Saint Lucy of Syracuse

Yet before she became a figure of poetry and art, Lucy was a real person of flesh and blood who lived and shed her blood in witness to Christ in Syracuse — a beautiful port city on the island of Sicily in southern Italy, once one of the most famous ancient Greek cities of the Mediterranean, with temples and stone theaters still standing today. She belonged to the generation of witnesses of the early Church, who gave up their young lives to keep the flame of faith alive under the brutal persecution of the emperor Diocletian.

As a young girl, moved by God’s grace, Lucy secretly promised to give her whole life to Christ in virginity. Meanwhile her mother, Eutychia — out of love for her fatherless daughter and wanting to secure her future — arranged to betroth her to a wealthy young nobleman who was a pagan. Mother and daughter loved each other dearly, but did not yet see the future in the same way.

Then illness struck the family. Eutychia suffered from a dangerous hemorrhage that lasted four years. Though she spent a great deal of money on treatment from famous physicians, her illness was beyond cure, and her body wasted away day by day.

When all hope seemed gone, Lucy gently persuaded her mother to make a pilgrimage with her to the nearby city of Catania, to the tomb of Saint Agatha, the famous virgin martyr who had died for her faith a few decades earlier.

Back in Syracuse, Lucy asked her mother’s permission to sell her whole precious dowry, with her gold, silver and jewels, and distribute everything to the poor, the widows and the orphans of the city. Wealth once set aside to secure the family’s future became bread broken for the poorest of the poor.

Ironically, Lucy’s very generosity — which ought to have been praised — became the excuse that drove her to her death. People who do good in any age may run into the same paradox: not everyone who sees an act of generosity knows how to value it; some see only the gain that has been taken from them.

At that time, the persecuting edicts of the emperor Diocletian were being enforced harshly. The prefect had Lucy arrested at once and brought before the court.

At first, the judge tried to coax her with sweet words into offering incense to the gods and returning to a comfortable noble life. But Lucy answered firmly:

“The pure sacrifice most pleasing to God is to visit and help the poor and widows in their distress. I have given all my material wealth to God, and now I am ready to offer my very self as a living sacrifice to Him!”

The prefect angrily told her she must obey the emperor’s decree. Lucy calmly replied:

“You keep the laws of earthly emperors, but I must keep the law of the living God. You fear mortal kings, but I fear God alone, the Lord of life and death!”

Seeing that he could not break the young woman’s will with threats, the judge gave a vile order: he sent soldiers to drag her to a filthy brothel to be dishonored by lecherous men, to defile the virgin’s purity.

Yet her story tells that the power of the Holy Spirit protected her in a wonderful way: Lucy’s body suddenly became as immovable as a massive rock, so that dozens of soldiers pulling together could not move her even an inch. They even tied ropes to her and harnessed teams of oxen, and still she stood unmoved, praying in peace.

From that image, later popular legends grew up telling that the judge ordered her eyes gouged out, or that she herself plucked out her eyes and sent them to her suitor so he would no longer be infatuated with her beauty, and that God then gave her a new and more beautiful pair of eyes. Though these details are not in the earliest historical texts, the symbol of the eyes carries a real meaning: the name Lucy comes from the Latin word Lux, meaning “Light”.

From that symbol, Saint Lucy has been honored for generations as the patron of those with eye diseases, the blind and eye doctors. The sick turn to her to ask for the grace of bodily sight, but above all for the grace of clear eyes of the soul, always able to recognize God’s will amid the dark nights of life.

Saint Lucy is named in Eucharistic Prayer I, the Roman Canon. The Church celebrates her on December 13 each year; in the old Julian calendar that date fell on the longest nights of winter, which makes her candle all the more meaningful in the darkness.