SAINT RITA OF CASCIA AND THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS
WHEN SHE WAS A BABY, BEES WERE CIRCLING HER COT – ST RITA WAS NO ORDINARY CHILD!
A holy child was born Cascia, a small town in Umbria. When she was in her cradle bees circled her cot, showing that she was no ordinary child. She soon heard in her heart the voice of the loving Heart of Jesus that called her to Him, to solitude and to prayer.
As an innocent young girl of twelve she felt abhorrence for the world, and she offered to the Heart of Jesus her perpetual virginity, but she had to obey the will of her parents and they married her to a man that turned out to be brutal. She became the mother of two children and gave them a pious Christian upbringing.
FORGIVENESS
Her husband meanwhile, ferocious and uncontrollable, treated her badly in a thousand different ways, making her patient as a martyr. After eighteen years of marriage, her husband was treacherously slain, and her sons swore to avenge their murdered father. She not only prayed for the murderer, but tried to bring her children round to forgiving him.
Seeing they would not listen to her, she told the Lord she would rather see them dead than guilty of such a crime. And so, they fell ill, and with her company and help, died a holy death.
SHE JOINED THE AUGUSTINIAN ORDER
She was then free, and joined the Augustinian Order, living a life of austere penitence and high contemplation. She often contemplated the passion of Christ, with floods of tears, and once a thorn from the head of the crucified One wounded her head, giving her a painful hurt that she carried all her life. She was the perfect imitator of the divine Heart and she received many celestial graces from it. She died a holy death and after four centuries, her body was still found to be incorrupt. She is St Rita of Cascia, called the saint of the impossible because of the prodigious things she did.
Mons. Nicola Tafuri, Month of the Sacred Heart
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