Marge

St. Margaret of Cortona

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After she got old and ugly from penance, her friends called her Marge, although when she was younger and living with her lover, friends called her Peg - short for Peggy.

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May 16 is the feast day of St. Margaret of Cortona. Margaret had a great appreciation for her own version of theology of the body, and lived with her lover without benefit of marriage. Her beloved was a dazzlingly good looking rich nobleman, to whom she bore a son. She and Romeo loved dogs, and when they weren't drunk or making love, or dressing up for parties, her boyfriend went hunting - at least that is what he told Peg.

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One day their dog, Mr. Giustini came home and told Margaret - Peg - to get her coat and come with him. Margaret was rather busy at the time doing a bikini wax, but she put on some clothes and followed Mr. Giustini, shouting at him, "Not so fast! Not so fast darling, I'm spilling my Prosecco all over myself." Finally she took one last gulp, threw her cigarette aside, and ran after the dog.

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Poor dog was crying and pacing in a clearing in the middle of the woods. Peg saw something that resembled a naked man and thought Romeo had sent for her to have a little tryst in the woods - just as foreplay of course. As she neared the body, she recoiled in horror and disgust, her lover had been beaten severely, almost beyond recognition... he had been brutally murdered... mafia style.

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Okay, so I made up some of the details, but Margaret really did discover her murdered lover's body, and this led to her repentance - which was sudden, although the process took several years. In fact, in her exile in Cortona, she sought admission to the Third Order of St. Francis, but the friars put her off for 3 years - to test the sincerity of her repentance and conversion. (Our Lord even spoke to her and instructed her to go to Cortona - Gosh! She was having visions and everything - yet the friars dared to make her wait - and wait she did. She didn't sue or protest or defiantly assert her right to be a secular Franciscan - nope - she just put up with it and was obedient. I know!)

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Interesting isn't it? The poor woman repented - she practiced severe penance - and she even renounced her former way of life. While going through months of anguish in her conversion, she found herself very nearly destitute, abandoned by former friends and family, yet she still had to wait three more years before being admitted just to the novitiate. Think of it - some Catholic bloggers, and on occasion, a few other converts in the news, haven't even been a Catholic that long, and yet they are preaching to the world and demanding the Church change Her teaching on this and that.

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Now to read an accurate account of the glorious penitent St. Margaret of Cortona, click here or here.