Saint of the Week

 

 

 

St. Agnes

Saint Agnes (291–304; feast day: January 21) is a Virgin Martyr saint of the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Catholic Churches. She is also acknowledged in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion as well as in Eastern Orthodoxy. She is one of seven women, excluding the Blessed Virgin, commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass. She is the Patron Saint of chastity, gardeners, girls, engaged couples, rape victims and virgins. Saint Agnes is admired everywhere around the world.

 

She is also known as Saint Agnes of Rome and Saint Ines (or Santa Ynez). Her feast day is January 21. Hundreds of churches are named in honor of Saint Agnes, including two major well-known churches and one Anglican Cathedral in Kyoto, Japan. She is depicted in art with a lamb as her name resembles the Latin word agnus, which means "lamb". The name "Agnes" is actually derived from the feminine Greek adjective "hagnē" (ἁγνή) meaning "chaste, pure, sacred". According to tradition, Saint Agnes was a member of the Roman nobility born c. 291 and raised in a Christian family. She suffered martyrdom at the age of thirteen during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, on January 21, 304.

 
The Perfect Sempronius wished Agnes to marry his son, and on Agnes' refusal he condemned her to death. As Roman law did not permit the execution of virgins, Sempronius had a naked Agnes dragged through the streets to a brothel. As she prayed, her hair grew and covered her body. It was also said that all of the men who attempted to rape her were immediately struck blind. When led out to die she was tied to a stake, but the bundle of wood would not burn, whereupon the officer in charge of the troops drew his sword and beheaded her, or, in some other texts, stabbed her in the throat. It is also said that the blood of Agnes poured into the stadium floor where other Christians soaked up the blood with cloths.

An interesting custom is observed on her feast day. Two lambs are brought from the Trappist abbey of Tre Fontane in Rome to the Pope to be blessed. On Holy Thursday they are shorn, and from the wool is woven the Pallium which the pope gives to a newly consecrated metropolitan Archbishop as a sign of his jurisdiction and his union with the pope

 

 
The Perfect Sempronius wished Agnes to marry his son, and on Agnes' refusal he condemned her to death. As Roman law did not permit the execution of virgins, Sempronius had a naked Agnes dragged through the streets to a brothel. As she prayed, her hair grew and covered her body. It was also said that all of the men who attempted to rape her were immediately struck blind. When led out to die she was tied to a stake, but the bundle of wood would not burn, whereupon the officer in charge of the troops drew his sword and beheaded her, or, in some other texts, stabbed her in the throat. It is also said that the blood of Agnes poured into the stadium floor where other Christians soaked up the blood with cloths.

An interesting custom is observed on her feast day. Two lambs are brought from the Trappist abbey of Tre Fontane in Rome to the Pope to be blessed. On Holy Thursday they are shorn, and from the wool is woven the Pallium which the pope gives to a newly consecrated metropolitan Archbishop as a sign of his jurisdiction and his union with the pope