The Message Of Saint Rita Of Cascia

Author : M. Corcoran
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 187 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (936 download)

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Download or read book Our Own St. Rita written by M. Corcoran and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-04 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amongst the Saints· of the Church whose memory is enshrined in the hearts of many Saint Rita stands supreme. It would be difficult to explain why so many love her with the devotion that is hers. No organized propaganda, no immense resources, no strong publications, no effort concentrated simply to that end; and yet I dare say there is no Saint in the history of the Church who has been so long thoroughly forgotten and so splendidly remembered once her name was emblazoned on the catalogue of the Saints. She died in 1457 and was canonized only in 1900. During the years that have gone one might say that she was forgotten. It is true that a few loyal hearts, either because of religious profession in the Augustinian Order or because of their nearness to her country and to her home, did remember her. But how few they were! But since her canonization the name of Rita has been a name to conjure with. It has spread through the four quartets of the globe and is as well known in South America as it is in China, in Chicago as it is in Rome, in San Francisco as it is in New York. Nor is devotion to her limited only to young men and young women, to cloistered nuns or to the mothers of families. There seems to be no state in which one may not find adherents of the cause of Rita. Perhaps it is that she can claim the title of "The Saint of the Commonplace," and that her life, passed as it was hidden from the eyes of men in the modest home in Roccaporena and in the cloister of the Augustinian nuns at Cascia, worked out so perfectly the problems which we, ordinary mortals in an ordinary life, must deal with and solve. She left no record in books, she founded no splendid monastery, she was not the head of a Religious Order, nor even of the convent in which she lived and died. She worked no miracles of universal renown during her lifetime, nor was it granted her to be the counsellor or the ambassador of prelate or pope. She did not shed her blood in defense of the Faith or in the preservation of her virginity. She does not stand forth as the mother of great sons, nor was she a queen in her own country. But the recompense that God in His goodness deigned to give unto the measure of her life - nothing less than the miraculous preservation of her body in the convent in Cascia - has drawn attention to the fact that that life, commonplace, drab and darkened by deep sorrow and by the affliction that almost every human heart may know, was filled with a measure of goodness far beyond the average. Perhaps it is for this reason that Saint Rita is loved; because she had fulfilled the great purpose of noble living, of simple desires and of intense realization of God's working in men's hearts. We have ventured therefore to bring before the reader a new tale with a very old theme. The inspiration of these lines is contained rather in the recent volume of Father Marabottini in Italian than in any other of the lives of St. Rita in Spanish, Italian or English which have been consulted. We hope that the reading of our little work may hearten those who know St. Rita, who have invoked her and have not invoked in vain, to love her more fervently and to call upon her more earnestly. We hope, too, that those who do not know her may be brought by means of these simple pages to know and to love the Saint whom a people's faith has named "The Saint of the Impossible."