Today November 22

I kind of like how I skirted the issue of the Presentation of Mary yesterday. I mean, all we have of it is from apocrypha which satisfies detail-starved readers at the price of truth and reliability. But that doesn't mean it DIDN'T happen. I call to mind my son's Thai friend whose Buddhist grandmother shaved her head and entered the convent late in life. When I marveled at that, the girl said that dedication to the temple is a very fluid and often temporary thing. One lives in the world and then enters religious life, or vice versa, easily. But it still is a huge deal -- her grandmother shaved her head, renounced all her possessions and donned the orange robe. Also, many monks serve and receive training and then leave to marry and start families. Perhaps Our Lady's Temple duty was like that.

Anyway, today's saint is the lovely St. Cecilia, aka Cecily, (died 230), the patroness of music. And I think she is patron in three ways. Many could be said to sing to God, but she, when she was compelled to submit to an arranged marriage, "sang in her heart to the Lord alone" - Acts of St. Cecilia. I used to think that was a pretty weak argument for making her patroness of all music! But as I've gotten older, I realize that that's the most important part of music: that which is in your heart. The sincere, the blessed, the bubbling-up music of the heart is the best. And this is what poor Cecilia had. Okay, here are the other two ways (related in many respects.) As a beautiful, educated, and above all, refined, daughter of Roman nobles, she KNEW music. She was trained in music, she performed it, she was surrounded by it. And finally, it is said she assiduously sang the divine praises and according to her Acts, she often joined instrumental music with vocal. All musicians, whether choristers or players or composers, can take her as patroness and this as their feast day.

Cecilia's life was not one of unmitigated tragedy. She was forced into marriage, yes, but she managed to convince her husband, Valerian, to live with her in a completely continent marriage! No easy task -- she was beautiful, he was young, they both had needs. She even convinced him that Christianity was the right religion. Oh, my. But in this she had the advantage of the performance of a miracle. Valerian asked to see this protecting angel she kept referring to. Upon proper cleansing and prayer, he was given the great grace of beholding her guardian angel. (Interestingly, her Acts describe him as appearing like an old man in garments white as snow and holding a book of gold. He wasn't silent, either. He read from the book: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all, who is above all and through all and in all of us." Valerian declared his submission to the truth of this Faith -- one wonders how much of his assent was just astonishment and awe -- and was baptized.) Valerian and his brother, Tiburtius, who was also converted by Cecilia, were put to death as Christians. Cecilia retrieved and buried their bodies properly and for this "crime" was given the choice of sacrificing to the gods or death. She bravely chose death and the magistrates, reluctant to cruelly behead such a lovely and gracious girl, sentenced her to be suffocated to death in the steam-room in her parents' basement. She remained a whole day and a night in the super-heated steam without harm. Finally a headsman was dispatched to behead her there. Losing his nerve, he merely brutally hacked her neck the requisite three times and then fled. She lingered three days and nights, her head half severed. She couldn't talk, but she lay on her side with her fingers extended three on one hand and one on the other, in mute testimony to her belief in the Trinity of the the One God. How do we know this?

A remarkable grace occurred many years after her death and removal from the catacomb of St. Callistus: when her body was exhumed by Cardinal Sfondrato and in the presence of many witnesses, it was found to be perfectly preserved, right down to the neck wounds and the position of her hands. She was lying on her side, her body modestly draped; a great sculptor, Stefano Maderno, executed an exact replica of the body in marble, which may be found still today above the high altar of the Basilica of St. Cecilia in Rome. St. Cecilia, pray for us.