Catholic - Universal Church ST. CATHERINE DE RICCI - 13FEB (1522-1590) PATRON: Against illness; sick people

St. Catherine was born in Florence in 1522. Her baptismal name was Alexandrina, but she took the name of Catherine upon entering religion. From her earliest infancy she manifested a great love of prayer, and in her sixth year, her father placed her in the convent of Monticelli in Florence, where her aunt, Louisa de Ricci, was a nun. After a brief return home, she entered the convent of the Dominican nuns at Prat in Tuscany, in her fourteenth year. While very young, she was chosenMistress of Novices, then subprioress, and at twenty-five years of age she became perpetual prioress. The reputationof her sanctity drew to her side many illustrious personages, among whom three later sat in the chair of Peter, namely Cerveni, Alexander de Medicis, and Aldo Brandini, and afterward Marcellus II, Clement VIII, and Leo XI respectively. She corresponded with St. Philip Neri and, while still living, she appeared to him in Rome in a miraculous manner.Sheis famous for the "Ecstacy of the Passion" which she experienced every Thursday from noon until Friday at 4:00 p.m. for twelve years. After a long illness she passed away in 1589. Her feast day is February 13. SOURCE: http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=587 Historically today is the feast of St. Catherine de Ricci a native of Florence, Italy, who became a Dominican tertiary in 1535 and eventually filled the offices of novice-mistress and prioress. She was famous for her ecstasies in which she beheld and enacted thescenes of our Lord's passion. It is said that she met St. Philip Neri, in a vision who was still alive in Rome. Three future popes were among the thousands who flocked to her convent to ask her prayers. The early testimony to St. Catherine's sanctity is quite striking. Her biography was written by F. Seraphin Razzi, a Dominican friar, who knew her, and who was fifty-eight years old when she died. The nuns of her monastery gave an ample testimony that this account was conformable partly to what they knew of her, and partly to manuscript memorials left by her confessor and others concerning her. Printed in Lucca in 1594, it is therefore considered highly reliable. Her life was again compiled by F. Philip Guidi, confessor to the saint and to the Duchess of Urbino, and printed at Florence in 1622. Fathers Michael Pio and John Lopez, of the same order, have given abstracts of her life. Since St. Catherine died in 1589, we can see how quickly thestory of her life was told. The Ricci are an ancient family, which still subsists in a flourishingcondition in Tuscany. Peter de Ricci, the father of our saint, was married to Catherine Bonza, a ladyof suitable birth. The saint was born at Florence in 1522, and called at her baptism Alexandrina, but she took the name of Catherine at her religious profession. Having lost her mother in her infancy, she was formed to virtue by a very pious godmother, and whenever she was missing she was always to befound on her knees in some secret part of the house. When she was between six and seven years old, her father placed her in the Convent of Monticelli, near the gates of Florence, where her aunt, Louisa de Ricci, was a nun. This place was to her a paradise: at a distance from the noise and tumult of the world, sheserved God without impediment or distraction After some years her father took her home. She continued her usual exercises in the world as much as she was able; but the interruptions and dissipation, inseparable from her station, gaveher so much uneasiness that, withthe consent of her father, which she obtained, though with great difficulty, in the year 1535, the fourteenth of her age, she received the religious veil in the convent of Dominicanesses at Prat, in Tuscany, to which her uncle, F. Timothy de Ricci, was director. God, in the merciful design to make her the spouse of his crucified Son, and to imprint in her soul dispositions conformableto His, was pleased to exercise herpatience by rigorous trials. For two years she suffered inexpressible pains under a complication of violent distempers, which remedies themselves served only to increase. These sufferings she sanctified by the interior dispositions with which she bore them, and which she nourished principally by assiduous meditation on the passion of Christ, in which she found an incredible relish and a solid comfort and joy. After the recovery of her health, which seemed miraculous, she studied more perfectly to die to her senses, and to advance in a penitential life and spirit, in whichGod had begun to conduct her, bypracticing the greatest austerities which were compatible with the obedience she had professed; shefasted two or three days a week on bread and water, and sometimes passed the whole day without taking any nourishment, and chastised her body with disciplines and a sharp iron chain which she wore next her skin.... To be continued...