She Refused to Marry
September 24, 2020
Barcelona Cathedral Interior – St. Thecla – 1486
FROM the life of St. Thecla, (Feast day, Sept. 23) Butler’s Lives of the Saints:
“SHE was exposed naked in the amphitheatre, but clothed with her innocence; and this ignominy enhanced her glory and her crown. Her heart was undaunted, her holy soul exulted and triumphed with joy in the midst of lions, pards, and tigers: and she waited with a holy impatience the onset of those furious beasts, whose roarings filled even the spectators with terror. But the lions on a sudden forgetting their natural ferocity, and the rage of their hunger, walked gently up to the holy virgin, and laying themselves down at her feet, licked them as if it had been respectfully to kiss them: and, at length, notwithstanding all the keepers could do to excite and provoke them, they meekly retired like lambs, without hurting the servant of Christ.”
“We must live in the habitual practice of frequently denying our inclinations, and mortifying the senses. If we give our appetites full liberty in things that are not forbidden, they will quickly master us, and crave gratifications that are unlawful, with too great violence to be restrained by us. We shall not lose courage at the name of penance and mortification, as many are apt to do, if we look up at our eternal reward, and if we have before our eyes the austerities which the most tender virgins joyfully embraced for the sake of virtue.”
