January 21--St. Agnes, Virgin and Martyr

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Why is virginity celebrated? In our day and age virginity is celebrated in absentia; namely, chastity and purity are held in low regard and the right to engage in sexual activity is not only expected, but promoted, even among minors. But the Catholic Church holds that virginity and chastity and self-restraint in the face of overwhelming societal promotion of self-indulgence are not only commendable, but holy and graced by God. Marriage between a man and a woman is the proper relationship of sexual love with its complementary unity and openness to procreation.

Today’s saint respected virginity AND marriage to the point of offering herself up for martyrdom in witness to her love for Jesus. St. Agnes was about twelve years old when she was arrested. Although there are many legends that surround her passion and death, the core of the stories conveys the truth of her holiness. She was soon to be able to be married when she refused propositions because she had consecrated her virginity to Jesus. She was reported to the authorities during the reign of Diocletian, the most comprehensive persecution in the ancient world, in AD 304. The judge of her trial tried to get her to give up her faith and threatened her with fire and torture. She was stripped at a brothel and threatened with rape. She was executed in a stadium by being hacked to death with a sword.

We have a modern martyr just like St. Agnes in St. Maria Goretti, who was eleven years old when she was killed for not giving in to lustful advances. Martyrdom is a gift for those who love God enough to suffer the ultimate sacrifice, life. St. Agnes, St. Maria Goretti, and others have offered their lives for the sake of love of God, the true offering of virginity.

*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Joseph%27s_Catholic_Church_(Central_City,_Kentucky)_-_stained_glass,_St._Agnes,_detail.jpg

July 6--St. Maria Goretti, Virgin and Martyr

Her last words were, “I forgive Alessandro Serenelli …and I want him with me in heaven forever.” St. Maria Goretti forgave the man who, after trying to rape her, stabbed her fourteen times and killed her. She was eleven years old, the youngest person to be canonized.

St. Maria was the eldest of six children, born into poverty, but deprived of her father at the age of nine by malaria. Because she was the oldest, she had to take care of her siblings while her mother worked in the fields. Serenelli was her next-door neighbor. Alessandro began to harass St. Maria, trying to get her to give into his lustful desires. He stated: “After the second attempt, in my mind was formed more than ever the intention to succeed in the vent of my passion and I conceived the idea to kill her if she continued to resist my cravings.” On July 5, 1902 he confronted St. Maria. She refused, protesting that what he wanted was a mortal sin: “No! It is a sin! God does not want it!” He served 27 years of a 30-year prison sentence and wrote when he was 79 and a Capuchin lay brother: “My behavior was influenced by print, mass-media and bad examples which are followed by the majority of young people without even thinking. And I did the same. I was not worried.”

In the same letter, Alessandro wrote: “I hope this letter that I wrote can teach others the happy lesson of avoiding evil and of always following the right path, like little children. I feel that religion with its precepts is not something we can live without, but rather it is the real comfort, the real strength in life and the only safe way in every circumstance, even the most painful ones of life.” Words to live by from a penitent, saved by a saint.