St. Margaret of Cortona (1247-1297)
Feast day: Feb. 22
In
1728 when Margaret of Cortona was canonized, she was held up
as a model for penitent sinners. Today she is often invoked
by mothers who, for whatever reason, are raising their
children alone.
But St. Margaret also teaches us that in most
cases saints are not born, but made. And it was more
difficult for some to become saintly than for others.
Margaret's biographers tell us that she was a beautiful,
lively little girl who could be very sweet as long as she
got her way. And usually her parents indulged.
All that ended
when Margaret was seven and her mother died. Very soon
thereafter Margaret's father remarried. We are told that
Margaret and her stepmother disliked each other almost from
the first moment they met. The stepmother tried to control
Margaret, so to escape the child spent more and more time
away from the house. As Margaret grew older, she became even
more beautiful. The older boys in the village began to pay
attention to her and Margaret liked it. We don't know if
Margaret had any sexual experiences with the village boys,
what we do know is that when she was only 13 or 14 years old,
Arsenio, the 16-year-old son of the local baron, saw Margaret
and invited her to live with him as his mistress. Margaret
accepted. Margaret was thrilled with her new situation.
Instead of the drudgery of peasant life, she had servants who
did everything for her. Instead of a scolding stepmother, she
had a lover who wanted to please her. True, Arsenio had told
her candidly that he would never marry her, but Margaret felt
confident that she could change his mind.
The young couple
lived together for nine years. Margaret bore Arsenio a son,
but still he would not marry her. Then one day Arsenio left
home for several days to attend to business at one of his
family's outlying estates. He never returned. Arsenio was
murdered in the forest near his castle, and it was Margaret,
led by Arsenio's dog, who discovered her lover's body lying
in a shallow pit beneath a pile of dry brush and dead
branches.
That was the darkest moment of her life, and the
moment of her conversion. While they lived together neither
Margaret nor Arsenio had given any thought to the state of
their souls. Now Margaret wondered if Arsenio had had time to
repent before he died. And she wondered, if death came
suddenly to her would she have the sense to beg for God's
forgiveness? Determined to amend her life, and to raise her
son properly, Margaret set out for Cortona where the
Franciscan friars had a reputation for helping repentant
sinners. The Franciscans exceeded their reputation. They
found Margaret and her son a home with two pious, unmarried
sisters. They assigned two priests to act as Margaret's
spiritual directors. And when her son was old enough to go to
school, the friars arranged for him to study at an academy in
the nearby town of Arezzo.
Perhaps because she was never
certain of the fate of Arsenio's soul, Margaret became
devoted to the poor souls in purgatory. As she lay dying she
had a vision of a vast crowd streaming out of heaven to meet
her: they were the souls that she, a once-notorious sinner,
had ransomed with her prayers.
Craughwell is the author
of Saints for Every Occasion (Stampley Enterprises,
2001) and Patron Saints Catholic Cardlinks (Our Sunday
Visitor, 2004).
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