Universalis

  Towards the end of his life she helped to convert her husband to a more pious way of life, but he was stabbed to death by his enemies not long afterwards. He repented before he died and was reconciled to the Church.

  Her sons planned to avenge their father’s death. When Rita’s pleas were unavailing, she prayed that God should take their lives if that was the only way to preserve them from the sin of murder. They died of natural causes a year later.

  Rita asked to join the convent of St Mary Magdalen at Cascia. She was rejected for being a widow, since the convent was for virgins only, and later given the impossible task of reconciling her family with her husband’s murderers. She carried out the task and was allowed to enter the convent at the age of 36. She remained there until her death at the age of 70.

  She is widely honoured as a patron saint of impossible or lost causes.

  See also the article in Wikipedia.

  This other way led to her marriage to Teodoro de Mas in 1799. Teodoro was someone who, like her, had considered religious life and was drawn to actively living a Christian life of prayer and charitable works. Together Joachina and Teodoro raised nine children in the midst of Napoleonic wars, retreating from Barcelona to live in the safety of Vich. Soon after moving to Vich, Teodoro joined the Spanish forces to defend Spain, leaving Joachina as the sole carer of their children. Teodoro returned to the family in 1813, after he resigned from the army, but returned weakened by warfare. When Teodoro died suddenly in 1816, Joachina was only 33 years old and left alone to raise their children. However, her unwavering life of prayer and her substantial inheritance left her with the means to care not only for her children into adulthood, but also the sick people of Vich.

  After her children had left home, Joachina resolved to direct her skills to other works of mercy. She based this ministry on the skills she had developed over previous years: teaching the young, and nursing the sick. In 1826, with the blessing of the local Bishop, Joachina established a community of nine sisters, naming the community the Carmelites of Charity. The early years of the community were spent in extreme poverty, but this did not hamper the establishment of a hospital in Tarrega, Spain. Under Joachina’s leadership and with God’s help, the community worked amidst further Spanish conflicts, their places of ministry were places of peace where wounded from either side of a conflict would be treated. In 1843 the community experienced a rapid period of growth and development, and received final approval from Rome in 1850. During the same year, Joachina’s health began to decline. She died in 1854, and was laid to rest at the mother house of the community at Vich, Spain.

  The Letter to Diognetus is a Christian apologetic work dating from the 2nd century, probably from late in that century. It was initially attributed to Justin Martyr but is now agreed to be by an unknown author. Whoever it was by, the letter seems to have passed out of general knowledge very early, since none of the standard authorities such as Eusebius mention it. The identity of the recipient is equally unknown. It is valuable as showing the nature of Christian belief in those very early days, and it is different from other Christian apologies in that it seems not to be a spontaneous work of explanation or justification, but a detailed response to a detailed series of questions.

  In the earliest centuries all vestments were white – the white of baptismal purity and of the robes worn by the armies of the redeemed in the Apocalypse, washed white in the blood of the Lamb. As the Church grew secure enough to be able to plan her liturgy, she began to use colour so that our sense of sight could deepen our experience of the mysteries of salvation, just as incense recruits our sense of smell and music that of hearing. Over the centuries various schemes of colour for feasts and seasons were worked out, and it is only as late as the 19th century that they were harmonized into their present form.