Life of St. Rita of Cascia, O.S.A. from the Italian

We must not pass over in silence the marvellous fact that, as the time of the canonization of our heroine was drawing nearer, it pleased the Lord to let men see more clearly how...

The primary object of miracles is to establish the Catholic religion, and this is the reason why the Son of God and His disciples performed so many miraculous works that filled...

St. Bernard observes that the place in which our Saviour died attracts our devotion in a greater degree than any of those places in which He dwelt during His life, and can there...

As regards this miracle, we told in full everything about it in the fourth chapter of the present part. We have only to add our joy that the oracle of the Holy See has solemnly...

There is a love which is the soul of every virtue, and another love which is an incentive to every vice; the former we call charity, the latter concupiscence. Charity, since it...

Now that we are about to describe Rita's birth, it will not be out of place to cast a passing glance at the unhappy state of those times, in order to see things more clearly as...

Rita had succeeded, as we have said, in assuaging the cruelty that seemed to have been natural to her husband. The means she employed to effect this change were the gentle manne...

All Rita's thoughts and all her affections were centred in heaven, and the reason why she desired to lead a more perfect life in the cloister was thereby to make more certain of...

The Apostle's saying, that 'all things work together for good to those who love God,' remains always true. Rita had passed from the state of virginity to that of matrimony, yet...

Rita survived seven years after her return from Rome. The first three of these, like the eight preceding years, are hidden under the veil of God's deep designs, for it is not gr...

What constitutes the greatness of the mystic city, the new Jerusalem, is not the number and variety of its inhabitants, or the fame of great undertakings, but charity alone. In...

In reading the wonderful and miraculous facts of the life of St. Rita and the very many prodigious works done by God through her intercession, the reader must have asked himself...

It is quite certain that the power of working miracles belongs only to Omnipotence; nevertheless, the many wonderful works done at the tombs of the saints seem to indicate that...

It was the Almighty's will that the body of the saint, born of a mother so long barren, visited by the wonderful bees, miraculously brought into the convent, marked by a wound f...

If Rita's body, oppressed by fastings, imprisoned in hair shirts and galling bonds, made livid by scourgings, was forced to groan and sigh, it was far otherwise with her spirit....

It had been provided by the sapient Pontiff Alexander III. three centuries before Rita's death that no one, however remarkable for holiness of life, and dying in the fame of san...

It is related in the holy Gospels that once when the Saviour was going to Jerusalem, as He entered into a certain town He saw ten lepers coming to meet Him, who began to shout f...

In the year 1393 Italy, not to say the whole world, was suffering under the evils that proceed from political disturbance, and the state of morals throughout the peninsula was d...

A period of one hundred and seventy years had passed since Rita went to live crowned with glory in the kingdom of the blessed, where there is no change of years or of things, an...

When the godmother and her attendants returned from Cascia after the baptism, a feast was prepared for them and the relatives of the happy parents, to celebrate in a manner beco...

In describing Rita's mortal life, we judged it expedient to give from time to time some idea of the trend of events and of the calamities of the times in which she lived, and we...

That truth to which St. Augustine draws our attention in many passages in his works--that charity is the source of all other virtues and their life-giving principle--is confirme...

If Rita's life till the time when she received the wound in her forehead may be called a hidden life, from thenceforward it was a buried life, and invisible to the eyes of men....

From her early youth Rita had a great longing for a solitary life, but now that the Omnipotent God had placed her in the convent she had no further reason to sigh for the desert...

Rita had lived thirty years in the convent, leading that saintly life we have described, and had attained her sixty-second year, when, in the year 1443, it pleased God to mark i...

St. Augustine in his Confessions takes up two chapters in describing his infancy, and he discovers in that period of his life only misery and vestiges of sin, but he recalls the...

However hard and sharp penance may appear at the first glance, yet it, too, is a daughter of love, love that gives strength to put a curb on carnal appetites, which are ever str...

The fortunate parents of Rita were Antonio Mancini, of Rocca Porena and Amata Ferri, who is believed to be from a village called Fogliano. Antonio was not noble, nor had he a ti...

St. John the Baptist experienced a similar strengthening of the spirit, as we read in that place in which it is also written that he went into the desert, where he hid himself,...

That God, who is wonderful in His saints, and who, to use a sacred expression, seems at times to play sport with the world, and especially with those creatures that form His del...

I. WONDERFUL EVENTS THAT HAPPENED AT RITA'S DEATH--BURIAL OF HER SACRED BODY II. MIRACLES WROUGHT BY GOD THROUGH RITA'S INTERCESSION BEFORE HER BEATIFICATION III. EFFICACY OF TH...

I. RITA'S MIRACULOUS ENTRY INTO THE CLOISTER AND HER RECEPTION II. RITA AS NOVICE--HER PROFESSION III. RITA'S CHARITY IV. OTHER VIRTUES WHICH RITA PRACTISED IN THE CLOISTER V. R...

I. CASCIA: A GLANCE AT ITS HISTORY II. RITA'S PARENTS III. RITA'S WONDERFUL CONCEPTION IV. RITA'S BIRTH V. THE WHITE BEES OF ST. RITA VI. RITA'S CHILDHOOD VII. RITA'S LOVE OF RE...