St. Agnes
Feast day: Jan. 21
“A new kind of martyrdom!” declared St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, with reference to St. Agnes, a young Italian girl of 12 or 13 years of age who died as a martyr rather than break her promise to Christ as a consecrated virgin. Although many details of her life cannot be corroborated, her purity and heroism were celebrated by Sts. Ambrose and Jerome, Pope St. Damasus I and the Roman Christian poet Aurelius Prudentius Clemens. The tremendous strength she exhibited before she died for Christ is an inspiration to all Christians and encourages us to know that God is with the lowly and downtrodden.
All the accounts we have of the life of St. Agnes involve the fate of a beautiful girl born to wealthy Christian parents. A consecrated virgin, she saw Christ as her only spouse and refused to marry the governor’s son. During the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian, Christianity was condemned as a cult, and one spurned suitor took revenge by reporting St. Agnes to the authorities. A judge ordered that St. Agnes be dragged naked through the streets to a brothel. According to legend, her hair miraculously grew to cover her nakedness, and a man attempting to violate her was struck blind. She remained prayerful throughout her ordeal and adamant in her faith, unperturbed by any means of torture. Refusing to renounce Jesus as Lord, St. Agnes was either beheaded or burned to death in approximately A.D. 304.
Her body was put into a crypt on the Via Nomentana and a larger catacomb with her name developed around her tomb. A basilica was built over her grave during the reign of Constantine through his daughter’s efforts. Today the name of St. Agnes still occurs in the Canon of the Mass with other early martyrs like St. Lucy and St. Cecilia. St. Augustine praised her for her youthful courage and noted that the name “Agnes” means “lamb” in Latin. Each year on her feast day, two lambs are brought from the Trappist Abbey of Tre Fontane in Rome to the Church of Sant’Agnese in Rome to be blessed by the pope. On Holy Thursday, those same two lambs are shorn, and the wool is woven into the palliums the pope gives to newly consecrated archbishops as a sign of their authority and union with him.
The innocence and gentleness of a lamb, combined with the strength to proclaim the divinity of Christ on an awe-inspiring, public scale — this is the legacy of St. Agnes. Whether we are young or old, married or unmarried, St. Agnes encourages us to be bold in living chastity and in defending it even in a hostile, secular culture. She is an inspiration to all of us called to peacefully evangelize and stand up for the truth amidst hatred and rebellion. St. Ambrose tells us, “And still this little girl had enough courage to face the sword. She was fearless in the bloody hands of the executioner. She prayed, she bowed her head. Behold in one victim the twofold martyrdom of chastity and faith.”
Reflection
Dear Jesus, may I fall in love with you and the teaching of your Church so much so that I will defend it amidst opposition and criticism. When I feel alone in my beliefs, may I know that I have the prayers of St. Agnes and my guardian angel to guide me.
Prayer
Almighty ever-living God, who choose what is weak in the world to confound the strong, mercifully grant, that we, who celebrate the heavenly birthday of your martyr St. Agnes, may follow her constancy in the faith. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.