St. Rita of Cascia COLLECTION (M 015)

Wife, Mother, Widow, Nun—St. Rita of Cascia (1386-1457) experienced many stages of life. Life, however, had a way of putting her between a rock and a hard place. She wanted to become a nun but was married off as a child bride by her parents. She tried to be a good wife but, nevertheless, was subject to physical and verbal spousal abuse. She bore twin sons, raised them good Christians, but nearly lost them to a vendetta after her husband’s murder. (They died of dysentery instead.) In her now childless widowhood, she again felt the call to the religious life but was originally rejected because of the scandal of her husband’s death… and the fact that she was not a virgin. After brokering a truce between the warring extended families of her husband and his murderers, she finally won her heart’s desire to become an Augustinian nun. Forty years later, she died of tuberculosis. Small wonder she has become patron saint of lost or impossible causes! + We like our saints young and pretty. St. Rita’s image here is anachronistic. Devoted to Christ’s Passion, she received a partial stigmata: a chronic wound in the forehead as if from a crown of thorns that bled for the next fifteen years. It is her principal attribute. However, at the time she was sixty years of age! + See catholicsaints.info/saint-rita-of-cascia/ for further information, especially the list of her patronages. + Feast: May 22