In the Gospel Jesus shows the necessity of prayer, how we should pray "in His Name," yet as we pray we should ask only for those things that keep us on the Christian road where Jesus points to His and our sign post, "I go to the Father." The Epistle warns us against the dangerous detour of false prayer since man's religion is vain unless he be a "doer" and not a "hearer" only. "Religion clean and undefiled" is the interior life of keeping "unspotted" and the social life of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy to all "in their tribulation."
The 22nd May is the Feast Day of St. Rita of Cascia, one of the holiest Saints of the Augustinian Order. In the Augustinian Missale a proper Mass of the Saint is found with Augustinian blessing of the Roses in honour of St. Rita. The roses are an important sacramental and when sick, a person might drop a rose petal into tea and consume it, with faith that the Saint can intercede.
It is well known that St. Rita was an Augustinian Sister for 40 years, having entered the convent at Cascia upon the death of her husband. Devoted to the sufferings of Our Lord, St. Rita asked to share in His Sufferings and received a wound, similar to the Crown of Thorns, on her head, painful and bloody for the last 15 years of her life. St. Rita is known as the Patron Saint of desperate Causes and families having problems ask for her intercession. The last 5 years of her life, St. Rita was largely bedridden and subsisted almost entirely only on the Holy Eucharist. Her monastery of St. Mary Magdalene at Cascia is a highly attended tourist attraction with waves of pilgrims daily visiting the convent and the church, where her body lies in a glass sarcophagus, immaculate and beautifully preserved. The wound on her forehead disappeared upon her death. Pray today especially to St. Rita to help our families, help our country, to find a way when there seems to be no way. Although not commemorated in the Mass on Sunday, using the 1960 rubrics, pray to the Saint to help us in our time of need.