Today October 13

Today is the feast of Magdalen Panattieri (? - 1503). There's a popular and pretty actress with our saint's same -- and fairly unusual -- last name. I can't stand her for some reason. Wooden and unnaturally sweet, she emotes through movies that seem not much better than after-school specials, so all her fame seems unwarranted to me.

Blessed Magdalen was a third order Dominican so I'm tempted to call her a laywoman, but as I've pointed out before in this column, joining a third order was a much bigger deal in those days than it is in ours. For one thing, you wore the full habit (of the third order, but a habit nonetheless). You took vows of celibacy and basically lived as an uncloistered nun. You were more free to move about the populace, as it were, which Magdalen did -- notably, teaching children, aiding the poor, and giving homilies! I'm sorry: reflections. Not at Mass, of course; not even in the church, but in the little adjoining chapel there in Trino. It is written as notable that even MEN came to hear her talk! Imagine that.

She is remarkable among saints in that she seemed to have met little opposition: she not only tightened up practice among the Dominicans, but cleaned up the town as well. She brought many souls to repentance and became quite a force in Trino. That being said, she was friend to some Dominican friars who were involved in a lawsuit and the Milanese opponent slapped her across the face. (So I think that should qualify as "some" opposition.) She immediately turned her other cheek to him. If *I* were writing this story, that would have melted the guy and ended the feud and averted his ensuing excommunication. No such luck. The act of meekness only made him madder. Within a year he was dead of a violent end and his partner of disease not much later. Sigh.

But she came to a happy end. She promised to intercede for her tertiary sisters in eternity and died saying, "I could not be happy in heaven if you were not there too." Dear Blessed Magdalen Panattieri, pray for us.