AGRIPPINA OF ROME

July 6 (June 23) The Church honors the memory of the holy martyr Agrippina. The saint was one of the many virgins dedicated to God, priceless for the first Christian centuries, who suffered for their faith in Christ during the era of Roman pagan persecution. Among them are Ekaterina, Barbara, Marina, Dorothea, Tatiana, Agatha and many, many others. “They now abide before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in His temple, and He who sits on the throne will dwell in them,” says the Apocalypse about such witnesses of faith (Rev. 7:17).

Saint Agrippina was once highly revered by the Church. She was commemorated in Rome, where she came from and where she suffered for Christ. She was revered in Sicily, where soon after her death her venerable remains were transferred. Her memory was celebrated in Constantinople, where, according to some sources, several centuries later her relics ended up, saved in this way after the invasion of the Italian islands by Arab troops. Now she is one of the forgotten saints.

The very ecumenical nature of the veneration of the great ancient young martyr and virgin takes us back to a time when universality, or better yet, “globalization” was reflected in the search for holiness. When the whole world, in many ways identical then to the Universal Church, was waiting and thirsting for holiness, interrupting and breaking through the killing chronological time. The defenseless holiness of the virgins resisted the sword of the persecutors, frightened the Caesars, and exposed the demons to mockery. Holiness is not acquired by effort, so the thirst for holiness is an open expectation.

According to her life, Agrippina dedicated herself to God at a young age. Being the daughter of wealthy parents, she could perform acts of charity and mercy. On the day which now corresponds to the recollection of her memory, she suffered for Christ under Emperor Valerian I (253–260). Having undergone many tortures, the body of the saint was laid where the Basilica of St. Paul the Apostle now stands. According to ancient legend, the body of the Supreme Apostle was first laid there by the first Christians. Agrippina was fifteen years old at the time of her suffering.

Having endured many tortures, she was beheaded with a sword. The saint’s body was laid where the Basilica of St. Paul the Apostle now stands. According to ancient belief, the body of the Apostle was first laid there by the first Christians. At the time of her suffering Agrippina was fifteen years old.

The subsequent tradition connects the discovery of the relics of the martyr, and, most importantly, her deep veneration with the great Sicilian saint Gregory of Agrigento (603–680) and his contemporary Severin, the bishop of the ancient see of the city of Catania, glorified by the exploits of Saints Savin, Cyril and Leo.

The very translation of the saint’s relics to Sicily was carried out shortly after her birthday—this is what the ancient Christians called the day of the death of the martyrs—by the martyr’s sister named Bassa, and the young women Paula and Agathonica on May 17, 263. The saint’s body was placed in a cave in the small village of Mineo near Sicilian Catania. Previously, this cave served as a source of fear among the pagans, for it was the abode of a legion of demons. Thus, the great little Agrippina again became a sign of the approaching Waiting for the Coming of the Lord, when all evil will be defeated forever (cf. Rev. 20:14). The genuine suffering of the ancient martyrs was characterized by an overwhelming paschality.

The ancient Church saw virgins dedicating their virginity to God as a special, incomparable calling. Such dedication, that is, the eternal preservation of female virginity, in the perception of the people of that time, meant that there is one single place on earth where in the universal “reign of change”, which is the earth, nothing changes in the name of the Lord Jesus. Here it is very important to be able to distance ourselves from ourselves, from our own era and its inherent understanding, in order to understand that the biblical, apostolic, ancient Christian consciousness was able to see in the virginity of virgins a suspension of time, a true collapse of chronology, a cessation, let us remember both St. Augustine and the thinker Sigmund Freud, of “the law of reproduction and destruction that rules the Universe.”

In other words, inspired by biblical texts, early Christianity did not want, and could not, see in the virginity of virgins dedicated to God simply asceticism aimed at mortification of the flesh or a conscious refusal to bear children. In this, in particular, it differed from Gnosticism or Manichaeism, which despised and destroyed life, the world and the flesh. “I will destroy those who destroy the earth,” the Lord Himself warns against this in the Apocalypse (Rev. 11:18).

So, the virginity of virgins, and here the peculiarity and uniqueness of the female vocation in the eyes of the Ancient Church, became and was a place of immutability, a topos of reflecting the presence of the One Who, being above the laws of time and being, became human, entered time, and, in the words of Augustine, “Himself became time to free us from time”.

“The Lord is near, do not worry about anything,” - inspired by these words of Paul (Phil. 4:5-6), all Christians, and, most importantly, Christian women of that time in their preaching power, not only in word and deed, but also in the inaction of dedication themselves to God, were sealed with the apostolic grace.

“The Lord is near, do not worry about anything,” - inspired by these words of Paul (Phil. 4:5-6), Christians, and, most importantly, Christian women of that time in their preaching power, not only in word and deed, but also in the inaction of dedication themselves to God, were sealed with the apostolic gift. In this sense, they were truly equal to the Apostles and became a visible explanation of why the Church in the Ancient Symbols always called itself Apostolic. They were able to show the world the onset of the messianic time, to indicate that the Second Coming, or, more correctly, the Return of the Lord is not just close, but is already “here, at the door” (Matt. 24:33).