Feast day: January 21
St. Agnes
A 12-year-old Roman girl who refused marriage to powerful suitors because she had consecrated herself to Christ, and was executed under Diocletian.
Of all the virgin martyrs of Rome, none was held in higher honor by the early Church than Agnes. From the fourth century onward the Fathers and Christian poets — Ambrose, Augustine, Damasus, Prudentius — sang her praises and extolled her courage, so that her fame was already ancient when the details of her story had grown uncertain. What they agree on is that she was very young, perhaps twelve or thirteen, and that she died for Christ during the persecutions.
According to the tradition, Agnes was a girl of a noble Roman family, beautiful and sought in marriage, who had consecrated her virginity to Christ and refused every suitor. Denounced as a Christian, she was brought before the authorities and, when neither promises nor threats could move her, was condemned and put to death by the sword. St. Ambrose marvels that a child too young to be a legal witness was old enough to win the crown of martyrdom.
She was buried beside the Via Nomentana, where the great basilica of Sant'Agnese still stands over her grave, and her feast has been kept on January 21 since the earliest times. Her name resembles both the Latin for 'lamb' (agnus) and the Greek for 'pure' (hagne), and both meanings were woven into her story from the start.
Each year on her feast two lambs are blessed at her basilica, and from their wool are woven the palliums — the bands of white wool — that the pope confers on archbishops throughout the world. So this young girl, one of the most beloved martyrs of the early Church, is honored still in a living custom at the heart of the Church's life.
She is one of only seven women named in the Roman Canon of the Mass, honored there for over 1,500 years.
“Christ made my soul beautiful with the jewels of grace and virtue. I belong to Him whom the angels serve.”
— St. Agnes
Image: Domenichino (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/01214a.htm
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