On the lips of thousands of priests every day are the names of some of the Church’s most revered female martyrs: “Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, and all the saints.”

When Saint Gregory the Great became Pope, he inserted the names of two of Sicily’s most revered martyrs, Agatha and Lucy, into the heart of the Mass, the Roman Canon.

Not much is known for certain about the life and death of Saint Agatha, but long tradition supplies what primary documents lack. Pope Damasus, who reigned from 366–384, composed a poem in her honor, indicating how widespread her reputation was by that early date.

Saint Agatha was from a well-off family in Sicily in Roman times, probably in the third century. After dedicating her life to Christ, her beauty drew powerful men to her like a magnet. But she refused all suitors in favor of the Lord. During the persecution of the Emperor Decius around 250, she was arrested, interrogated, tortured, and martyred. She refused to renounce her faith or to give in to the powerful men who desired her. An ancient homily relates: “A true virgin, she wore the glow of a pure conscience and the crimson of the lamb’s blood for her cosmetics.”

It is also the constant tradition that her torture included sexual mutilation. Whereas Saint Lucy is shone in art with her eyeballs on a platter, Saint Agatha is normally shown holding a plate on which rest her own breasts, as they were cut off by her pagan tormentors before her execution. This peculiar image is, in fact, carved into the wall over the entrance to the sixth century church of Saint Agatha in Rome, a church re-dedicated by Pope Saint Gregory himself so long ago.

The stories of the early male martyrs of the Church relate tales of extreme torture by their Roman captors. Saint Agatha and others were not only physically tough to endure the pain cast by the troturers, but also mentally and spiritually powerful to have resisted to the death the public embarrassment and degradation particular to them as women. They were the strong ones. It was their male captors who looked weak.

It was Christianity’s exaltation of women, children, slaves, prisoners, the old, the sick, the foreigner, and the outcast that caused the vast leaven of the Church to slowly rise in the Mediterranean world. The Church did not create a victim class who complained about a privileged class. The Church preached the dignity of persons.

The Church spoke in theological language and taught that every man, woman, and child was made in God’s image and likeness and so deserved respect. It taught that Jesus Christ died for every person on the cross. The Church gave, and gives, total answers to total questions, and those answers were, and are, compelling.

The Feast of Saint Agatha is massively celebrated in Catania, Sicily. Hundreds of thousands of faithful moves through the streets in procession, in honor of the island’s patron saint.
-Mycatholiclife

Other Saints of the Day
1. Saint Adelaide of Guelders
2. Saint Avitus of Vienne
3. Saint Bertulph of Renty
4. Saint Genuinus of Sabion
5. Saint Albinus of Brixen

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