St. Agatha is one of the great virgin martyrs of the Roman Church,
who, in the midst of the Roman paganism, chose to be faithful to Christ no matter what the cost.
She was a beautiful young woman who was sought after by many of the wealthy suitors of her time,
and she had been given the inspiration by God to remain consecrated to him in virginity,
and so she refused all the offerings of marriage until one of the men who had significant power in the empire
decided that he would threaten her for her Christianity.
He knew she was a Christian. He wanted to marry her, and so he used his power,
and the threat of persecution, to dissuade her from her purpose
and ultimately extort from her her consent to marry.
And she refused, of course, and was for a time sent to a brothel
where she was tormented and maintained her virginity
and then brought back before him, and she still refused to marry him,
and then he put her in prison.
He had her tortured, and finally when he saw that there was no way to dissuade her
from her consecration to Christ, he finally had her killed.
And, of course, to think about what she did is to reflect upon the power of God's grace,
because she declined not just to reject,
not just to reject her faith, or even to maintain her purity,
but she refused a legitimate marriage because she was consecrated to Christ.
That was her desire. That was her inspiration.
And she died for that consecration.
And we should take saints like Agatha and other Roman virgin martyrs,
and saints like St. Maria.
And we should take St. Maria Goretti as not only our examples,
but our patrons for these times of impurity,
when we are surrounded by compromise,
where we are inundated with images and live in a culture
which is in some ways worse than the culture in which she lived.
She lived in a time in which the enlightenment of Christ had not come to fruition.
Christendom did not yet exist.
You know, the world was still missionary territory.
We live in what some might describe, and I don't know if it's altogether accurate,
but in a post-Christian world,
in which the truth has been rejected and overrun and replaced by neo-paganism.
So it's like the world returned, as St. Francis would say,
like a dog to its vomit.
And rejecting the truth,
and returning to falsehood,
and preferring falsehood to the truth,
and refusing or preferring impurity to holiness and to chastity.
The saints, like St. Alphonsus Liguori,
says that most of the people who lose their souls and go to hell,
go to hell if not because of impurity,
at least with sins of impurity.
And chastity,
true chastity of thought, word, and deed,
is wholly supernatural.
It cannot be acquired by merely natural means.
It is the fruit of grace,
the fruit of prayer,
sacramental life,
and of humility.
We see that Agatha put our Lord first.
She had true love.
She loved her spouse.
And she loved him so much,
and had such recourse to him,
and clung to him with such intensity,
that she was able to endure
the most horrendous kind of trials.
And the reading from the letter of St. Paul
to the Corinthians, the first letter,
underscores this humility of St. Agnes
and of those who choose purity
over impurity.
Where he talks about how
those who were chosen by Christ
to follow him
were not chosen because they were mighty
or noble,
because they were well-born,
or because they were wise.
But rather,
St. Paul
underscores the fact
that God chooses the foolish things of this world
to confound the wise,
and the weak to confound the strong.
He chooses those who are contemptible
in the eyes of the world
to raise them up so that
those who see them
will recognize the power of God.
It's like in the Old Testament,
when God, you know,
took away the soldiers from Gideon,
or so often showed the Israelites
that they could accomplish nothing
save through his power.
And very often, as in the example of Gideon,
where he removed all the soldiers,
he didn't want Israel to exalt in its own power,
but to recognize that it was through the power of God
that they conquered.
In the end, only the humble
will be pure.
And therefore,
what we're confronting in our impure world
is a horrendous kind of pride.
You know,
so often,
things are inverted.
Impurity
is arrogance.
Impurity is pride.
Impurity is the refusal
to acknowledge the lordship of Christ
and to submit ourselves to his grace
and to recognize that without him
we can do nothing.
So we turn to the saints,
like Saint Agatha today,
and most of all to the Queen of Virgins,
our Blessed Mother,
who
they alone can teach us how
how to truly be pure
and to maintain our purity
no matter what the cost.
We have to beg for that grace
every day
so that we can persevere
in the life of grace
and be instruments
of God's grace
for others.
Purity is supernatural.
It's a manifestation of the power of God.
May we manifest that power through our lives
and through the grace of God in our hearts.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.