OUR PATRONSAINT CECILIA
OUR PATRONSAINT CECILIA
We have a particularly fine role model, in the body of St. Cecilia (22nd of November), a patrician woman of second or third century Rome. Her life was, to put it mildly, harsh, and her martrydom was, to put it even more mildly, cruel. Her recorded life begins with her marrige, against her will, to Valerian. She had planned to devote her life to serving god, and during her wedding feast, she remained alone in a corner, praying while the others ate and danced.
Her husband was a remarkable man who agreed to respect her vow of virginity. He and his brother Tiburtius were both impressed by Cecilia's piety, and they too were soon baptized. Together, the three lead a life of buying the remains of Christian martyrs and giving them proper burials. Of course, as was the rule in Roman Rome, no good deed was ever left unpunished, and Valerian and Tiburtius were quickly hauled before prefect Almachius's court. He ordered them to sacrifice to the pagan gods, and when they refused, he sentenced them to be scourged and beheaded. During their whippings, they even managed to convert one of their guards to Christianity, Maximus. He too died with them.
Cecilia of course rushed out to get their bodies, and lovingly buried them in the cemetery of Praetextatus. Having lost her husband, her brother-in-law, and the soldier who whipped them both, she re-decorated her home. Almachius was horrified to see the new scheme--a fetching church interior, complete with services, and attempted to force her to renounce her Christianity. Having no more luck with her than with her husband, he sentenced her to death too.
Her death sentence was to be carried out by suffocating her in her own bath. Locked in her bathroom, the executioners stoked the furnance until the temperature in the roman bath was seven times normal temperature. Several hours later, Cecilia emerged unharmed. The same could not be said for her new wallpaper, which was in tatters. Enraged, Almachius ordered her to be beheaded. Proving that a Ginsu knife is only as good as he who wields it, a bumbling klutz of a soldier managed to only to fatally wound her after three attempts. Over the next three days, she lay in pain, singing songs of praise to god, and comforting herself with sacred music, as her friends came to seek her final blessings. Finally, she died, never once forsaking her faith in Christ.
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