Recently I went to a city here in Italy that has been on my list of places to visit ever since arriving almost two years ago. It isn’t so much the city that I wanted to see but the remains of the person who lived there nearly 600 years ago. The city is Cascia and the person is St. Rita (the Saint of the Impossible).
Cascia is located in Umbria, not too far away from Assisi. It is a tiny town (I think I walked through all of it in the span of fifteen minutes) but the old part of it rests on the side of a large hill; and it is surrounded by mountains, which made it a very peaceful and prayerful place to visit.
St. Rita has a very fantastic story and many things still exist to be seen at the Augustinian monastery (where she lived) in relation to her life. She was a mother with twin sons and had a violent husband. She prayed for him and he converted only to be murdered soon afterward. Her sons wanted to avenge their father’s murder but through her prayers they died before they could do so. This is particularly touching, that she would rather lose her sons on earth than for them to sin.
She joined the Augustinians in Cascia (who reluctantly accepted her because they thought she might cause trouble in the community due to the deaths in her family) and lived there for about 40 years until she died in 1447.
Some remarkable things about her time in the convent:
She received the stigmata of a single thorn on her forehead while praying before an image of our Lord crucified. The wound smelled bad and she was left in solidarity to live humbly and lonely.
Out of obedience (in order to join the community of sisters) she was made to water a dry, dead branch in the ground, which came to life and still blossoms today. It is called “the miracle plant”.
On her death bed in the middle of winter she asked a relative to go to a specific place where she used to pray in the mountains and bring a rose and two ripened figs. They thought she was crazy but they went reluctantly and found a beautiful rose amid the snow and two figs on a leafless tree. These were signs to her from God that her husband and two sons were in heaven and that she would see them again in paradise. This is why blessed flowers are given out to women on her feast day.
In the basilica her remains are displayed in a small chapel in a clear silver and crystal case. It is amazing that even though exposed (over the course of 5 centuries) to the elements (bacteria, humidity, etc) her body has not decomposed; but it appears mummified even though it did not undergo any natural or human means of preservation.
Another spiritual high I had on this trip was seeing the Eucharistic miracle present in the lower basilica. A priest in 1330 was taking a consecrated Host to an ailing person but he irreverently put it between the pages of his breviary (a book for praying the Liturgy of the Hours). When he opened the book he found that it bled so much that it impregnated both of the pages. This miracle has been honored and venerated ever since in Cascia.
“I am the bread of life. Who eats this bread will live forever” (Jn 6,48.58)
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