V for Victory!: April 13th: Bl. Margaret of Castello, O.P.

V for Victory!: April 13th: Bl. Margaret of Castello, O.P.:

April 13, 2012

April 13th: Bl. Margaret of Castello, O.P.

The hippies of the '60s and '70s prided themselves (and some of them still pride themselves) on being "counter-cultural" just because they shunned barbers, smoked dope, wore draw-string pants and primitive jewelry, and could sit through an entire Joan Baez concert without wanting to slit their wrists.  But when it comes to being counter-cultural, the spoiled, disaffected children of middle-class America have nothing on Bl. Margaret of Castello.  Consider:

-- Margaret was short, hunchbacked, clubfooted and blind.  She met no ideals of physical beauty, either in her own time or in ours.  We, on the other hand, write off the physically ugly.

-- Margaret's parents shunned her, isolated her, imprisoned her, abused her, yet she bore it all cheerfully and patiently.  Even after they abandoned her, she would not hear a word said against them.  We, on the other hand, covet "victimhood" status, milking it for all it's worth; we pick constantly at the sores of injuries, real or imagined; we sue at the drop of a hat; we demand "reparations" for injustices of the distant past from the descendants of those who may or may not have had a hand in such injustices. 

-- Margaret sought always to do what was right, no matter what it cost her or what other people thought of her.  We, on the other hand, drop our principles as soon as they become inconvenient, or there is something to be gained by dropping them.

-- Margaret possessed a passionate nature, yet she embraced virginity.  We, on the other hand, embrace immodesty, promiscuity, depravity and even unnatural acts, all while viewing virgins as objects of pity.

Margaret's was a life that today would be considered as worthless.  Had she been conceived in 2012, once her obvious deformities turned up on an ultrasound, she would stand a fair chance of being suctioned out of the womb in pieces in the name of "compassion."  Yet she is a beata of the Church.  How many would-be great saints have we aborted and contracepted out of this world in order not to be "burdened" with them? 

What a fitting patroness of Life, and against abortion and contraception, Bl. Margaret of Castello would be.  Perhaps it is for just such a depraved time as this that she has waited 700 years to be raised to the altar.