Vidua, Religiosa, et Spinæ Coronatæ Particeps
“In medio spinarum florem produxit” — “In the midst of thorns she brought forth a flower.”
I. Of Her Birth and Holy Infancy
In the year of Our Lord 1381, in the small hamlet of Roccaporena, nestled within the rugged Apennines of Umbria, near the ancient town of Cascia, there was born unto Antonio Mancini and Amata Ferri a daughter whom they named Margherita — a name diminished in tender affection to Rita. Her parents, advanced in years and long barren, had besought the Lord with continual prayer for the gift of offspring, and the Most High, who humilia respicit in cælo et in terra (Psalm 112:6), did not despise their supplications.
Her parents were known throughout the region as Pacieri di Cristo — Peacemakers of Christ — for they were entrusted by ecclesiastical and civil authority alike with the reconciliation of feuding families in those turbulent times of Guelph and Ghibelline strife. Thus from her earliest years did the child Rita imbibe the spirit of peace, and her cradle was, in a manner, the very threshold of charity.
Pious tradition relates that, while she lay yet an infant in her cradle in the fields where her parents labored, a swarm of white bees descended and entered her open mouth, departing thence without leaving sting or wound, and that her infant lips were beheld smiling as though touched by the sweetness of Paradise. This prodigy, which the faithful have ever regarded as a celestial sign of her future sanctity, prefigured both the honey of her contemplation and the wax of that pure life which she should one day offer as a candle before the Throne of the Lamb.
II. Of Her Desire for the Religious Life and Forced Espousal
From her tenderest years, the maiden Rita gave herself wholly to prayer, to mortification, and to works of charity. She fashioned in a corner of her parents’ humble dwelling a small oratory, wherein she would withdraw to meditate upon the Sacred Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ — a devotion which should accompany her unto her dying breath. Her soul, drawn powerfully by the divine attraction, longed to consecrate itself to Christ in the cloister of the Augustinian nuns at Cascia.
Yet the designs of God are inscrutable, and non est consilium contra Dominum (Proverbs 21:30). Her aged parents, fearing to leave their only daughter unprotected in a violent age, and following the custom of the times, betrothed her against her inclination to one Paolo Mancini, a man of harsh temper and turbulent disposition, reputed to be embroiled in the bloody vendettas which then ravaged the mountain villages of Umbria.
Rita, instructed in obedience and recognizing in her parents’ will the providential disposition of God, submitted herself with that supernatural docility which the Holy Doctor Thomas teaches to be the perfection of the virtue of religion when ordered to the Divine Will: “Obedientia præfertur omnibus sacrificiis” (cf. Summa Theologiæ II-II, q. 104, a. 3).
III. Of Her Patient Suffering in the Marriage State
For eighteen years did the holy Rita endure the trials of conjugal life with a husband whose vices were many and whose violence was not infrequent. Yet she received from the Lord such treasures of patience that, by her meekness, her silent prayers, and the example of her hidden mortifications, she at length obtained the conversion of her husband. Paolo, softened by grace through her perseverance, renounced his former enmities and sought peace with those who had been his foes.
Two sons were born of this union, Giangiacomo Antonio and Paolo Maria, whom Rita reared in the fear and love of God. Of this hidden domestic apostolate, the words of the Apostle are most fitting: “Salvabitur autem per filiorum generationem, si permanserit in fide et dilectione et sanctificatione cum sobrietate” (1 Timothy 2:15) — “Yet she shall be saved through childbearing; if she continue in faith, and love, and sanctification, with sobriety.”
But the ancient enmities of her husband’s house pursued him even unto his reformation; and Paolo was treacherously slain by his former enemies. Rita, learning of the murder, restrained her grief and made of her tears an oblation to God; she pardoned the slayers with her whole heart, in conformity to the prayer of the Crucified: “Pater, dimitte illis, non enim sciunt quid faciunt” (Luke 23:34).
Yet a more grievous sorrow awaited her. Her two sons, inflamed with the youthful desire of vengeance — vindictam quæ Dei est, sibi arrogantes — purposed to slay their father’s murderers, that the law of the vendetta might be fulfilled. Rita, knowing that the soul is of greater worth than the body, and that qui occiderit gladio, gladio peribit both temporally and eternally, prayed unceasingly that God should rather take her sons from this life than permit them to fall into the mortal sin of homicide. The Divine Mercy heard her terrible petition: both youths were taken by illness within the year, and being prepared by their mother’s prayers and the Holy Sacraments, they departed this life in the peace of the Church.
In this we behold the heroic charity of a mother who, like the Maccabean matron of old (cf. 2 Maccabees 7), loved the eternal salvation of her sons more than their bodily continuance — a sublime exemplar of the amor benevolentiæ of which the Angelic Doctor treats (Summa Theologiæ II-II, q. 26).
IV. Of Her Entry into the Monastery and Prodigious Transvection
Now wholly bereft of family ties and free at last to pursue the consecrated state she had so long desired, Rita made her way to the Monastery of Santa Maria Maddalena of the Augustinian nuns at Cascia and besought admission. But thrice was she refused — partly because she was a widow, partly because the unresolved feud between her husband’s house and the assassins still raged, and the community feared to be drawn into worldly strife.
In her distress she had recourse to the three patrons of her devotion: Saint John the Baptist, the Forerunner of Christ; Saint Augustine, the Doctor of Grace whose Rule she desired to embrace; and Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, the great Augustinian wonder-worker. By their intercession was wrought a marvel which the faithful have venerated through the centuries: the three holy patrons, appearing to her in vision, bore her by night through the air over the locked walls of the cloister and deposited her within the chapel itself. The astonished nuns, finding her at Matins prayer within their enclosure — whose gates remained yet sealed — recognized therein the manifest will of God and received her without further delay.
V. Of Her Religious Life and the Sacred Stigma
Within the cloister, Sister Rita gave herself to the Augustinian observance with such fervor that she soon surpassed the elder religious in mortification, obedience, and the spirit of prayer. The legend of the withered vine, which is recounted to this day in Cascia, illustrates her perfect obedience: commanded by her superior to water daily a dry stick set in the ground, she did so without question for many months, until the stick burst into life and became a fruitful vine, which yet grows in the monastery garden — a living parable of how obedience, though seemingly fruitless to human prudence, brings forth abundance in the order of grace.
Her devotion to the Passion of Our Lord grew daily more intense. In the year 1442, being then about sixty years of age, while she meditated before a crucifix upon the Crowning with Thorns, she besought the Lord that she might be permitted to share in some measure His sufferings. Forthwith a thorn detached itself from the crown of the crucified image and pierced her forehead, leaving a wound so deep that the bone itself was exposed, and which became so corrupt and noisome that she was for the remainder of her life — fully fifteen years — separated from the common life of the community by reason of its offensive nature.
This wound, which she bore as a sacred stigma uniting her mystically to the Caput Christi spinis coronatum, she carried with rejoicing, esteeming it the most precious ornament of her religious profession. “Mihi autem absit gloriari, nisi in cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi” (Galatians 6:14) — “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
VI. Of Her Holy Death and Glorification
On the twenty-second day of May, in the year of grace 1457, after a long illness borne with seraphic patience, Sister Rita was called to her eternal reward. It is recorded that, in her final hours, she requested of a kinswoman a rose from the garden of her childhood home at Roccaporena — though it was yet winter and no flower could be expected — and that the kinswoman, going thither in obedience, found there a single rose in full bloom amid the snow, together with two figs upon the tree. This prodigy, repeated mystically in the roses brought yearly to her shrine, has caused her to be invoked under the title Rosa di Cascia and to be venerated as the Saint of the Impossible — Advocata Causarum Impossibilium.
At the hour of her death, the bells of Cascia rang of themselves untouched by mortal hand, and a heavenly light filled her cell. Her body remained incorrupt — as it does to this day — and a sweet fragrance proceeded from it, by which many sick were healed. She was beatified by Pope Urban VIII in 1626 and solemnly canonized by Pope Leo XIII on the 24th of May, 1900, who proclaimed her Patrona Causarum Impossibilium.
VII. Of the Virtues to be Imitated
In the holy widow and religious Rita, the faithful soul beholds a luminous mirror of:
- Heroic patience in the trials of the married state, that wives may bear with sanctity the crosses of family life;
- Maternal solicitude for the eternal salvation of children, esteemed above their earthly prosperity;
- Perfect pardon of injuries, even unto the murderers of her own husband;
- Religious obedience unto the very letter of the superior’s command;
- Configuration to the Crucified through loving meditation upon His sacred Passion;
- Confidence in impossible causes, when human means have utterly failed.
VIII. Collect for Her Feast (22nd May, III. classis)
Largire nobis, quæsumus, Domine, sapientiam et fortitudinem Beatæ Ritæ, ut, infirmitatem nostram in caritate tua perficiens, palmam æternæ beatitudinis cum eadem percipere mereamur. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti, Deus, per omnia sæcula sæculorum. Amen.
Grant unto us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the wisdom and fortitude of Blessed Rita, that, perfecting our weakness in Thy charity, we may merit to attain with her the palm of everlasting blessedness. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
IX. Devotional Application
Those who would walk in the footsteps of Saint Rita may consider:
The pious recitation of the Novena to Saint Rita, which begins on the 13th of May and concludes upon her feast day, particularly efficacious for desperate causes and reconciliation within families. A daily meditation upon the Crowning with Thorns — the third Sorrowful Mystery of the Most Holy Rosary — joined to the offering of some small mortification in union with that wound which Saint Rita bore. The reception of the blessed roses of Cascia when available, sacramentals long associated with miraculous healings through her intercession. The cultivation of silent endurance within one’s own state of life, recalling that the holy widow sanctified the most ordinary domestic sufferings by interior union with the Passion of Christ.
Sancta Rita, Advocata Causarum Impossibilium, ora pro nobis.