Thursday part II: Prayer to Saint Rita
Childhood and youth of Saint Rita Sign of the cross The following prayer is recited O glorious St. Rita, we entrust ourselves with a happy and grateful heart to your prayer, which we know is powerful at the Throne of God. You who have lived the different conditions of life and you know the worries and anxieties of the human heart, you who knew how to love and forgive and be an instrument of reconciliation and peace, you who followed the Lord as the precious good before which every other good pales, obtain for us the gift of wisdom of the heart that teaches to walk the way of the Gospel.
Look at our families and our young people, at those who are marked by illness, suffering and loneliness, at the devotees who entrust themselves to you with hope: ask for all the grace of the Lord, the strength and consolation of the Spirit, the strength in the trial and consistency in actions, perseverance in faith and in good works, so that we can witness before the world in every circumstance the fruitfulness of love and the authentic meaning of life, until, at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, we will be welcomed in the House of the Father, where together with you we will sing his praise for the eternal centuries. Amen
Saint Rita's childhood and youth deepen As soon as our Saint was regenerated in the salutary waters of Baptism, extraordinary signs of heralding the sanctity of her life began to manifest in her. It is said that while she was still a child in the cradle, a swarm of bees entered and left her small mouth. In the Monastery of Cascia, where he spent the second part of his life, some holes in the walls can still be observed today: they are the refuge of the wall bees, which are called S. Rita bees. From an early age Rita showed herself solicitous in serving God, faithfully observing the Commandments.
Hence the Saint's constant and tireless care to grow in love for God, to produce fruits of good in the practice of every Christian virtue and in seeking only what God might like most, despising those pleasures and joys that prevent the his running in the ways of Christian perfection. Among the virtues that particularly adorn his childhood and youth, obedience to parents, contempt for vanity and luxury and a particular love for Jesus Crucified and the poor stand out. Listening to the Word (Wis 7, 1-3) My son, keep my words and treasure my precepts.
Observe my precepts and you will live, my teaching be like the apple of your eye. Tie them to your fingers, write them on the tablet of your heart. Virtue: readiness in service to God The voice of the Lord repeats incessantly to you too: "Come to me, dear soul, come, and you will be crowned with true and not transient glory". But how many times the divine voice is not heard! Fioretto: faithful service to the Lord. Study, o devout soul, to know your predominant passion, which prevents you from prompt and faithful service to the Lord, and, with the help of St. Rita, destroy it with contrary acts of virtue.
Pater, Ave, Glory