#clearly I do not have an answer shksgdjdvd but I hope this was nice food for thought!!!

[catholicsapphic]

HELLO fellow gay who is super normal about Saint Rita!!!! I have a question about our bestie: Why were there maggots in her stigmata? Wouldn’t a holy wound not fester and rot? That has always been strange to me.

LOVE your Ritaposting. You. You get it. 🌹🐝🐝❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

HI OMG the MOMENT I saw you reblogging the Rita posts I was like… that’s my sibling… that’s a fellow Connoisseur™️… that’s the same species as me. I’m thrilled to find another of our kind! (Gay st Rita enthusiast)

Ok, I’m actually SUPER happy about this question. Not because I have a good answer, but because I’m a med student so I think about this a lot in the light of what I’ve been taught so far!!

Warning. Long, nerdy, passionate ramble bellow the cut

So. Myiasis. That’s the name we give to infection by fly larvae. There are several species of fly that can cause this; those found on open wounds can feast on live or dead tissue*. Take for example the species Cochliomyia hominivorax**. The female fly, upon finding opportune places with access to live tissue, lays her eggs. Those will then hatch, and the maggots will remain there, feasting on the tissue until they are old enough to fly away.

(*the tissue (this can mean skin, muscle, bone, etc… basically the components of our body :)) in an old wound can die for many reasons. The main one if that the continual inflammation, caused by the damage that was done if healing doesn’t happen, will make white blood cells keep destroying that area. Especially if it’s contaminated by outside agents. It makes healing a lot harder

** ‘hominivorax’ means ‘devourer of men’. How cool is that???)

Right, so that’s the medicine of it. Your point, however, is so good. Other stigmatists are said to smell like roses. I haven’t yet heard of a single other one with an infested wound. Why would Rita be different?

Well, in my humble opinion, I think she was blessed. I think of how she was given the chance to experience even more of Christ’s suffering, which was what she prayed for in the first place. I think of how, when other stigmatists crumbled under the weight of wounds that only a God could stand, Rita was given a Human’s wounds. She showed herself so very humbly towards God, that maybe God felt comfortable to show her His most vulnerable parts as well. The parts of him that weren’t pretty, or healed miraculously. I think of a God who came to us screaming, soft-boned, covered in amniotic fluid; and I think of His beloved, who smelled like rotten meat. I think He saw his spouse self flagellating and thought, My dear, it is painful enough to be human. It is beautiful enough to be human. It is enough to be human.

I think of the symbolism, too. We are the maggots in Christ’s wound. The crown pierced His head to heal our pride, and we feast on His body to be saved. And if we think ourselves unworthy of His love for taking advantage of Him, well. If Rita called her maggots ‘her little angels’, how much more sweetly will an all loving God call us?

(I think of how cannibalism is such a common metaphor for love, I think about Rita making her flesh an Eucharist for beings most of us would call disgusting, beings actively isolating her and hurting her and and and—

— and I think that maybe there has never been such a perfect imitator of Christ, never before, never since)

I think of loneliness. I think of how Rita was so beloved, as long as she didn’t get too weird. Too fierce. Too filled with ideas. Who was ever close enough to her in life to know what was really going on in her head? Her sons? We know how that went. Her bees, maybe. Maybe God saw how she liked her little, flying things. Maybe He wanted to give her more chances to be with Him, considering her smell would lead her to being avoided by all the sisters, hidden away and treated as a madwoman. Maybe He wanted to give her to us, an example to follow when we feel ourselves being excluded by our community for something we are not to blame for. Maybe it was for us that He did that. Gave us a mother’s embrace to crawl into when we are treated like we’re contagious, infested. Maybe it was for her He did that. Gave her friends who were too grateful to ever leave her alone.

I think about persecution, about how the stigmata wasn’t reported to the Church right away because they were afraid Rita would be judged as a heretic. I think about God’s gifts not always being pretty to see. How they almost didn’t take her to Rome because of her wound. About how sometimes, those who are supposed to sing praises to Love will point their fingers and snarl. I think about how maybe, maybe, God knew there were going to be queer people to whom this would resonate very much…

I think it’s ironic. Her body is preserved until today. Face, feet and hands, perfectly mummified. Under her habit, nothing but clean bones. A servant of God who gladly rotted in life, but refused to in death. I think it makes perfect sense.

I also think of what Rita couldn’t possibly have foreseen. I think of the lectures I’ve heard on larval therapy, on how we are learning to use species of dead tissue eating maggots to heal wounds, in order for them to eat the necrotic tissue and close it up. I think maybe it was an irony all along. I think maybe the point was healing.

I also think maybe the point was not healing. Stigmatists with pristine wounds loose so much blood, their confessors have to ask them to pray their stigmata away. And they do. Rita, however? She only needed to pray for that once, and that was for being allowed to travel to the Vatican with her fellow sisters. What took her out were her lungs, cystic fibrosis if I’m not mistaken. Nothing whatsoever to do with her wound, not even an infection that would be so easy to accompany myiasis. Maybe this was God’s way to allow her to keep this grace. Maybe her little angels were, indeed, angels, maintaining God’s gift with their inflammation inducing presence not allowing the wound to close, yet making sure it would not be a source of significant bleeding, either. Maybe they were protecting the wound from the other things that could infect it.

Maybe He was making her stand out among other stigmatists. Maybe it’s yet another impossible thing in her story to grant her the patronage. Maybe it’s supposed to make us reflect on how we treat the sick. Maybe it’s telling us to care for little things. Maybe it’s a lesson on humility. On love. On the price of God’s favour.

My friend, you asked me why there were maggots in her stigmata, why flesh that was touched by God would rot at all. And here is my answer: I have far too many thoughts, and not a single clue! What I know is that it intrigues me, it touches me in a way I never could have foreseen when I first met this saint, it makes me want to immerse myself in God and ask Him how can it be all of these things and none of them at the same time.

But you know what, my friend? I think, at last, that I like to not know. Because I am certain of my wonder at this mystery. And I am certain that in heaven, Rita is looking down at us, and she’s laughing in joy and amusement. And I am certain that her Beloved is there, laughing with her.