Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Seven martyred women saints are included in the Eucharistic prayer during the Catholic Mass: Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Agnes, Lucy, Cecilia, and Anastasia. The legends about them can be downright gory.
Consider, for example, St. Agatha, whose feast we celebrate today. She was such a beautiful, kind, Christian noblewoman that Sicily’s 
ruler fell in love with her. Then when she rejected him, he sought to humiliate and subjugate her by any means available. Those means, we are told, included sending her to a house of prostitution, torturing her on the rack, chopping off her breasts, rolling her over glass and hot coals, and more. But Agatha continued to refuse both his advances and the demand to deny her faith. She died about 251.
Now, just how many of those tortures Agatha actually suffered, we’re not exactly sure. But we are sure that she stood firmly by her belief in Christ throughout. And that is what matters. That is what inspires us as we face the slings and arrows of the world today and tomorrow and the next day.
St. Agatha, pray for us!
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