7th Friday of Easter
Saint Rita of Cascia
22 May 2026
The holiness of endurance
Today the Church gives us Saint Rita of Cascia, and one of the reasons people love Saint Rita so much is because her life feels painfully real.
Not polished. Not idealized. Real.
Sometimes saints can seem distant from ordinary struggles, but Rita’s life touches almost every kind of suffering people carry quietly. Difficult marriage. Family conflict. Violence. Grief. Widowhood. Loneliness. Disappointment. Long years of unanswered longing.
She is often called the saint of impossible causes, but I think that title can be misunderstood. It can make her sound almost magical, as though holiness consists in making impossible situations suddenly disappear.
But that was not her life at all.
Rita’s life was marked not by instant solutions, but by endurance transformed by grace.
As a young woman, she desired religious life, but her parents arranged a marriage instead. Her husband was reportedly harsh, impulsive, and involved in the violent feuds common in that part of Italy. Rita spent years trying to bring peace into a home shaped by anger and retaliation.
And eventually, by patience, prayer, and charity, her husband began to change.
We modern people often assume that if something is difficult, painful, or imperfect, it must therefore be meaningless or hopeless, and should be avoided. But saints like Rita remind us that grace frequently works slowly, quietly, and hidden beneath ordinary fidelity.
Conversion often looks less like lightning and more like erosion.
Slow softening.
Slow surrender.
Slow healing.
But then tragedy struck anyway.
Her husband was murdered. And according to tradition, Rita feared her sons would seek revenge and continue the cycle of violence consuming their family.
That detail should strike us because it reveals how deeply Christian forgiveness cuts against human instinct.
Everything in us wants vengeance to feel satisfying. We imagine hatred will heal the wound caused by hatred. But it never does. Violence only reproduces itself.
Rita understood that.
And so she prayed not merely for protection from suffering, but for the salvation of souls, even when those souls belonged to people caught in bitterness and violence.
That is heroic Christianity.
Not sentimental Christianity.
And eventually, after the deaths of her husband and sons, Rita entered the convent she had desired years earlier. But even there, her holiness was not spectacular in worldly terms.
Hidden prayer. Ordinary sacrifices. Fidelity. Long perseverance.
One of the most famous moments in her life came near the end, when she asked to share in Christ’s suffering more deeply and received a wound on her forehead associated with the crown of thorns.
And honestly, I think we modern people struggle with saints like that.
We are comfortable with religion helping us avoid suffering. We are less comfortable with saints who loved Christ so deeply that they desired communion with Him even in suffering.
But Rita understood something many of us spend our whole lives resisting and running away from:
love always involves sacrifice. Always.
Not because suffering is good in itself. But because love remains faithful even when suffering arrives.
And perhaps that is why Saint Rita matters so much right now.
Ours is a culture deeply uncomfortable with endurance. We want immediate resolution, immediate healing, immediate clarity. But many people are carrying crosses that do not disappear quickly. Difficult marriages. Estranged families. Deceased spouses and relatives. Long grief. Hidden loneliness. Chronic illness. Unanswered prayers.
And in those places, people often begin to wonder whether God has abandoned them.
Saint Rita says otherwise.
She reminds us that holiness is possible even in unresolved suffering. That grace can exist in wounded homes. That forgiveness is stronger than revenge. That fidelity matters even when nobody notices.
And perhaps most importantly, she reminds us that impossible causes are not hopeless causes when they are entrusted to Christ.
Not because every earthly situation resolves perfectly. But because no suffering, no wound, no brokenness is beyond the reach of God’s grace.
For help in carrying the crosses entrusted to us, we ask:
Saint Rita, pray for us.