A Saint for our times. St. Agnes of Rome

We linked this in from our companion blog the other day:

Cellmate of Boethius: Lex Anteinternet: St. Agnes of Rome: 

Lex Anteinternet: St. Agnes of Rome

Lex Anteinternet: St. Agnes of Rome: 

St. Agnes of Rome

 A saint, in many ways, for our times.  Her feast day was yesterday.

Martyred on January 21, 304.

It struck me at the time that I should have posted more on St. Agnes and how she's become so contemporary.

It's hard to know all the details of her martyrdom give as it happened in 304, but what seems clear is that she voluntarily declared herself a Christian at a time that meant death, and that she steadfastly refused to yield her virginity. She seems to have had many suitors, which at that time exposed a young woman to being turned over to the authorities if they felt sufficiently jilted.  It is clear that she was tortured. She may have actually been turned over, as part of that, to a house of prostitution where, according to one account, she not only did not yield, a desirous patron of the house actually fell dead upon propositioning her.

She seems to have been executed by the sword.

Her relics, including a skull that is visible through a window, remain in Rome.

What makes her so relevant today is her steadfast refusal to yield to the spirit of her age, choosing to go to her death rather than surrender her virtue.  She's a patron saint of chastity.

In an age, in the West, which almost has no other interest other than the carnal, and the individual carnal at that, she speaks to us through her example as loudly as she did in 304.  Likewise for her example to refusing to yield to the false and convenient, no mater what it meant.