The Gospel tells us that fear came upon all the neighbours of Elizabeth and Zachary as they considered the miraculous events that marked the birth of the Baptist, and that they noised abroad all these things that foretold his future extraordinary sanctity. In like manner similar the wonderful signs that were given at Rita's birth, for Divine providence so disposed it in order that honour should be rendered to her by those whose attention had been attracted by these extraordinary happenings, and that those who came in contact with her should be induced to order their own lives more exactly by following the salutary example she was to give. This incident of the appearance of the white bees in the cradle of our saint is the one which the painters and poets who have illustrated her life have vied most with one another in depicting. To avoid having to return again to the subject of the bees, which have ever been mentioned in connection with the life of St. Rita, we will here describe what seems to be a confirmation and perpetuation of the wonderful occurrence we have just related. Going from Rocca Porena to Cascia, and entering the convent where our saint resided, there, in an old wall opposite the convent gate, at a point midway between the cell which Rita inhabited and the spot in which her body was laid to rest, we are met with a sight that cannot fail to move us to admiration. For there, even to the present day, the bees, commonly called St. Rita's bees, have their nest. They are called St. Rita's, for they have been there since her time, and have come there, we may believe, owing to her, and, as it were, to do her honour. There is only a small number of them—some twelve or fifteen—and everything connected with them is extraordinary and wonderful. In the first place, as we have hinted above, the species to which these bees belong has never, as far as we are aware, been determined. They live each one to itself in a hole which it has dug in the wall, and as often as these holes have been stopped up in the process of plastering the wall they have again excavated them. They spin a sort of white substance, with which they stop the entrance to their retreat, as if to hide themselves from view during their long retirement and fast of eleven months. They appear only on those days dedicated to the memory of our Lord's Passion, and, be it noted, these are mostly movable feasts; and they betake themselves to retirement about the time of the death of St. Rita, who was devoted, as we shall see, to meditation on the Passion of our Lord. For four centuries they have been found in the same place, without ever having changed their place of abode. These ascertained facts seem to declare clearly enough that it has been the will of the Most High to extol through them the merit and the glory of His beloved servant. There is no need to add the many anecdotes of these bees, which are related in some lives of our saint, and which the nuns of Cascia still tell; let one suffice. Jacobilli says that one of these bees was sent to Pope Urban VIII. in a crystal vessel, and that it soon flew back again to the place it occupied in the convent wall.
Here it may be asked whether the bees we have described are the same that appeared when Rita was an infant in swaddling-clothes. It would be harder to give an answer to this question than to the riddle which Sampson proposed to his bridesmen. Sampson's faithless spouse was able to wrest his secret from him and then reveal it to her Philistine friends: that the sweetness that came forth out of the strong was the honeycomb that was made in the mouth of the lion that he had torn in pieces a short time before. But we can find no answer to our question. However, those biographers of St. Rita who, without hesitation, confused the bees that appeared at her birth with those in the convent may be excused, as they supposed both to be of the same white colour. But they have been mistaken, for those at present in the convent wall are not white—in fact, they do not differ in colour from ordinary bees, except that they are of a deep red on the back and they want the sting. But perhaps these writers were not so far from the truth, since there is but the accidental variety of colour that distinguishes the present bees from the white ones that appeared first at Rita's birth. And who can say but that those once meant by God to symbolize by their whiteness the splendour of Rita's baptismal innocence may not, through the power of God, have taken on their present appearance to signify the humiliation and sadness of the penances she took upon herself? To change the appearance of a species already existing or to create a new species is easy to God. Let the truth of the matter be where it may, it is clear that both are marvellous, and worthy to be recorded in the history of our saint. But it is time we returned to gaze on her, surrounded in her cradle by those lilies of her incipient sanctity, and crowned with the bright circle of bees that still buzzed around her. We might now inquire whether the bees that entered her innocent mouth made a honeycomb in it, as is believed to have happened to St. Ambrose in his infancy, as if to forecast the mellifluous eloquence which he poured forth in his manhood in defence of the Church. Although this anecdote as related of St. Rita is not sufficiently well proven, neither is it impossible; for when there is question of miraculous events the difficulties of time and place do not form an insurmountable obstacle, as they did not in the case of St. Ambrose. At all events, we have two authors that assert it, and perhaps their opinion is supported by the farther statement that is made—that Rita abstained from her mother's milk on the day on which the bees appeared, the fifth day after her birth. God may have wished to give her for corporal food mystical or symbolical honey of unearthly origin, as He had fed her soul with the food of baptismal grace. In this way would be more clearly signified that which was foreshadowed by the appearance of the bees, the insinuating sweetness in word and manner which was afterwards the cause of the conversion of many sinners, which ever brought consolation to the afflicted, and spiritual profit to all who had the good fortune to converse with her.
CHAPTER VI
RITA'S CHILDHOOD
St. Augustine in his Confessions takes up two chapters in describing his infancy, and he discovers in that period of his life only misery and vestiges of sin, but he recalls these evils that spring from our sinful origin only to extol the triumphs which Divine grace obtained in his mature years. The time of infancy is, however, one in which, since there can be no acts of reflection, nor exercise of will, there can be no demerit or actual sin, nor merit or virtue. It will not, therefore, be strange if our history passes over the infancy of Rita and proceeds to describe her childhood. From the extraordinary piety that distinguished her parents we can easily surmise what care they took in training and educating their child to instil into her mind the truths of religion. They had abundant proofs that Rita was especially dear to God, that she was born for heaven, and that Divine grace had marked her for its own. But they knew also that God, who disposes all things wisely, wished them to co-operate in moulding the chosen child to virtue and in establishing her in holiness. They were well aware that even the chiefest vessels of election had for a time kicked against the goads of grace. Nor were they ignorant what a bulwark of defence is raised by education and by the example of parents—a fact which many unhappy parents either know not or are careless of, and hence by their neglect they become the cause of the eternal ruin of their children. It will not, therefore, be useless to remark the watchfulness, the care and anxiety, with which Rita's parents observed all the movements, words, and actions of a child so dear to them, lest she should take a step to the right or to the left of the way that leads to heaven, and which, with the dawning of reason, she began to discern for herself. But these happy parents had no cause for anxiety during the process of instructing and moulding the character of their child, for she had, through God's grace, acquired a disposition marked by uncommon submission and precocious wisdom. Let it suffice to say that even then she could not bear those pastimes and sports which are proper to that tender age, and which are universally regarded as innocent. She had an example in Tobias, who, although he was the youngest in his tribe, showed himself to be the wisest, and never did anything that was childish.
Another failing, which is dear not only to children, but to all, and especially to the female sex, the love of fine clothes, was an abomination to Rita. We must not believe that a virtuous mother like Amata, especially considering her lowly condition, could allow her daughter to appear in anything savouring of pride or ostentation. On the other hand, Rita, although scrupulously obedient in other things to the slightest wish of her parents, became uneasy whenever they wished her to put on some pretty ornament; she used even to run away and hide herself at such times, till she saw that her disinclination provoked a smile. Thus, satisfied with her humble dress, she took more pains to adorn her soul than to improve her appearance by the addition of the least ornament. To simplicity in dress she joined a sedateness of manner so beyond her years that it attracted universal respect, admiration, and love, and set a salutary example not only to those of her own age, but to older people also. She restrained to a wonderful degree that common tendency of women to curiosity and gossip, and having her thoughts occupied with higher subjects she avoided all human conversation as far as good manners and obedience permitted. Obedience was the virtue according to which she regulated all her actions. She regarded a beck of her parents as a command of God which she could not violate; and her obedience was all the more willing as it accorded with the impulse of grace which impelled her to the practice of all other virtues. For obedience, as Blessed Simon of Cascia observes, is the gate of the virtues. Rita's love of retirement and of prayer had already risen to the heroic point. Whoever wished to see her was certain of finding her either at home or in the neighbouring parish church, which was her favourite place of prayer, where she spent entire hours in meditation and devotion, to the great edification of all. Although penance is a virtue hardly suitable to so tender an age or to such perfect innocence, yet Rita began from her earliest years to chastise her body by different mortifications, and especially by fasting; and to render her abstinence more meritorious and acceptable to God she distributed to the poor children of the neighbourhood that food which she denied herself, thus bringing forth fruits of mercy and charity from the root of penance. This was the only way in which her loving good-will and tender compassion could show themselves in action; poverty made anything further impossible. But the Lord, who searches the heart, and delights in men of goodwill, sought nothing more from Rita then. But she was unconsciously increasing in charity and in merit as she grew in years, so that she could apply to herself the saying of Job—that mercy came out with him from his mother's womb, and from his infancy grew up with him.[[1]] Not only did her spirit grow, as it were, and become strong by the exercise of these beautiful virtues, but her progress in all virtue was extraordinary.
[[1]] Job xxi. 18.