Saint Cecilia

In this world of music offered to God, Saint Cecilia holds a special place. She is painted seated at an organ, and honored as the patron of sacred music.

Yet the story of her life begins with a song that needed no keyboard or earthly instrument at all: the silent song of a heart turned wholly to God while all the noise around it tried to pull it another way.

Yet the Christian community’s devotion to her has left deep and clear traces. By the end of the fifth century, a basilica bearing Saint Cecilia’s name stood in the old Trastevere quarter of Rome, built right on the foundations of her family’s former house. Archaeological excavations beneath the church today still reveal the remains of an ancient Roman house from the second century before Christ, a steam bath, and even a small altar to the goddess Minerva from that same house: silent layers of brick and stone that tell her story more clearly than any book. The memory of her tomb in the cemetery of Callistus was also kept by the faithful through all the upheavals of the centuries.

An account of her martyrdom handed down from the fifth century has given later generations a full and moving story of her life. Though written in the devotional style of its day, it has kept intact her ideal of consecration and her steadfast witness as a martyr.

It is worth noting that this ancient Roman house, where Cecilia would later spend the last hours of her life, was no poor, makeshift dwelling, but a fine residence in the heart of an aristocratic quarter. To give up everything such wealth could offer and keep only one thing, faithfulness to Christ, shows a rare inner freedom in Cecilia: not the freedom of someone with nothing to lose, but of someone who had weighed it all and knew for certain what was worth keeping.

But according to the social custom of the time, her parents arranged, without consulting her, to marry her to Valerian, a wealthy, virtuous young pagan nobleman.

The wedding day was lavish and splendid. Lamps and candles blazed, there was a great banquet, and trumpets and strings rang out merrily through the palace.

That line is why the Church honors her as patron of music. Cecilia’s song was not a performance for the wedding guests. It was the song of a praying heart. In a setting where everyone around her thought she belonged entirely to the world, her heart stayed turned toward God.

On the wedding night, when the two were alone, Cecilia bravely opened her heart to her young husband. She spoke to Valerian about the Christian faith, about her vow to give herself to God, and about an angel of the Lord who guarded her purity every day. She urged him to go and see Bishop Urban, who was hiding in the catacombs, to learn about the faith.

Furious, the judge ordered her shut in a sealed steam bath, with a great fire lit beneath it to suffocate her with smoke and heat. It may well have been the same steam bath whose remains archaeologists later found beneath the church that bears her name. But after a whole day and night had passed, they opened the door and were astonished to find her completely unharmed, as if a cool breeze had been blowing over her.

The very next year, 1600, the young sculptor Stefano Maderno, who had witnessed the scene, carved a white marble statue showing her exactly as she lay. It became one of the first masterpieces of the Baroque sculpture about to blossom in Rome, and today, beneath the high altar, it still draws millions of pilgrims to prayer.

The Church celebrates Saint Cecilia on November 22 each year. Her name is also among the saints named in Eucharistic Prayer I, the Roman Canon.