This Friday, May 22, is the Feast Day of
St. Rita, our patron saint. Below is more information about this very special saint!
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Saint Rita was born in Italy in 1381. Her parents, Antonio and Amata Lotti, considered her birth a very special gift from God, for Rita was born to them as they were already advancing in age.The day after her baptism, as Rita was sleeping in her cradle, she was surrounded by a swarm of white bees. The bees alighted on her lips and were seen to enter and issue from her partially opened mouth, without harming her or causing her to awaken. Rather than being alarmed, her family believed she was marked to be virtuous and devoted to God.
After all these centuries, the swarm of bees still exists in the convent, within a small fissure in a wall midway between St. Rita's cell and the place of her sepulcher. Their color is not white, but that of the common bee, except they have no sting. They live retired during the year, only coming out in the last few days of Holy Week and staying out until the Feast of St. Rita. On one occasion, one of the bees was given to Pope Urban VIII, the Pope who beatified St. Rita. He tied a silk thread around the bee and it was found to have returned to the convent.
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As a young girl Rita frequently visited the convent of the Augustinian Nuns in Cascia and dreamed of one day joining their community. Her parents, however, had promised her in marriage, according to the custom of the day, to Paolo Mancini. Paolo Mancini, was known to be a rich, quick-tempered, immoral man, who had many enemies in the region of Cascia. Rita accepted her parents’ decision, resolved to see this as God’s will for her.
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St. Rita's Married Life
Young Rita became a wife and mother. Her husband was a man of violent temper and he often mistreated Rita verbally and physically. The young couple had twin boys. Rita found herself occupied with the typical concerns of a wife, mother, and homemaker.
Paolo had many enemies in Cascia, but Rita's influence over him eventually led him to be a better man. He even renounced a family feud between the Mancinis and Chiquis. Unfortunately, the feud between the Mancini and Cascia family grew turbulent and one of Paolo's allies betrayed and killed him.
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Following her husband's death, Rita gave his murderers a public pardon, but Paolo's brother, Bernardo, was still angry and encouraged Rita's two sons, Giovanni Antonio and Paulo Maria, to join the feud. Under their uncle's leadership, each boy became more and more like their father had been before
Rita attempted to stop them, but both of her sons were determined to revenge their slain father. Rita prayed to God, asking Him to take her sons before they lost their souls to the mortal sin of murder. As it happened, the death of both boys from natural causes a short time later removed them from physical and spiritual danger. Despite her great burden she could still thank God that they had died in peace, free of the poison of murder to which hatred and revenge might have otherwise drawn them.
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St. Rita in Religious Life
Following the deaths of her sons, Rita attempted to enter the monastery of Saint Mary Magdalene in Cascia, but she was not allowed to join. Though Rita's character and piety were recognized, her husband's association with the family feud was greatly feared. When Rita persisted, the convent told her she could join if she could find a way to mend the wound between the Chiquis and Mancinis.
After asking John the Baptist, Augustine of Hippo, and Nicholas of Tolentino to help her in her task, she attempted to end the feud. The bubonic plague had been spreading through Italy at that time, and when Bernardo Mancini became infected, he finally abolished the feud with the Chiqui family. Once the conflict was resolved, Rita was allowed to enter the monastery at the age of thirty-six. It is said that she was transported into the monastery of Saint Magdalene through levitation at night by St. Augustine, St. John the Baptist and St. Nicholas of Tolentino, whom she had appealed to.
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While at the monastery, Rita performed her duties faithfully and received the sacraments frequently. Rita had a great devotion to the Passion of Christ, and one day, when she was sixty-year-old, she asked, "Please let me suffer like you, Divine Savior." After her request, a wound appeared on her forehead, as if a thorn from Christ's crown had pierced her. It left a deep wound, which did not heal, and it caused her to suffer until the day she died.
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It is said that as she neared the end of her life, Rita was bedridden from tuberculosis. It was then that she asked a cousin who had come to visit for a rose from the garden in her old home. As it was January, her cousin did not expect to find any roses, but there was a single rose in bloom, which was brought back to Rita at the convent.
She passed away four months later, on May 22, 1457. Following her death, she was buried at the basilica of Cascia, and was later discovered to be incorrupt. Her body can be found today in the Saint Rita Shrine at Cascia and is shown in the above picture.
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A Prayer to St. Rita when in Special Need
O powerful St. Rita, rightly called Saint of the Impossible, I come to you with confidence in my great need. You know well my trials, for you yourself were many times burdened in this life. Come to my help, speak for me, pray with me, intercede on my behalf before the Father. I know that God has a most generous heart and that he is a most loving Father. Join your prayers to mine and obtain for me the grace I desire
(here mention your request)
. You who were so very pleasing to God on earth and are so much so now in heaven, I promise to use this favor, when granted, to better my life, to proclaim God's mercy, and to make you more widely known and loved. Amen.
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