in 1900 after even more careful research had been conducted. Her body remains intact, and lies in state in a basilica.

Throughout the centuries, miracles have taken place in Cascia. People come from all over the world with petitions to Saint Rita, whose little house is now a chapel. Near both the basilica and chapel are orphanages for girls and boys - so Saint Rita is still a mother, even from heaven.

FOR PONDERING

"Why art thou proud, O dust and ashes? Dost thou forget that a God humiliated and annihilated Himself, stooping from Heaven to lift you thither?"

St. Rita endured many unspeakable hardships in her marriage. She was often misunderstood and rejected as a religious sister as well. How does her story speak to you?

PRAYER OF THE DAY

Mother Mary, pray for me. When my happiness was threatened, when my loved ones suffered and struggled in the throes of death, as my mother your heart broke for me. Even now, as I continue to wander in fearsome darkness, you are with me still. St. Rita is remembered as the patroness of impossible causes; join your prayers with hers and mine, that our petitions would not go unheeded. Help me to find joy and consolation even in the midst of tears. Blessed Virgin, Faithful Widow, remember me.