A Sunday Thought About a Beloved Saint to Start the Week Off Right

Saint Agnes must be among the most beloved saints in the traditional Liturgical calendar. Excepting St. Paul, St. Peter, John the Baptist, Our Lady (any others?), who else has not one but two days devoted to them? St. Agnes does. And they both come within a week!

Her first day, January 21st is celebrated as well in the Novus Ordo calendar. But they dumped her second. That's on January 28th. As I understand it, she was so beloved by the citizens of Rome, they couldn't get enough of her. So a week later, voilá, another commemoration.

While not a Roman, I've got my own special devotion to this girl-martyr-saint. Even if I had never taken the trouble to read about her, we used to attend Mass at St. Agnes RC church in Manhattan for many years. We'd drive a distance with our children because we wanted to attend a Vetus Ordo (a/k/a/Tridentine, a/k/a old Latin a/k/a extraordinary, a/k/a...whatever) Mass. 

In addition to those Sunday Masses, my place of work in the city wound up, some years later, within easy walking distance of the very same church. So I attended the mid-day Novus Ordo offering at times. Because at the time they offered confession every day during mid-day Masses, I received the Sacrament of Confession there as well for many years.

Needless to say, I had an attachment to the place.

A plain white statue of St. Agnes stands in front of the church. 

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When the original building was destroyed by fire, the reconstructed church commissioned an artist to paint a huge mural surrounding the main altar. It depicts St. Agnes being welcomed into Heaven by Our Blessed Mother, along with various angels and saints. 

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You might notice how St. Agnes' expression on the statue was captured by the artist who painted the mural. I would sometimes simply gaze at the beautiful child saint as I knelt and prayed in my pew. If you knew nothing else about her, her purity was perfectly depicted in that painting.

But I did take the trouble to learn what I could about this remarkable girl. Her beauty and purity attracted prospective Roman men who wanted to marry her. Marriage at 14 was not uncommon; and while she was apparently shy of that age, the competition must have been pretty hot to win her hand. (The early bird gets the worm?) St. Agnes, though, had vowed to remain a virgin, "married" only to her Lord, Jesus Christ. And so some of her frustrated suitors, apparently enraged that she could turn them down, saw to it that her Christianity was revealed to the authorities - a crime in those days (late 3rd, early 4th centuries), punishable by death.

While there are several stories of how she met her end, we know for certain that she did. A best guess puts her age at somewhere between 11 - 13. And another best guess tells us she met her demise joyfully, without fear.

You really should research the life of St. Agnes for yourself if you're not familiar with it. If you do, you will be in awe of how she defended her purity with the jaws of death closing upon her. You may even grow to love this child saint. And you'll likely gain a deeper understanding of just how incredibly moving "purity" can be in the person of a beautiful young lady.

The appreciation of purity alone would be worth the effort to get to know St. Agnes. If we simply look around, we should all be absolutely stunned and revolted at the lack of purity in our current culture. If you haven't noticed, just try using the word "purity" in a positive way and see how other react. Now I don't know if today's Romans have any better regard for purity, but they apparently still name their children "Agnes" because of their ongoing indefatigable love for her. 

Even if their appreciation of purity may be muted, their devotion to the person does not seem to have suffered. Perhaps some will put 2+2 together and realize that purity is part of the reason they love her so. 

So perhaps we might join together on this Sunday in our shared love for Saint Agnes. And if we truly love her, we will also pray for her intercession to restore purity to our degraded culture. At the very least, we each can strive to practice that same virtue of purity that compelled our Blessed Mother to guide her spotless soul into Paradise.

Happy Sunday!