The Ritian symbol par excellence

Towards the end of her days, sick and bedridden, Rita asks one of her cousins who was coming to visit her from Roccaporena to bring her two figs and a rose from the garden of her father’s house. But we are in winter and the cousin indulges her, thinking she is delirious because of her illness. Back home, the young relative finds a rose and two figs in the snow and, amazed, immediately returns to Cascia to take them to Rita.

Like the rose, Rita was able to flourish despite the thorns that life had reserved for her, gifting the good scent of Christ and dissolving the icy winter of many hearts.

The prodigy of the roses and figs in winter is made reliable by various testimonies collected in the process for beatification in 1626. The flower also characterises the name of the monastery magazine “From the Bees to the Roses“

The symbol that represents the first miracle: the healing of a peasant.

On the fifth day after her birth, while little Rita rests in the cot placed in the garden of the paternal house, bees begin to enter and leave her mouth, without stinging her. A peasant, reaping in a field not far away, cuts his hand deeply with a scythe. The man begins to lose much blood, hastily stops work and goes to seek help. As he passes by little Rita, he notices the bees buzzing around her face and makes a gesture with his hand to push them away. In dropping his hand, he realises with astonishment that he has been healed.

It is a simple popular belief, full of symbolism. In particular, the choice of bees is linked to the need to communicate the importance of the figure of Rita from an early age. There is a sacredness in honey, which has ancient roots. The mediaeval Church used bees as a symbol to represent the industriousness, hard work and social efficiency typical of these insects.

The industrious insects that are the symbol of Saint Rita inspired Blessed Mother Fasce when she gave the name of Beehive of Saint Rita to the project of support for little girls and boys.

The name of the monastery’s magazine, From the Bees to the Roses, is also a tribute to Ritian symbology.

The symbol of obedience and spiritual fertility

The luxuriant vine that can be admired inside the monastery produces white grapes every year.

Tradition has it that while Rita is a novice, the Mother Superior asks her to water a dry plant in the garden as a sign of obedience. Rita does so humbly day after day, drawing water from the well that still stands next to the vine. Thus the plant comes back to life.

In 1700 it began to be affirmed that the dried up plant revived through the obedience of Saint Rita was in fact a vine. What you see today is over 200 years old.

The symbol of sacrificial love

The stigmata are the sign of a true love that gives life freely for friends and enemies, neighbours and those who are far away.

So it was in Christ, the supreme model, so it was in Rita. In truth, she suffered and loved: she loved God and loved men; she suffered for love of God and suffered because of men

John Paul II

After having passed through pain for the death of loved ones, within the walls of the Monastery, Rita raises her pain to the sufferings of Christ for humanity: as a pledge of love, she asks and obtains from the Lord to become even more involved in His suffering.

It is not possible to know what happened at that moment: a light, a flash of lightning, a thorn detached from the Crucifix forever sticks in her forehead and in her soul.

The symbol of love towards the Mother of God

Inside Rita’s cell in the ancient Monastery, there are the wedding ring and the crown of Rita’s rosary, very similar in number of grains to those we see painted in the hands of the saint in the oldest iconography.

The crown emphasises her filial love for the Mother of God and the imitation of her virtues.