St. Catherine de Ricci
The saints can exemplify for us in an extraordinary way aspects of the Christian life that we can emulate in our own more ordinary lives. In the life of St. Catherine de Ricci, three aspects come to mind today: her religious vocation, her Marian heart, her compassion for Christ.
Usually, Our Lord does not appear to us and show us a certified decree of His plan for our lives. He often leads us to fulfill His designs of love for us by an attraction deep in our hearts, drawing us to live somehow more exclusively for God. Alessandra de Ricci experienced this from a strikingly young age. Born in 1522 to a noble Florentine family, as a child she received special guidance from her Guardian Angel, who taught her the Rosary! At age seven, she wanted to enter a convent, but the Benedictine life at the convent school she attended did not attract her heart. At age thirteen, she met the cloistered Dominican Sisters at Prato, near Florence, who lived according to the fervent reform of Fr. Girolamo Savonarola. Here, she felt, her aspirations for a life in service of God could be fulfilled. Overcoming the resistance of her father by receiving a miraculous cure, she joined the community, receiving the Dominican habit and the name Catherine.
Her religious life was marked by the flowering of the special graces God had planned for her. After enduring several trials, as a young nun St. Catherine begged Our Lady to obtain for her the gift of a new heart. We read about an exchange of hearts with Christ in the life of St. Catherine of Siena and other saints, but in St. Catherine de Ricci’s case, the special grace she received was a new heart modeled on that of the Blessed Mother of God. How much all of us should desire our own hearts to be like Our Lady’s, continually pondering the mysteries of Christ!
Click to view this chant video on Vimeo.
St. Catherine is best known, however, for her life-long devotion to the Passion of Christ. For twelve years, she experienced ecstasies in which she accompanied and suffered with Jesus in His Passion every Thursday and Friday, burning with love for her Spouse and zeal for the salvation of souls. (The greatest cross was not her union with Christ, but all the visitors who wanted to “attend” her ecstasies!) As with many holy Dominican women, she received the stigmata, as well as the crown of thorns, conforming her ever more closely to Christ.
Although we may not be called to these same mystical graces, we can join St. Catherine de Ricci in compassion for Our Lord by praying the Canticle of the Passion, a scriptural devotion given her by Our Lady and traditionally chanted on the Fridays of Lent in the Dominican Order.
St. Catherine de Ricci, pray for us!