Text is from The Saint Andrew Daily Missal,
unless stated otherwise.
Saint Agnes.
Virgin And Martyr.
Feast Day 21 January.
Double.
Red Vestments.
Saint Agnes.
Artist: Domenichino (1581–1641).
Date: Circa 1620.
Collection: Windsor Castle.
Source/Photographer: Web Gallery of Art.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Today's Mass Commemorates one of the most touching and glorious triumphs of Jesus over the World. Agnes, a daughter of one of the noblest families of Rome, goes to meet the Spouse (Gospel) and Consecrates herself to Him at the age of ten.
Jesus, in return, “works, through her, wonderful prodigies” (Gradual). The son of the Prefect of Rome asks for her hand in marriage and she replies: “The one to whom I am betrothed is Christ, Whom The Angels serve.”
Then, they attempted to dishonour her by violence, but “God delivered her body from perdition” (Epistle). She was thrown on a burning pile, but “the flames did her no harm” (ibid).
Saint Agnes.
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When condemned to be beheaded, she thus encouraged the hesitating executioner: “Strike without fear, for the bride does her Spouse an injury if she makes him wait.” At the age of thirteen (about 304 A.D.), this weak girl confounds the powerful of the Earth (Introit).
Over her tomb, in The Via Nomentana, was built the magnificent Basilica which still exists, and her name, towards the end of the 5th-Century A.D., was inscribed in The Canon of The Mass with those of five other female Martyrs (Second List). [Editor: Currently, there are seven female Saints mentioned in The Second List in The Canon of The Mass. They are: Felicitas; Perpetua; Agatha; Lucy; Agnes; Cecilia; Anastasia].
A Benedictine Convent is attached to the Basilica of Saint Agnes. On this Altar, every year on 21 January, The Abbot General of The Canons Regular of Lateran Blesses two Lambs. Then, they are brought to The Vatican, where The Pope Blesses them, again, and entrusts them to the Nuns of Saint Agnes's, who rear them until Good Friday, and weave, from their wool, the Palliums, the insignia of the Archbishops, and, also, by privilege, of a few Bishops.
The Pallium consists of a narrow band of White woollen cloth and is worn over the Chasuble.
Mass: Me exspectavérunt.
Although only loosely connected with the Catholic hagiography of St. Agnes, this mid-winter feast always reminds this reader of Keats’ mysterious romantic poem, “The Eve of St Agnes”: (it starts)
ReplyDelete“St. Agnes’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl for all his feathers was a-cold; The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in wooly fold…”
According to Keats’ medieval legend, the poem goes on to tell of a young woman who would dream of her beloved-to-be on S. Agnes’ Eve. The high-minded and motivated Porphyro, her beloved, does in fact manage to enter the castle and appear, and convinces her to elope (her parents disapprove of him), we hope to a long and happy matrimonial bliss with many children.
It is a beautiful, quaint, and imaginatively mysterious bit of poetry by one of the great craftsman of the English language—And admittedly only distantly connected with the cult of S.Agnes, but artistically beautiful nonetheless. -Comment by Dante P.
An outstanding contribution to this Article from Dante P. Many thanks, indeed. Zephyrinus's appreciation and understanding of John Keats (Poet) is now greatly enhanced. Thank You. Now, he supposes, Zephyrinus must check out Shelley and Byron !!!
DeletePlus, one wonders whether the beautiful term "The Eve of St. Agnes" would ever be heard nowdays. Sadly, probably not.
DeleteVery kind, Zephyrinus, but I depend on the scholars to decipher much of the meaning of the “high English poets.”
ReplyDeleteThe 19th C. English poets—Keats, Shelley, Byron, Robert Browning, others I shouldn’t be leaving out—and before them, of course, John Dryden, John Donne, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, of course William Blake—have an incomparable capacity to use words to create whole virtual “paintings.”
A lost art in our degraded language world today. -Comment by Dante P