Three saints, a steep rock and a convent's locked doors

CASCIA, Umbria, 1407 AD — One day in 1407 AD, a widow named Saint Rita of Cascia went into the nuns’ church at Cascia during Mass. She heard Christ’s words from St. John’s Gospel: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” The words stayed in her mind and filled her with love for Jesus. St. Rita went to the nuns and threw herself down at their feet. She asked to serve God inside their walls for the rest of her life, dressed in the nuns’ habit.

St. Rita had wanted to be a nun ever since she was a girl. Her parents were old. They cried as they begged their daughter to stay with them, and they arranged a marriage for her instead. Around 1406 AD her husband, Paolo, was ambushed and killed near their village, Roccaporena.

St. Rita forgave the men who killed Paolo, and she would never say who they were. Then Paolo’s brothers set out to get revenge. St. Rita prayed that God would take her two sons before they shed anyone’s blood. Both boys fell ill and died, one soon after the other.

No, no and no

The abbess put St. Rita’s request to all the nuns, and they voted on it. The answer was no. Their house was meant for women who had never been married, and it did not take widows. Most of the nuns said no widow had been let in since the convent began. Taking one now would hurt its good name, they said, even though they knew she had lived a good and holy life.

St. Rita believed the nuns had said no because she wasn’t good enough. She walked the two and a half miles home to Roccaporena and prayed more faithfully than before. Then she came back and asked again, and the nuns said no a second time. The more often they refused her, the more she prayed. She asked her three patron saints to plead with God for her: St. John the Baptist, St. Augustine and St. Nicholas of Tolentino.

The third time, St. Rita begged the nuns to take her even as a servant. She didn’t think she was worthy to live among them. They refused her again. Tradition holds that the abbess told her: “My dear woman, it is impossible for you to become a member of our community.” The abbess told her to stop asking. St. Rita went home and accepted that the time God had set for her had not come yet.

Around this time Paolo’s family made peace in public with the families of the men who had killed him. The Order of Saint Augustine gives St. Rita the credit for that peace. The Order calls it “the great ‘miraculous deed’ that gained her acceptance into the convent.”

A knock in the night

According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, St. Rita was praying late one night at home. She heard hard knocking at her door and a voice calling, “Rita, Rita.” She ran to the window and saw no one. She went back to her prayers and heard the voice again. This time it said clearly: “Come, beloved Rita, for now it is time that you enter the monastery from which you have so often been turned away.” St. Rita went to the window a third time and saw St. John the Baptist standing at the door. She followed him out.

St. John the Baptist led her to the Schioppo, a sheer rock above the village, and his path went up the rock. St. Rita stopped at the bottom. The rock was so steep that no one would dare to climb it, even in daylight. Then St. Augustine and St. Nicholas of Tolentino appeared beside St. John the Baptist. With the three of them, she climbed it.

She followed the three saints to Cascia, and then she was inside the convent. Every door and window was still shut.

The nuns found her there when they got up for their early morning prayers. Each of them suspected another of leaving a door unlocked. St. Rita told them plainly what had happened. The nuns would not send away a woman the saints had brought in, and they let her join them.