Faith Filled Friday: Feast of St. Rita

Yesterday, Thursday, May 22^nd, was the Feast Day of St. Rita of Cascia.  She is the patron saint of our parish, which is named after her.  If you are not aware of this wonderful saint, you should be.  I’ll try to list a number of pertinent facts.  The Wikipedia entry, linked above, has a lot of good information.  The Catholic Company’s Saint of the Day entry is also very good.  

She was born in 1381, the year after my beloved St. Catherine of Siena died, near the town of Cascia, which is in the Umbria region.  Umbria is in central Italy, north of Lazio, which is the region which Rome is in, and Tuscany, which is the region where Florence and Siena reside.

From very young she wanted to become a nun, but her parents needed her to marry, and so arranged a marriage when she was twelve years old.  Her husband turned out to be violent and abusive, but she quietly prayed for him, and by her prayers and constant sweetness converted him over to faith.  They had two sons together.

After eighteen years of marriage, her husband was murdered.  Her two sons vowed to take revenge, and she prayed that God should take their lives rather than to fall into such sin.  Within months, both sons came down with illnesses and died.

Free of family obligations, she joined some nuns and formed a convent.  Eventually their group joined the Augustinian Order and lived under the Rule of St. Augustine.  She was an Augustinian nun for over forty years.

She became known as a prayerful and self-sacrificing nun, and one who meditated on the sufferings of Christ on the cross.  In time she received a partial stigmata, an indentation of a thorn in the middle of her brow.

Miracles began to sprout on her prayers, and she is now known as the saint of the impossible causes.

On her death bed, she was asked what if anything she wanted.  She asked for roses and figs from her old family property.  Unfortunately it was winter, and not the season for either roses or figs.  She told one of her sisters to go look, and sure enough roses and figs were miraculously growing and were brought back to her.

Roses are special to St. Rita, and so parishes that celebrate her feast day Mass will give out blessed red roses to the congregation.  Every year at our St. Rita Church, Fr. Eugene our pastor gives out red roses blessed during the course of the Mass.

Fr. Eugene is fantastic at decorating the church.  Let me share some photos.  First the altar with the red roses all around. 

The ones in the bucket in front of the altar are the ones that will be blessed and distributed.  The statue on the left is St. Rita, in the black and white habit of the Augustinians.

To the left of the altar, we had a statue of St. Rita, kneeling and looking up toward heaven, surrounded by an arch of roses and a spread of roses before her. 

This statue is normally in an alcove in the back of our church but was moved up for the feast day Mass.  You can see the thorn indentation in her forehead.

Finally, as I’ve mentioned before, Fr. Eugene is also a great collector of relics.  He has three relics of St. Rita, which he situated in from of the lectern.  Two pictures, one for an overview and one zoomed in.

In the zoomed out photo, you can see the statue of St. Rita in the background.

I will close this from a couple of the prayers from this Novena to St. Rita.  

 

Glorious St Rita, you wanted to enter the convent but your parents arranged a marriage for you. We pray for those whose hopes have been frustrated.

 

Saint Rita, so humble, so pure, so mortified, so patient and of compassionate love for thy Crucified Jesus that thou couldst obtain from him whatsoever thou askest, on account of which all confidently have recourse to thee, expecting, if not always relief, at least comfort; be propitious to our petition, showing thy power with God on behalf of thy suppliant; be lavish to us, as thou hast been in so many wonderful cases, for the greater glory of God, for the spreading of thine own devotion, and for the consolation of those who trust in thee.

 

Truth be told, because St. Rita had a difficult husband, I appeal to her to pray for my wife when she has to put up with me! 

St. Rita pray for us.