Saint Agatha
But alas, they would
not!
And what courage! What
bravery they showed when their eyes were gouged out, their fair bodies scourged,
their nakedness exposed, their breasts cut off, their limbs torn off one by one
by beasts, their heads chopped off, their bodies burnt at the stakes while everyone
else watched in amusement (or in dismay)!
What were they
thinking? What had gotten into their heads?
These questions have been
asked over the centuries. But how can one explain Love?
It is only she who
loves that truly knows what it’s like when her Love demands something of her.
For the virgin martyrs, their Love demanded from them their lives, and if they
had to go through the fire, or through the teeth of starved lions to give it to
him, they were ready to go all the way, as we see in the life of St Agatha.
According to
tradition, Agatha was born either in Catania or Palermo in 231 AD. At age
fifteen she gave away all she had—her body, her wealth, everything!—to the
Lord, becoming a consecrated virgin.
Her qualities, however,
had attracted the unwelcome attentions of many men, whom she rejected. But the
local Roman prefect, Quintianus, would not take no for an answer. He wanted her
for her beauty and her wealth, and persisted in his proposals, only to be
perplexed by the young virgin’s equally persistent refusal.
When the emperor
Decius issued a decree requiring all citizens to sacrifice to the Roman gods in
250 AD, Quintianus got his chance to win over Agatha. She would surely give up
her faith in fear of the tortures that awaited those who disobeyed the emperor.
Then she would marry him.
Or so he thought.
He had her arrested
and brought before the judge: himself. The young virgin prayed for courage,
which her Divine Spouse bestowed upon her such that to all the threats Quintianus
managed to fabricate, Agatha simply replied, “If you threaten me with wild
beasts, know that at the Name of Christ they grow tame; if you use fire, from
heaven angels will drop healing dew on me.” She would not marry him, not even
to save her life.
Her holy stubbornness
only enraged the tyrant. He decided to have her imprisoned in a brothel, where
sexual sin reigned unchecked. However, her light of purity thrived untainted
even in that place of immorality. She endured this torture for a month until Quintianus
himself had her withdrawn from the brothel after hearing of her calm
persistence in her virtue and faith.
When she was brought
before the cruel judge again, Agatha was nothing but joy and peace. Quintianus
had her stretched on a rack; then her flesh was torn with iron hooks, burned
with torches, and whipped. Through the excruciating pain, she proclaimed Jesus
as Lord, which made the tyrant grow even more nefarious: he had her breasts
twisted and cut off!
“You may destroy my
body, for it is but weak and perishable; yet my soul, consecrated from my
childhood to its Saviour, you cannot reach nor destroy,” she managed to say.
Quintianus threw her
into a dungeon, all wounds, allowing her no food and no medical attention. But
no need, because that night, her Divine Spouse sent St Peter the Apostle from
heaven to cure her wounds and console her. Four days later, she would appear before
an amazed, yet still obstinate Quintianus. The last of her tortures was being
stripped naked and rolled over hot coals mixed with sharp shards before being
sent back to prison.
Perceiving that her earthly sorrow had at last come to an end, St Agatha prayed and surrendered her soul. It was in the year 251 AD, and she was about twenty years old. She died a virgin. She had remained faithful to her Divine Spouse to the end, and he welcomed her joyfully, at last, into his embrace.
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| The Martyrdom of St Agatha, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Wikimedia Commons) |
Jesus Christ, Lord of all, you see my heart; you know my desires. Possess all that I am. I am your sheep: make me worthy to overcome the devil.
It was the Lord
himself who said that whoever tries to save his life will lose it, but the one
who loses his life for His sake will save it (Mt 16:25). In our largely post-Christendom
era, living a life of virtue may at times seem like a waste. You could
be out there attending some vanity-filled party or concert instead of attending
vigil Mass on Christmas Eve or Holy Saturday; you could be enjoying your
life (and your body) instead of preserving your virginity for your future spouse
or consecrating it in Religious Life. There are a million things you could do with
your talents and faculties instead of wasting them on God.
The virgin martyrs
like St Agatha, however, would rather we waste our lives on the Lord!
They would rather we lose our lives for Jesus! They would have us pour
out all we have and are into the uncertainty, the mystery of this
strange God, until we have nothing left of ourselves. They would have us
dedicate our talents to tirelessly helping the needy and spreading the Word of
God. They would have us tame our senses and give up the endless pursuit of worldly
pleasures, if only to grow in virtue. They would have us be laughed at and
mocked; they would have us become signs of contradiction and even be
called mad.
They would have us
love God.
Because, it is in
doing these things, really—in the folly and madness of Christian
self-sacrifice and virtue (in being who God made us to be)—that we manage to live
in the only true and full sense of the word; that we manage, in the end, to
secure our happiness for all eternity.
St Agatha is invoked against
diseases of the breast such as breast cancer. Her feast day is February 5.
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Cover image: St Agatha, Carlo Dolci (1616–1686)
