Today, in the first reading with St. Paul's letter to the Hebrews, we truly can say that
St. Agatha, who we celebrate today, is one of those great cloud of witnesses who surrounds
us.
St. Agatha is a martyr of the early church of around the year 250 A.D.
She was martyred in Sicily, and she's one of those great virgin martyrs that is mentioned
in the Roman canon, along with St. Agnes and other great virgin martyrs of the early church.
St. Agatha, whose name is the writer in the Office of Readings mentions, whose name means
good, truly was good in all ways.
She was the daughter of a noble family.
She had vowed her virginity to Christ, like many young women did in the early church.
I'm sure that they were inspired by the great example of Our Lady and being a virgin.
And it seems that a man who was a Roman senator was very...
very much desirous of her and wanted her to marry him.
But she kept refusing his advances, and somehow he learned of her being a Christian, and that
was because of her Christian faith that she was refusing him because she had made a vow
of virginity.
And so he had her arrested, and they...
At first, he tried to...
to discourage her or dissuade her from her life of virginity by putting her in a brothel.
He sent St. Agatha to a brothel, and she stayed there for almost a month, and instead
of, you know, she maintained her virtue with great trials and tribulations, and may even
have converted some of the prostitutes, and then because of his frustration that she didn't
give in.
After that, he sent her to prison where she was tortured.
Some said she was even thrown on red-hot coals.
Finally, in his anger and frustration, he had her breasts cut off.
And St. Agatha is depicted in the iconography, you know, St. Lucy is portrayed with a platter
with her two eyes on a platter while St. Agatha is portrayed with a platter with her two breasts
on the platter.
She is a patron saint of nurses and also of women who suffer from diseases of the breast.
We should maybe invoke St. Agatha in a special way to pray for the truth to come out about
the connection between abortion and contraception and breast cancer.
Truly, we need that truth to be proclaimed wide and far, that the evils of abortion and
contraception are always being downplayed and covered up.
But St. Agatha, after that, eventually succumbed to her torture, and now we honor her as the
great saint who resisted evil, even to the point, as St. Paul also says, that we haven't
opposed sin enough in our own life.
We really need to...
We really need to make ourselves so worthy of these witnesses, these great saints who've
gone ahead of us, that we know we haven't really struggled that much against sin until
we have resisted to the point of shedding our blood.
And that is, you know, how much must... should we resist sin?
Well, the saints, especially the martyrs, show us how much we should resist sin.
Better to die than to commit sin.
You know, has been the great motto of the...
the saints of old, and should be, even today, hopefully, you know, better to die than to
capitulate, to give in to sin and those who are promoting sin.
That, you know, the worst thing in all is not physical evil, that we should die physically,
but rather that we should die spiritually.
That is a far greater evil, and that, of course, is sin.
So, today, as we honor St. Paul, we honor St. Paul, and we honor St. Paul, and we honor
St. Paul, and we honor St. Paul, and we honor St. Paul, and we honor St. Paul, and we honor
St. Paul, and we honor St. BEAUTIFULuit
Let us ask her to intercede for us in our day and age.
Let us ask her to intercede for us in our day and age.
Let us ask her to intercede for us in our day and age. That we truly will have that heroic
That we truly will have that heroic
That we truly will have that heroic virtue.
virtue.
virtue. That courage to resist sin and evil,
That courage to resist sin and evil,
That courage to resist sin and evil, even when it should try to...
even when it should try to...
even when it should try to... make threats or try to hold out the
make threats or try to hold out the
make threats or try to hold out the allure of sin, you know, try to
allure of sin, you know, try to
think that somehow sin has
a good side to it,
which it never does.
But this is probably
one of the biggest falsehoods
of our modern day,
is that it portrays a life of sin
as always something very good
and no one ever suffers
any consequences from it.
And that is probably
one of the biggest propaganda pieces
that is promoted,
especially in the cinema and TV.
It shows all these people
living sinful lives
and they never have to reach
any kind of judgment,
never suffer any consequences of it.
People who are living a life
of decadence,
they don't seem to have any worries
and that's not the case.
The whole sexual revolution
has left so many victims
and so many people
who have suffered terribly
because of it.
If that were to be portrayed
as it ought to be,
we would really much see
the great benefit
of living a virtuous and chaste life
just in the physical
and natural realm.
Let us today also ask
Our Lady, Queen of Virgins,
Queen of Martyrs,
to assist us
to be one of those great witnesses
that St. Paul talks about
for the future ages
that we too have given
that heroic witness
to our love for Christ
and His Church.
In the name of the Father
and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.