Saint

St Rita of Casia: Patron of abused wives and widows

I grew up hearing stories about Jesus and his saints. They were usually fantastic exaggerations like Saint Francis talking to birds or Saint George saving an innocent girl from a monstrous dragon. So when I read about Saint Rita of Casia in Marquez’s autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale, I burst into laughter. Marquez says that his mother used to narrate the story to the children.

Rita of Casia had an alcoholic husband. He returned home one night maddened by alcohol. Rita’s hen had just left her droppings on the dining table. Rita didn’t get the time to clean the immaculate tablecloth as the husband staggered in. She managed to place an inverted plate over the hen’s droppings before asking her drunk husband, “What would you like to eat?”

The man growled, “Shit.”

Rita just lifted the plate and said with her saintly sweetness, “Here you are.”

The husband was amazed by the miracle. He was convinced by his wife’s holiness and became a devout follower of Christ.

Wikipedia tells me that the husband was killed in a family feud. But Marquez’s mother was not teaching history to her children. She was teaching religion. So the twisting of history is justified, I guess.

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