Venite Prandete

  ST RITA OF CASCIA FEAST DAY 22nd MAY St Rita is a pretty formidable saint: she is the patroness of impossible causes, along with St Jude, abused wives and heartbroken women. She is an intercessor for challenging marriages, for saving difficult children, feuding relatives, spiritual mothers and vocations. St Rita is another example of those strong, faithful and just women who seem to prevail in Catholic history. She was born Margherita Lotti in 1381 in Cascia, (near Umbria, Italy), to parents who are described as noble people, such that they were called Conciliatore di Cristo, (Peacemakers of Christ). She was married young - Wikipedia says at 12, another account at 18 years of age - in an arranged marriage by her parents. Her husband, Paolo Mancini, was renowned as a quick-tempered and immoral man who had many enemies in the region of Cascia. Rita endured his insults, infidelities and abusive behaviour for many years. God blessed the marriage with two sons. It lasted 18 years, dur...

 ST MONICA, MOTHER OF ST AUGUSTINE                                                             St Monica by Benozzo Gozzoli, (1464-65), Wikipedia. ST MONICA, MOTHER OF ST AUGUSTINE Patron saint of abuse victims, invoked for conversion of family members and loved ones, difficult marriages and disappointing children. FEAST DAY 3rd MAY (Traditional calendar) All mothers can relate to St Monica. Even if we don’t have a wayward son who says, “Lord make me chaste, but not yet”, (Confessions 8,7), we can understand her desperate concern for her son’s moral and spiritual well-being. She was a Berber woman, a devout Catholic, born in 331 AD and married to a pagan man, Patricius, who was abusive and materialistic. When Augustine was a young child, he became ill to the point of near death and St Monica managed to pe...

  ST CATHERINE OF SIENA 30th APRIL St Catherine of Siena was the twenty-fifth child born to her mother on 25th March 1347, although most of her siblings did not survive childhood. She was a twin and her sister too, did not survive infancy. At an early age she devoted herself to God and joined a Third Order of St Dominic, the ‘mantellate’, a group of pious women devoted to Dominican spirituality. This allowed her to remain at home while still a member of a religious order. At the age of 16 Catherine’s sister, Bonaventura, died, leaving her husband as a widower. Catherine’s parents proposed that he marry Catherine in her place but Catherine opposed the marriage. She fasted, although remaining devoted to her family and respectful of her parents. Professors Mutschmann and Wentersdof observe, in relation to the Church view of forced marriage in Elizabethan times that it was and is the view of the Church that, while children must serve their parents with respect, nevertheless, "there mu...