By Susan Ciancio
Over six hundred years ago, in 1381, a baby girl was born near Cascia, Italy, to devout parents. From the time she was small, Rita felt drawn to religious life, but her parents had arranged a marriage for her, and she complied. The man she married was unkind and often abusive, though stories say that his behaviors softened over the years and because of Rita’s fervent prayers. He and Rita had twin sons.
After 18 years of marriage, Rita’s husband was viciously murdered. Rita forgave the killers, but she knew that her sons would want to avenge his death. She taught them about forgiveness, and she prayed that they would not damage their souls by committing murder.
A sickness soon swept through their town, and within a year, both sons had died. Rita was left alone.
Rita then decided that she still felt called to religious life and joined the local Augustinian convent; there she lived for the rest of her life.
Legend has it that, in Rita’s last days of her life, she was visited by a relative who asked if she needed anything. Rita asked the woman to go to the garden outside her parents’ former home in the mountains and bring her a rose from the bush in their yard. The cousin was dubious, as it was winter and no flowers were growing at the time. But she agreed to go, and when she got there, she found one red rose on the bush, which she took to Rita.
Rita understood this impossibility as a sign that her sons and husband were in heaven with God. And thus, she is the patron of the impossible.
But she is also the patron saint of parenthood, as she prayed fervently for her sons and knows the heartache that parents feel upon losing a child or fearing that a child will go astray and lose their faith.
So we can go to her with prayers for our children, and we can use her example as we pray for them.
Patron saint of parenthood
St. Rita cared deeply about the souls of her children, as most of us do. In today’s world, it’s easy to know how to protect the souls of our children; the hard part is actually implementing those actions.
Let us think of our faith as that rose that grows in the desolate area—the culture of death that surrounds us. As parents, we must also be like that rose and teach our children to do the same. And as Christians, we must counter the bleakness around us and bring beauty and life to it by living our faith openly and proudly. We cannot allow our fear to prevent us from standing out.
This is a lesson we must also teach to our children. We help them grow closer to God by teaching them, by living God’s word through our examples, and by giving them the tools they need to go out into the world and live as disciples of Christ. That requires effort. It requires work. And it requires love.
If we want to teach our children to stand out in society as a beautiful rose, we have to give them concrete examples for how to act. That means we have to talk to them about different situations they may find themselves in and discuss the world around them. That means we pray together and make a conscious effort to teach them about our faith. That means we get them off their phones into Adoration, teach them about the lives of saints, and let them see us care for the people around us. It also means that we involve them in caring for the vulnerable around us—those who are sick or have disabilities, our elderly family and neighbors, and moms and babies in need. And it means we teach them the beauty and dignity of life from creation until death.
When we live a culture of life within our families and impart these pro-life values to our children, we show them how they can become a rose in a culture that wants to strip morals and religious teaching from our everyday lives.
Yet we know, as Rita did, that nothing is foolproof. We could do all these things and still watch our children walk away from the faith and put their souls in jeopardy. If that happens, we cannot give up, and we pray incessantly, as Saint Rita did, trusting in God, for Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, on your own intelligence do not rely; in all your ways be mindful of him, and he will make straight your paths.”
Rita’s final words to the Sisters who gathered around her were “Remain in the holy love of Jesus. Remain in obedience to the holy Roman Church. Remain in peace and fraternal charity.”
Rita did this by becoming the rose that stood out to everyone around her. Let us go and do the same.