Sant'Agnese, My Old Friend: I Am So Grateful to You.

I have loved Saint Agnes since I was in graduate school. I used to pray at her altar in the crypt of the National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC.

I really brought my searching heart there, to her, in those youthful days.

Also, I often went to Mass at St. Agnes parish in Arlington, Virginia. The parish has a shrine to her centered on the beautiful sculpture pictured on the left.

Agnes the Roman maiden became a very special friend to me. Here was this young girl whose heart was made heroic by the grace of Jesus. I was inspired by her.

"Saint Agnes raised her hands and prayed: 'Holy Father, hear me. I am coming to you whom I have loved, whom I have sought and always desired'" (antiphon for evening prayer, feast of St. Agnes).

Her total love for God still flows over the world seventeen hundred years after her death, drawing many people after on the path of consecrated life, and reaching out to countless others who have sought her help. She points us all in the direction of that unique relationship that God wills to have with each one of us.

When I lived in Rome, I found her presence to be almost palpable. She loves Rome and ordinary Romans very much, and they still love her too.

On this day 21 years ago (hard to believe it's been that long), I went to the feast day celebration at her Basilica on the Via Nomentana, and they opened the catacomb for people to freely visit the tomb. There, I felt moved to ask her to find me a wife, and I promised that if she did (and if the wife agreed) we would name our first daughter after her.

This was not in any way an attempt to "bribe" a saint, or a superstitious effort to conjure up her heavenly assistance. It was an exuberant gesture of the heart, born of the conviction that Agnes of Rome really, personally cared about me. She participated in Jesus's love for me -- the love that engenders a human reality that is destined to last forever: the communion of saints.

And St. Agnes did guide me and help me.

Two and a half years later, Eileen and I returned to Rome on our honeymoon and renewed the promise at her tomb. It was Eileen actually who advocated that we give our daughter the beautiful Italian form of the name, Agnese (pronounced On YAY zay).

Obviously, our first child was a boy, but needless to say John Paul's name was also inspired by the experience of Rome. Then, on December 21, 1998, a little girl was born, and a promise was fulfilled.

St. Agnes has been a special patroness of our family through the years. She continues to look after us, especially her "spiritual daughter," my own "little girl" who is now a young lady, my eldest daughter whom I've loved since before she was conceived. Hard to believe there was a time.

It's all so mysterious.

Agnese Janaro, age 16, from this past Christmas.

A New Kind of Hope

Yesterday was the great feast day of St. Agnes of Rome, a twelve year old girl of noble family at the beginning of the fourth century. She openly professed her Christianity and died a martyr, which is certainly extraordinary in itself for a young girl. But there is another reason why Agnes is regarded as one of the great saints of the Church.

Carved statue of St. Agnes from the shrine at St. Agnes Catholic church in Arlington, Virginia.
Agnese Janaro was baptized in this church over 14 years ago. Was it really that long ago?!

The earliest accounts praise St. Agnes's heroism and her purity. Clearly she made an astonishing impression on those who witnessed her martyrdom and communicated her story. The traditions that come down from various sources, and that are reflected in the ancient liturgical texts for her feast, indicate that even before her martyrdom this young girl had already given over her life to Jesus in a total dedication--one that would inspire and shape the personal identity of countless women over the next 1700 years.

Agnes had consecrated her virginity to Christ, not for a term of service like the vestals of pagan Rome, but forever. She sacrificed her natural vocation to be a wife and mother in this world and embraced a life of virginity as a witness that God alone was the love of her heart. Christ would be her true husband, and as His bride she would begin to reflect the glory of the life of the resurrection by remaining a virgin, by being entirely for God and God alone, offering Him her entire identity as a woman.

But this was not her idea. It was He Himself who had called her. In the liturgy, Agnes says, "My Lord Jesus Christ has espoused me with his ring; he has crowned me like a bride."

There is no disparagement of earthly marriage here. Marriage itself serves as a sign of what she found, and finds its own fulfillment in being this sign.

Rather, something happened to this twelve year old girl, Someone revealed to her a new kind of life, an eternal life that was already dawning in that moment of her heart, a life and a love worthy of all she had and all she was, worthy of following exclusively, a life greater than any human hope even as it fulfilled the promise hidden in all hopes, a life that could not be broken by all the power of the most powerful Empire the world had ever known, a life greater than the whole universe: eternal life in communion with the God who is Love.

"I am espoused to him whom the angels serve; sun and moon stand in wonder at his beauty."

It was this Beauty that made her utterly fearless. It was a Beauty that so filled this child that all the connivance and energetic cruelty of the powers of this earth could not prevail against her freedom, even when they dedicated all their deception and all there brute force to crushing that freedom.

They did not prevail.

Now, Agnes of Rome sings in glory, in the company of a multitude of women who followed as she did, into martyrdom, into the prayer and silence that seeks Him alone and in so doing lifts up the cry of the whole world, into an exclusive devotion to Christ wherever He is found, seeking to bring comfort to His heart, seeking Him as missionaries, teachers, care-givers, companions and servants of the poor, workers of mercy. St. Agnes leads the song that brings sweet breezes of consolation to the weary, and the strength of a new kind of hope for all of us in the face of every danger and every kind of violence:

"What I longed for, I now see; what I hoped for, I now possess; in heaven I am espoused to him whom on earth I loved with all my heart."