Four notable saints have the rather unusual reputation of championing “impossible causes.” Among them is St. Rita of Cascia, whose feast day we celebrate on May 22. She teaches us to hope — a virtue our world so desperately needs, especially in this Jubilee Year of Hope.
A story of impossible odds
As a child, young Rita longed to enter religious life. But for decades of her life, that dream seemed totally impossible. She overcame repeated insurmountable obstacles to finally enter the monastery, after first living in a difficult marriage.
Rita’s parents forced her to get married at a young age to a man who was harsh and cruel. After years of marriage, he gradually softened and became kinder, but was killed suddenly in an ongoing feud between his family and another.
When he died, she prayed for her two sons not to follow in his violent footsteps:
Rita’s two sons became more and more like their father had been before Rita married him, and they wanted to avenge their father’s murder.
Rita attempted to stop them, but both of her sons were determined to avenge their slain father. Rita prayed to God, asking Him to take her sons before they lost their souls to the mortal sin of murder. One year later, her prayers were answered when both of her sons fell prey to illness and died.
Widowed and childless, Rita returned to her desires for religious life. But she was not allowed to join:
The convent told her she could join if she could find a way to mend the wound between the feuding families.
After asking John the Baptist, Augustine of Hippo, and Nicholas of Tolentino to help her in her task, she attempted to end the feud. The bubonic plague had been spreading through Italy at that time, and when Bernardo Mancini became infected, he finally abolished the feud with the Chiqui family.
Finally, at age 36, after overcoming so many "unsolvable" problems, Rita entered the monastery that had been her heart's desire since childhood.
Hope for our world
Rita of Cascia was a wife, mother, widow, and member of a religious community at different points in her life. Yet her heart always longed for God. Her persistence in answering his calls, and her hope and trust in God through all the setbacks she faced, is a powerful witness.
We live in a world where hope is hard to find. Crises in all spheres — economic, military, environmental, social — bring sorrow and despair for so many people.
Yet St. Rita reminds us that our God works miracles every day. The Angel Gabriel reassured Our Lady, “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37), and his message is no less true now than it was then.
The power of Christian hope
Holding fast to our hope in God and his Kingdom brings encouragement and banishes fear and distress. The Catechism beautifully describes how hope changes our outlook:
The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire men's activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity. (CCC 1818)
Our God is a God who makes the impossible real. He is not done working miracles. And St. Rita’s story reveals how God can bring to life a dream that lies dormant, seemingly dead, for decades.
On the feast of St. Rita, consider what problems in your life seem beyond resolution. Bring these “impossible causes” to Our Lord, asking St. Rita to pray for you. Cast out in hope. Then sit back and allow God to work, marveling at the way in which “all things work for good for those who love God” (Romans 8:28).
Have you experienced God's intervention in an "impossible" situation? We would love to hear about it. Please share your story in the comments below.
