Believing in the mercy of God doesn’t mean we continue to sin with the knowledge that God will forgive us for anything we do. It’s a belief that living in sin is simply not appealing because it separates us from God.
God’s mercy is enough to die for.
St Agnes of Rome, martyred in 304 AD, clearly believed this and remained inwardly joyful even when her devotion to God led her to the arena.
St Agnes, possibly of the Clodia Crescentiana family of ancient Rome, was from all reports a beautiful, graceful and gracious young girl. Her family was upper class, and so she had all the benefits that wealth could provide, and much to live for. Today, she’d be living in Mosman or Toorak or Dalkeith.
At the age of twelve or thirteen, Agnes became the object of several young Roman aristocrats’ yearning. Girls married younger then, so early romantic interest could quickly require an adult-level, life-long commitment.
According to her hagiographers, Procop, son of the local Roman prefect Sempronius, was refused by her. ‘Jesus Christ is my only spouse’, Agnes told him. His male pride affronted and his male desire deflated, Procop turned to his father. Sempronius first offered enticements to Agnes to submit to his son’s advances. To be desired as a wife by the Roman governor’s son would be any other young Roman girl’s dream come true!
But St Agnes was not like other Roman girls. Hers was a strong sense of the saving mercy of God through Jesus Christ, and her response to it was to devote herself to God’s will, which did not include her being a kept wife in the household of a pagan lord.
When she repeated her intention to devote her life to God, Sempronius realised she was from the hated sect known as ‘Christians’ and he began to harass and torture her. In one beautiful version of her story, during one assault on her Procop died but was revived when Agnes prayed to God for mercy for him, her persecutor. Agnes could have received Roman mercy if she relented, but she persevered, so was taken to the arena and executed.
It sounds melodramatic; in Australia, we aren’t faced with a life-or-death choice because of our faith. Nonetheless we know of places in the world right now where devotion to a different God is still considered an affront, and the believers are condemned to a similar fate.
If we consider St Agnes’ story in plain human terms, we find on one side sexual jealousy, indignation, resentment, pride, fury, abuse of power and ultimately, mercilessness; human nature doing what human nature, left to its own devices, revels in.
In Agnes, however, we see an affecting sense of meekness, peace, and quiet assurance, a reliance on Jesus, the source of spiritual mercy – and its reward, salvation.
But here’s the thing: Agnes was offered a chance for mercy by an Earthly authority with the power to grant it. If she had just ‘gone along’ with the boy and renounced Christ, she would have saved her life. But, like Christ before Pilate, she already knew the far greater power of God, and this rendered the Roman prefect’s mercy completely and utterly worthless.
St Agnes
4th century Rome
Feast day: 21 January
Patron saint: Girls
Peter Fleming is the author of Would I Like Jesus? (Paulist Press 2015).