Today is the feast of yet ANOTHER namesake of the great St. Mary Magdalene -- Mary Magdalen dei Pazzi. I don't know what all she's patron of, but she could well be one for the mentally ill, especially those suffering from bi-polar disorder and depression. She herself, great mystic, was plunged in a deep depression for five whole years, during which she experienced "desolation and spiritual dryness", when she lacked energy and saw herself as a horrible failure. But on Pentecost in 1590 while at Mass in her convent (she was a Carmelite) she went into a rapture and emerged cured: "Rejoice with me," she said to the prioress and novice-mistress, "for my winter is at an end." And she then went on to higher highs and deeper lows, suffering tremendous temptations to gluttony and impurity (for which she scourged herself, poor thing) and enjoying hour-long ecstasies, levitation and frequent heavenly consolations. She suffered something of the Lord's passion and was favored with visions of people she had known in life in Purgatory. She could read souls and tell the future -- she knew who the next pope would be, and that his reign would be unseasonably short. She used to exclaim, like St. Francis before her, "Love is not loved!" and she seemed always to be united with God.
She suffered headaches in her final days -- really bad ones. Perhaps she could be invoked by headache sufferers as well. She had become somewhat of a recluse in her last days -- she literally couldn't bear being touched. When she died, surrounded by the Reverend Mother and her spiritual sisters she said, "I am about to leave you; and the last thing I ask of you is that you trust implicitly in Him." She remains incorrupt to this very day. You can see her remains in the church attached to her convent in Florence.
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