St. Rita pray for us!
Wonderful to see such love of a saint spring forth into words! I have an aunt named Rita!
From some old vita of the saint:
"The day after her Baptism, the fifth after her birth, a swarm of bees, white as the driven snow, was noticed hovering and buzzing around the sweet angelic face of baby Rita, as she lay quietly sleeping in her cradle. The bees alighted on her lips and were seen to enter and issue from her partially opened mouth, without harming her or causing her to awaken. All who witnessed this prodigy recognized that it implied a mystery, although they could not fathom it. In after years Rita herself made known the meaning of the mystery by the singular sweetness and simplicity of her manner and by the eminent sanctity of her life; the bees were also a presage of her Beatification by Pope Urban VIII.
After all these centuries, the swarm of bees still exists in the convent, within a small fissure in a wall midway between St. Rita's cell and the place of her sepulcher. Their color is not white, but that of the common bee, except they have no sting. They live retired during the year, only coming out in the last few days of Holy Week and then returning once again for the Feast of St. Rita. On one occasion, one of the bees was given to Pope Urban VIII but it would not remain and went back to the convent."
"It is said that when the saint was nearing her death she asked a visitor from Roccaporena to go to her old garden and bring her a rose. It was early in the season and the friend had little expectation of being able to gratify what she took to be a sick woman’s fancy. To her great surprise, on entering the garden, she saw on a bush a rose in full bloom. Having given it to St. Rita she asked if she could do anything more for her “Yes,” was the reply. “Bring me two figs from the garden.” The visitor hastened back and discovered two ripe figs on a leafless tree."
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