Monastery of the Holy Cross

This post comes a day late and is an expansion of my homily from Mass yesterday.

During the darkest days of the year, we celebrate four improbable lights of the early Church, the Virgin Martyrs St. Cecilia (Nov 22), St. Lucy (Dec 13), St. Agnes (jan 21) and St. Agatha (Feb 5).  In fact, January 21st is statistically the coldest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, just as December 13 was (in the old Julian calendar) the darkest day of the year.  So as we look forward to more light and more warmth, these feast days help us to mark the time.

All four were martyred in Sicily or Rome and have their names included in the Roman canon of the Mass.  Their cults indicate a very early interest in consecrated virginity, a charism only recently reintroduced into the Catholic Church (it had been absorbed into religious life of the convent in the early middle ages).  Their deaths took place in the seventy years before the official toleration of Christianity, during some of the fiercest persecutions of the young Church.  Thus their martyrdoms stand in relation to the victory of the Church over the Roman Empire as the yearly darkness stands to the light of spring.  They are a reminder to hold to faith even in our times of darkness, while we await God’s delivery.

Many will object to the idea of the Church triumphing over the Roman Empire.  Some will object because of nostalgia for Rome, even a Rome so violent as to put to death twelve-year-old girls for running afoul of corrupt government officials who could use their religious beliefs as a pretext to have them executed.  Others maintain that the conversion of Constantine and the consequent admixture of the sacred and profane spheres was a disaster for the Church and should not be counted as a triumph at all by those who love the Church.

I have no qualms referring to this event as a triumph, though I would also acknowledge the ambiguous results of such a victory.  While I’m not eager to condemn the sensibilities of ages other than our own, I also don’t long for the imperial papacy that resulted from the Christianization of the Empire, and especially from the withdrawal of the imperial apparatus to the East, leaving the pope as the effective governor of Rome.  The reason that I am all for calling this a triumph is that it is–but not because Christians became powerful; Christians triumphed because in the face of savage persecution, they preferred to die rather than renounce the Truth of Christ.  And the Virgin Martyrs, whose lives were consecrated to Christ, represent the hidden dimension of this triumph.  This is why they are mentioned in the Roman Canon and Constantine, whatever might his merits be, is not.