The stigma of the thorn

From the early days of her monastic life, Rita’ s maturity and perfection gave evidence to the monastery community that might suggest a long-lasting religious experience. Each of the Sisters became aware of his unexpected presence thanks to supernatural actions that confused them.

They have a deep respect for her, mixed with tenderness, fear and sometimes even envy. By the way, some of them became religious due to the circumstances of life or forced by their families, and in Rita’s case it was a predestined vocation that overcame all obstacles in order to fulfill her expectations. What a responsibility and what a grace for the Superior to have among her religious an envoy of the Lord! It was God, personally, who placed her there to be his servant and to favor the journey of those who are seeking God.

To give a more exact idea of the extent of her renunciation of the outside world, it is necessary to remember that, now that she is finally in her place, Rita – whose dream was always that – has henceforth every possibility of exercising her living faith in relation to God and mankind. A person like her, who lives in God’s hands, manifests a particular grace that each of her companions can perceive.

Some religious who also seek perfection try to imitate her. Charity leads her, incessantly, to receive with meekness and love the people who come to look for her in the parlor. Farmers from Roccaporena, mothers from Cassia and the surrounding area, young people with no prospects in life, destitute wanderers, widows without families, battered, divorced or bereaved women, the sick and oppressed, beg him to hear their miseries.

Here we approach the true spirituality of Rita, who received the gift of love, patience and compassion at a very early age. From an early age, at her parents’ school, she learned generosity, sharing, listening and charity. In the first lost glance of a homeless beggar he encountered on the street in his childhood in Roccaporena, he felt all the sadness, hunger, deprivation and hopelessness. It is a terrible apprenticeship in life that leads us to encounter the extreme poverty and suffering of those who are in the worst of life.

Blessed St. Giacomo della Marca, of the Order of Friars Minor, came to preach in the parish for the office of the Passion of Our Lord, on Good Friday in the year 1442. Like many of his Order, he has a particular devotion to the Passion of Jesus. The Sisters of Cassia, authorized to leave the walls of the Monastery, are in the front row. Rita, in their midst, contemplates the smooth and deep face of the Franciscan. His heart is pierced with love for the Lord.

“From that love, the brief biography of 1628 tells us, she was amply rewarded: as soon as he preached, Giacomo della Marca let himself be seized by fervor to speak with such emotion of the excruciating pains suffered by the Savior, that the listeners’ hearts were on fire.”

Listening carefully. Rita feels deeply touched. In her apostolate of listening, patiently and affectionately, to those who come to confide their sorrows to her, she gives her own life in sacrifice, in order to accompany them, help them and assist them in finding relief and a solution to their difficulties.

Your desire to participate in the sufferings of Christ will be attended to. Rita, more than the other Sisters, was moved by a violent desire to participate in the torments of Christ, in one way or another. When he returned to the monastery, he ran to prostrate himself before Christ, depicted in the center of a painting in an oratory next to the chapel. A flash of light flooded the room.

She weeps, and her tears are tears of love, and turning to Christ she says: “O Jesus, grant that I may share in the sufferings of your agony. I beseech you: let at least one of those thorns that burn your forehead also pierce mine. Do not forget my desire, make the blood of your Passion run down my forehead”.

Rita received the gift of the Thorn as a heavenly grace that she will carry during the last 15 years of her life. It was in honor of those fifteen years that the practice of the 15 Thursdays was instituted, during the 15 weeks preceding May 22, the feast of St. Rita.