Feast day: April 27

St. Zita

Virgin · 1212–1272

Patron of Domestic workers, housekeepers

An Italian servant girl who spent forty-eight years in one household, treating her humble work as prayer and sharing her own food with the poor at the door.

Zita was born about 1212 into a poor family of a village near Lucca in Tuscany. At the age of twelve she was sent into service as a maid in the household of the wealthy Fatinelli family of Lucca, and there she remained, a domestic servant, for the rest of her long life — some forty-eight years in the same house.

She did her work as a form of prayer, regarding her household tasks as service rendered to God himself. She rose early to attend Mass before her duties, gave her own food and even her master's goods to the poor — which at first earned her the resentment of the family and her fellow servants — and bore unfair treatment with patience.

In time her evident holiness won everyone over. She was put in charge of the whole household, and treated the other servants with such kindness, defending them to their employers and caring for the poor at the door, that she became beloved throughout the city.

She died in 1271, and miracles were soon reported at her tomb; the people of Lucca venerated her so completely that the poet Dante could refer to the city simply as 'Santa Zita.' Canonized in 1696, she is the patron of domestic workers and housekeepers — sanctity found in a lifetime of faithful, ordinary service.

She is the patron of maids and housekeepers — a servant who proved that sanctity is built out of ordinary chores done faithfully and with love.

Image: Arnould de Vuez (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/15762a.htm