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

Continuation... Her obedience, humility, and meekness were still more admirable than her spirit of penance. The least shadow of distinction or commendation gaveher inexpressible uneasiness and confusion, and she would have rejoiced to be able to lie hid in thecenter of the earth, in order to be entirely unknown to and blotted out of the hearts of all mankind, such were the sentiments of annihilation and contempt of herself in which she constantly lived. It was by profound humility and perfect interior self-denial that she learned to vanquish in her heart the sentiments or life of the first Adam—that is, of corruption, sin, and inordinate self-love. But this victory over herself, and purgation of her affections, was completed by a perfect spirit of prayer; for by the union of her soul with God, and the establishment of the absolute reign of his love in her heart, she was dead to and disengaged from all earthly things. And in one act of sublime prayer she advanced more than by a hundred exterior practices in the purity and ardor of her desire to do constantly what was most agreeable to God, to lose no occasion of practicing every heroic virtue, and of vigorously resisting all that was evil. Prayer, holy meditation, and contemplation were the means bywhich God imprinted in her soul sublime ideas of his heavenly truths, the strongest and most tender sentiments of all virtues, and the most burning desire to give all to God, with an incredible relish and affection for suffering contempt and poverty for Christ. What she chiefly labored to obtain, by meditating on his life and sufferings, and what she most earnestly asked of him, was that he would be pleased, in his mercy, to purge her affections of all poison of the inordinate love ofcreatures, and engrave in her his most holy and divine image, both exterior and interior–that is to say, both in her conversation and her affections, that so she might be animated, and might think, speak, and act by his most Holy Spirit. The saint was chosen, very young,first, mistress of the novices, then sub-prioress, and, in the twenty-fifth year of her age, was appointed perpetual prioress. Thereputation of her extraordinary sanctity and prudence drew her many visits from a great number of bishops, princes, and cardinals-among others, of Cervini, Alexander of Medicis, and Aldobrandini, who all three were afterwards raised to St. Peter's chair, under the names of Marcellus II, Clement VIII, and Leo XI. Something like what St. Austin relates of St. John of Egypt happened to St. Philip Neri and St. Catherine of Ricci. For having some time entertained together a commerce of letters, to satisfy their mutual desire of seeing eachother, whilst he was detained at Rome she appeared to him in a vision, and they conversed together a considerable time, each doubtless being in a rapture.This St. Philip Neri, though most circumspect in giving credit to or in publishing visions, declared, saying that Catherine de Ricci, whilst living, had appeared to himin vision, as his disciple Galloni assures us in his life.1 And the continuators of Bollandus inform us that this was confirmed by the oaths of five witnesses.2 Bacci, in his life of St. Philip, mentions the same thing, and Pope Gregory XV, in his bull for the canonization of St. Philip Neri, affirms that whilst this saint lived at Rome he conversed a considerable time with Catherine of Ricci, a nun, who was then at Prat, in Tuscany.3 Most wonderful were the rapturesof St. Catherine in meditating on the passion of Christ, which was her daily exercise, but to which she totally devoted herself every week from Thursday noon to three o'clock in the afternoon on Friday. After a long illness she passed from this mortal life to everlasting bliss and the possession of the object of all her desires, on the feast of the Purification of our Lady, on the 2nd of February, in 1589, the sixty-seventh year of her age. The ceremony of her beatification wasperformed by Clement XII in 1732,and that of her canonization by Benedict XIV in 1746. Her festival is deferred to the 13th of February. 1 Gallon. apud Contin Bolland. ActaSanctorum, Maii, t. 6, p. 503, col. 2, n. 146. 2 Ibid. p. 504, col. 2. 3 In Bullar. Cherubini, t. 4, p. 8. — Excerpted from Vol. II of "The Lives or the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints" by the Rev. Alban Butler, the 1864 edition published by D. & J. Sadlier, & Company SOURCE: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2012-02-13—