On this February 13th we commemorate the mystic Dominican tertiary Saint Catherine Ricci (1522 – 1590), a contemporary of Saint Philip Neri (+1515 -1595), to whom she appeared by bilocation, one of her miracles for her canonization. Saint Philip was normally very reticent about such supernatural occurrences – one of his maxims was ‘secretum meum mihi’ – my secret is my own. But here he let it out that Saint Catherine did indeed have this charism, along with many other thaumaturgic occurrences.
Catherine began her religious life inauspiciously. She was born in Florence, and given the name Alessandra, and her mother died soon after. She was raised by Benedictine nuns, and upon maturity decided to enter the Dominicans. Clumsy and dull, dropping plates and distracted, they thought she wouldn’t amount to much. But her devotion to the Passion of Christ, her asceticism – a fruit of love, not of morbidity – soon led her to the heights of the spiritual life. She was elected prioress, and proved a very capable administrator, with a reputation for holiness.
Catherine died on February 2nd, fittingly the feast of the Presentation, and was canonized by Pope Benedict XIV in 1746.
Today is also the twentieth anniversary of the death of Sister Lucia of Fatima, whose full name was Lucia de Jesus Rosa de Santos. After the visions of Our Lady during that fateful year of 1917, and the death of her fellow visionaries, her cousins Francisco and Jacinto Marto, Lucia entered the Discalced Carmelites. To her was entrusted the ‘Third Secret’, about which there swirls much controversy and conspiracy – in fact, even about Lucia herself. She lived full, if hidden, life of prayer and penance within the cloister, only speaking publicly a few times, and wrote six memoirs. On the 100th anniversary of Fatima, Pope Benedict XVI declared her a ‘Servant of God’, a significant step towards beatification and canonization. Hence, we can pray to her, that whatever Our Lady wants us and the world to do, we may do.