Cecilia was a virgin who came from an extremely rich family in Rome. She was given in marriage to a youth named Valerian. She wore sackcloth next to her skin, fasted, and invoked the saints, angels, and virgins, beseeching them to guard her virginity.

During her wedding ceremony she was said to have sung in her heart to God and before the consummation of her nuptials, she told her husband she had taken a vow of virginity and had an angel protecting her. Valerian asked to see the angel as proof, and Cecilia told him he would have eyes to see once he travelled to the third milestone on the Via Appia (Appian Way) and was baptized by Pope Urban I

Following his baptism, Valerian returned to Cecilia and found an angel at her side. The angel then crowned Cecilia with a chaplet of rose and lily. When Valerian's brother, Tibertius, heard of the angel and his brother's baptism, he was also baptized and together the brothers dedicated their lives to burying the saints who were murdered each day by the prefect of the city, Turcius Almachius.

Both brothers were eventually arrested, brought before the prefect Turcius Almachius and were executed after they refused to offer a sacrifice to pagan gods.

As her husband and brother-in-law went about burying the dead, St. Cecilia spent her time preaching, and in her lifetime, was able to convert over four hundred people, most of whom were baptized by Pope Urban.

Cecilia was later arrested and condemned to be suffocated in the baths. She was shut in for one night and one day, as fires were heaped up and stoked to a terrifying heat, Cecilia did not even sweat.

When the prefect Almachius heard about this, he sent an executioner to cut off her head in the baths.
The executioner struck her three times but was unable to decapitate her so he left her bleeding and she lived for three days. Crowds came to her and collected her blood while she preached to them and prayed. On the third day she died and was buried by Pope Urban and his deacons.

St. Cecilia is regarded as the patroness of music, because she heard heavenly music in her heart when she was married and is represented in art with an organ or organ-pipes in her hand.

Officials exhumed her body in 1599 and found her to be incorrupt, the first of all incorrupt saints. She was draped in a silk veil and wore a gold embroidered dress. Officials only looked through the veil in an act of holy reverence and made no further examinations. They also reported a "mysterious and delightful flower-like odour which proceeded from the coffin."

St. Cecilia's remains were transferred to Cecilia's titular church in Trastevere and placed under the high altar.

St. Cecilia was not known or venerated in Rome until about the time when Pope Gelasius introduced her name into his Sacramentary in 496.

It is said that there was a church dedicated to St. Cecilia in Rome in the fifth century, in which Pope Symmachus held a council in 500.

Other Saints of the Day
1. Saint Devniolin
2. Saint Lucretia
3. Saint Mark and Stephen
4. Saint Philemon
5. Saint Tigridia

- catholic.org