Description

Oil Dedicated to St Rita of Cascia 8 (Patron against Wounds)

St Rita of Cascia 8 (Patron against Wounds) from A Blessed Call To Love, Ireland.

Saint Rita of Cascia is a widely venerated Catholic saint, often invoked in desperate situations because of her difficult and disappointing life. She was born in Roccaporena, Italy in 1381 and passed away in Cascia, Italy in 1457.

Through her life, she encountered a series of challenges that made her a figure of perseverance and faith. She wanted to be a nun, but her parents arranged her marriage to a man named Paolo Mancini. Mancini was violent and abusive, but Rita tried to be a peacemaker in their family. They had two sons who, unfortunately, took after their father.

Her husband killed in a feud, and her sons died of dysentery a year later, which left Rita alone. She then entered the monastery of Saint Mary Magdalene in Cascia at age 36, where she lived the rest of her life in prayer, meditation, and service to the community.

Saint Rita known for a wound on her forehead, which many believe to be a partial stigmata. The story goes that when she was about sixty years of age, while meditating before an image of Christ crucified, she allegedly received a wound on her forehead from a thorn from the crown that Christ was wearing on the crucifix. For this reason, she often depicted in religious art with a wound on her forehead, and because of this regarded as the Patroness of Wounds.

Her feast day celebrated on May 22. She is the patron saint of impossible causes, sterility, abuse victims, loneliness, marriage difficulties, parenthood, widows, the sick, bodily ills, and wounds.