The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



Commemoration of St. Lucy of Syracuse, December 13, 2011, Tennessee Laymen, Christ Church Cathedral, Nashville

“And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb’” (Rev. 19:9a).

The Episcopal Church cannot decide about St. Lucy of Syracuse, the saint whose feast we celebrate today. In my fifty or so years as a baptized Christian, she has been added to our calendar for trial usage and removed several times. We’ve tried her out and then thought better of it and taken her name off again. Right now she’s back on, though don’t hold your breath. I’m not exactly sure why she keeps disappearing from our calendar, though I suspect it has something to do with the perceived uncertainty of the historical record about her life and witness.

What I am sure of is why she keeps re-appearing. Lucy has cultural heft, in both Italy (she is Sicilian, after all) and Scandinavia, where the coincidence of her name with the Latin root word for “light” has made her day a popular one for winter celebrations centered on light. As Garrison Keillor regularly reminds us (A Prairie Home Companion) that’s pretty important for “Norwegian bachelor farmers,” famously dour and light-deprived. The popular Neapolitan song, “Santa Lucia” (which isn’t really about the saint at all) was recorded by both Enrico Caruso and Elvis Presley, and if that isn’t cultural heft I don’t know what is. Other saints would give their eyeteeth for that kind of exposure.

So briefly, the tradition about St. Lucy: a young woman of patrician family from Syracuse in Sicily, put to death in the time of the persecution under the Roman Emperor Diocletian. As the story goes, Lucy spurned her pagan suitor, who then turned her in to the authorities. It’s a gutsy story, and some of the legendary bits of it are pretty colorful: I’ll spare you. Suffice to say that Lucy was a robust and fearless young Sicilian woman, like Vito Corleone’s mother in the flashback to his early life in the movie The Godfather II, another Sicilian who was not at all worried about taking on unjust authorities. (You see, with mention of The Godfather this really is a “guy” sermon after all, even if we are celebrating St. Lucy’s day.)

What’s interesting to me is how Lucy’s story really took off with the later rise of Christian monasticism, which at about the time of her martyrdom began to challenge Christians to take seriously Jesus’ call to turn away from the world and to follow him. The nature of the Christian witness was changing, as the focus shifted from martyrdom as the preeminent form of Christian witness, to the vowed monastic life. The Church was becoming increasingly comfortable and compromised as the Roman authorities themselves became Christians, and the radical call to follow Jesus became eclipsed by the claims of Roman citizenship. As a result many serious Christians refused these compromises and headed away from the settled lands of Roman civilization into the desert, turning away from the demands of clan and family, marriage and property, in order to re-discover the claim of Jesus upon the whole of their lives.

So you see how Lucy’s rejection of her suitor powerfully appealed to the Christian imagination of the time. It was not love she was rejecting but the whole entangling apparatus of pagan civilization. Lucy stood as a symbol of another love, of Christ himself. There was a renewed sense in the fourth century that Christians were called to “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9a), as our first reading from Revelation puts it; called to espouse themselves first and foremost to their bridegroom Christ. It was a vital witness at a crucial time. Lucy provided part of the pattern, in her willingness not simply to offer her life as a martyr but to dedicate the living of her life to God.

Christians live at that point of tension between this age and the age to come, the kingdom of God whose coming we recall and make present at Advent, and for which we continue to pray expectantly. We are called to live in the world but to not be of it; to be the stewards but not the possessors of our lives and of our goods. St. Lucy’s witness is an apt one for our own time, because in the midst of many possessions we are more likely to be possessed by them than they by us. It’s an apt witness as well because our culture has its own entangling apparatus that we need to be freed from. How can we re-discover the claim of Christ upon the whole of our lives and the living of them? The pattern of the third century or the fourth century won’t be precisely our pattern, though we surely have lots to learn from our forebears in the Faith.

In the meantime between now and then, in this time of tension between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God where we will share in the marriage supper of the Lamb, we are given grace so that here and now we might receive the foretaste of that heavenly banquet. We are invited to the Eucharist, to share in a liturgy that gives us a glimpse into the things of heaven This liturgy not only gives us that glimpse, but it also advances the cause, giving us grace so that we can be the People of God we are called to be. This wedding banquet unites us to Christ and empowers us to be the Church, the Body of Christ present in the world. It is the same for us as it was for St. Lucy. Happy are those who are called to this supper!

- The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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