By Susan Ciancio
Have you ever faced a seemingly impossible situation or ever felt like you were out of options, ideas, or choices? You are not alone, and on May 22, we celebrate the feast of a great saint who faced many hardships and much anguish but who never stopped praying and never lost her faith in God.
As parents, many of us have likely encountered what we believe are impossible circumstances, especially as they relate to our children. Maybe it’s a problem they are facing. Maybe they have lost their faith. Maybe there’s a rift in our relationship with them. Or maybe the problem is health related.
All of these things break our hearts as parents, and they frequently drive us to our knees in prayer and even in sadness.
Yet we know that nothing is impossible for God. He works in His own time, but He wants our prayers and our participation in His furthering of His kingdom here on earth. We can use examples of faithful saints like Rita to encourage us and to lead us when we face despair.
St. Rita
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 jeopardize the state of their souls by committing murder.
A sickness soon swept through their town, and within a year, both sons had died. Rita was left alone. She decided that she still felt called to religious life and joined the local Augustinian convent, where she lived for the rest of her life.
Legend has it that, in Rita’s last days, 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. That is why she is now the patron of the impossible.
But Rita 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 Christians, we must counter the bleakness around us and bring beauty and life to it by living our faith openly and proudly. And as parents, we must also be like that rose and teach our children to do the same. We cannot allow our fear to prevent us from standing out and doing God’s work.
At Mass this past weekend, our deacon spoke of the importance of this during his sermon, and he ended with this bit of wisdom: “There are people out there that only you can reach.”
That thought really stayed with me, as it shows the importance of one person’s persistent prayers. As St. Rita knows, our prayers make a difference. Whether our children have strayed from the faith or are encountering some other problem, they need us and our prayers. Not only must we pray daily, but we must also never stop teaching them and living God’s word through our examples. If we want to teach our children to stand out in society as a beautiful rose, we must give them concrete examples of how to act. When we do this, we give them the tools they need to go out into the world and live as disciples of Christ.
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 do the same, knowing that we are never insignificant and that there are indeed people out there that only we can reach.