Weakness, Paul, and Agnes

In the middle of a health challenge, it has been a blessing and a consolation this morning to remember Saint Agnes and to meditate on a few scripture passages.

I often read the readings from Vigils in Benedictine Daily Prayer. This morning I was surprised by this passage from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (9:22):

“To the weak I became weak, so that I may win the weak.”

As if this was not enough, the first of the Mass readings for the feast of Saint Agnes includes these words of Saint Paul (1 Corinthians 1:27):

“God has chosen … to weak of this world to put the strong to shame.”

It gets more complicated. The short reading for Morning Prayer is, again from Paul, Romans 12:16)

“Put away ambitious thoughts and associate with those who are lowly.”

And the prayer for the Mass of Saint Agnes reads:

“Almighty ever-living God, who choose what is weak in the world to confound the strong…”

I have been wondering if God might be calling me for something more. I am, after all 75 years old, and I’m feeling a call for “more” – the Ignatian “magis.”

Is embracing weakness – as a force for good – part of this call?

The subversive power of virginity

Today is the feast of St. Agnes, a virgin–martyr who was killed at the age of thirteen about the year 304.

The opening prayer of the liturgy notes that God chooses the weak in the world to confound the strong, a belief deeply embedded in the theology of the incarnation and in the reflections of St. Paul in his letter to Philippians (chapter 2) and throughout his second letter to the Corinthians, where he notes:

 “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.”(2 Cor 11:30)

In his reflection of Saint Agnes in  All Saints, Robert Ellsberg reveals the subversive power of this virgin martyr:

In the story of Agnes, however, the opposition is not between sex and virginity. The conflict is between a young woman’s power in Christ to define her own identity versus a patriarchal culture’s claim to identify her in terms of her sexuality. According to the view shared by her “suitors” and the state, if she would not be one man’s wife, she might as well be every man’s whore. Failing these options, she might as well be dead. Agnes did not choose death. She chose not to worship the gods of her culture. The God she worshiped sets an altogether different value on her body, her identity, and her human worth. Espoused to God, she was beyond the power of any man to “have his way with her.” “Virgin” in this case is another way of saying Free Woman.

May this free woman, Agnes, move us all to worship not a God of power and violence, but a good of weakness and love.

---

I will return to this theme later, but I have to leave early this morning for the celebration of the closing of the centennial year of our diocese of Santa Rosa de Lima.

Saint Agnes the Virgin

Do not act the harlot!
1 Corinthians 6: 13

Last Sunday’s second reading (1 Corinthians 6: 13-20) began with a very strong statement in the Spanish translation I heard:

El cuerpo no es para fornicar, sino para server al Señor…
The body is not for fornication but for serving the Lord…

The version used in the US was a little less strong:

The body is not for immorality, but for the Lord…

Yet the verb translated as fornication or immorality comes from the Greek word for harlot and so a more pointed translation might be

The body is not for prostitution, for harlotry, but for the Lord.

This reading came to mind this morning as I read the entry on Saint Agnes in Robert Ellsberg’s All Saints: Daily Reflection on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time.

Today is the feast of the youthful virgin and martyr Agnes. According to the early accounts, she was a twelve year old who refused offers of marriage because she had consecrated her virginity to Christ.

She was accused as a Christian by her suitors. She refused to deny Christ and was at first sentenced to a house of prostitution where no one dared touch her. The infuriated magistrate then had her beheaded.

The story of Saint Agnes has been read as a call for virginity and some have seen it as a denigration of the body and sexuality. But I think Robert Ellsberg’s commentary offers an alternative and even more challenging interpretation of her life:

In the story of Agnes … the opposition is not between sex and virginity. The conflict is between a young woman’s power in Christ to define her own identity versus a patriarchal culture’s claim to identify her in terms of her sexuality. According to the view shared by her “suitors” and the state, if she would not be one man’s wife, she might as well be every man’s whore. Failing these options, she might as well be dead. Agnes did no choose death. She chose not to worship the gods of her culture. The God she worshipped sets an altogether different value on her body, her identity, and her human worth. Espoused to God, she was beyond the power of any man to “have his way with her.” “Virgin” in this case is another way of saying Free Woman.

May this example of Agnes help us all remember that, as St. Paul put it, “you are not your own” and that we are called to “glorify God in your body.”

That’s real chastity!