Dusty Feasts

Official feasts used to be an important part of the human community. People would gather together to remember something sacred, express their faith and hope for the future, and / or just be together formally, recognizing each other as being part of a shared community. Few things express a desire for shared companionship and social intimacy more than dining together. Sadly, the gathering together for feasting is increasingly a relic of the past – at least here in the West.

It need not be so! Today we will remember the ancient feasts.

The Feast Day of St. Lucy

The Feast Day of St. Lucy is a Christian religious celebrate of Lucy, a Christian martyr from the early 4th century, who is now recognized as a patron saint for the blind and visually impaired. Because her name means “light” and her feast day had at one time coincided with the shortest day of the year prior to calendar reforms, it is now widely celebrated as a festival of light. Falling within the Advent season, Saint Lucy’s Day is viewed as a precursor of Christmastide.

Who is St. Lucy?

Lucia of Syracuse (c. 283 – 304 AD), also called Saint Lucia (Latin: Sancta Lucia) and better known as Saint Lucy, was a Roman Christian martyr who died during the Diocletianic Persecution. She is venerated as a saint in Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. She is one of eight women (including the Virgin Mary) explicitly commemorated by Catholics in the Canon of the Mass. Her traditional feast day, known in Europe as Saint Lucy’s Day, is observed by Western Christians on 13 December. Lucia of Syracuse was honored in the Middle Ages and remained a well-known saint in early modern England. She is one of the best known virgin martyrs, along with Agatha of Sicily, Agnes of Rome, Cecilia of Rome, and Catherine of Alexandria.

Sources

The oldest record of her story comes from the fifth-century Acts of the Martyrs. The single fact upon which various accounts agree is that a disappointed suitor accused Lucy of being a Christian, and she was executed in Syracuse, Sicily, in 304 AD, during the Diocletianic Persecution. Her veneration spread to Rome, and by the sixth century to the whole Church. The oldest archaeological evidence comes from the Greek inscriptions from the Catacombs of St. John in Syracuse. Jacobus de Voragine‘s Legenda Aurea was the most widely read version of the Lucy legend in the Middle Ages. In medieval accounts, Saint Lucy’s eyes were gouged out prior to her execution. The most ancient archaeological traces attributable to the cult of Saint Lucia have been brought back to Sicily, particularly in Syracuse, and are preserved in the archaeological museums of the city.

Life

All the details of her life are the conventional ones associated with female martyrs of the early fourth century. John Henry Blunt views her story as a Christian romance similar to the Acts of other virgin martyrs.

According to the traditional story, Lucy was born to rich and noble parents in 283. Her father was of Roman origin, but died when she was five years old, leaving Lucy and her mother without a protective guardian. Her mother’s name, Eutychia, seems to indicate that she came from a Greek background.

Like many of the early martyrs, Lucy had consecrated her virginity to God, and she hoped to distribute her dowry to the poor. However, Eutychia, not knowing of Lucy’s promise, and suffering from a bleeding disorder, feared for Lucy’s future. She arranged Lucy’s marriage to a young man of a wealthy pagan family.

Saint Agatha had been martyred 52 years before during the Decian persecution. Her shrine at Catania, less than 50 miles (80 km) from Syracuse, attracted a number of pilgrims; many miracles were reported to have happened through her intercession. Eutychia was persuaded to make a pilgrimage to Catania, in hopes of a cure. While there, St. Agatha came to Lucy in a dream and told her that because of her faith, her mother would be cured and that Lucy would be the glory of Syracuse, as she was of Catania. With her mother cured, Lucy took the opportunity to persuade her mother to allow her to distribute a great part of her riches among the poor.

Eutychia suggested that the sums would make a good bequest, but Lucy countered, “…whatever you give away at death for the Lord’s sake you give because you cannot take it with you. Give now to the true Savior, while you are healthy, whatever you intended to give away at your death.”

News that the patrimony and jewels were being distributed came to Lucy’s betrothed, who denounced her to Paschasius, the Governor of Syracuse. Paschasius ordered her to burn a sacrifice to the emperor’s image. When she refused, Paschasius sentenced her to be defiled in a brothel.

The Christian tradition states that when the guards came to take her away, they could not move her even when they hitched her to a team of oxen. Bundles of wood were then heaped about her and set on fire, but would not burn. Finally, she met her death by the sword thrust into her throat.

Absent in the early narratives and traditions, at least until the fifteenth century, is the story of Lucia tortured by eye-gouging. According to later accounts, before she died, she foretold the punishment of Paschasius and the speedy end of the persecution, adding that Diocletian would reign no more and Maximian would meet his end. This so angered Paschasius that he ordered the guards to remove her eyes. Another version has Lucy taking her own eyes out in order to discourage a persistent suitor who admired them. When her body was prepared for burial in the family mausoleum it was discovered that her eyes had been miraculously restored. This is one of the reasons that Lucy is the patron saint of those with eye illnesses.

Veneration

The earliest evidence of Lucy’s veneration is the grave stele of Euskia, which was discovered in the catacombs of Syracuse, Sicily and is now housed in the Museo archeologico regionale Paolo Orsi. Euskia was a 25-year-old woman who died on St Lucy’s Day in the late 300s or early 400s. By the sixth century, her story was sufficiently widespread that she appears in the procession of virgins in the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna and in the Sacramentary of Pope Gregory I. She is also commemorated in the ancient Roman Martyrology. St. Aldhelm (English, died in 709) and later the Venerable Bede (English, died in 735) attest that her popularity had already spread to England, where her festival was kept in England until the Protestant Reformation, as a holy day of the second rank in which no work but tillage or the like was allowed.

Lucy is honored in the Catholic Church, in the Church of England, in the Episcopal Church, and in the Lutheran Church on 13 December.

The monk Sigebert of Gembloux (1030–1112) wrote a mid-eleventh-century passio, to support a local cult of Lucy at Metz.

The General Roman Calendar formerly had a commemoration of Saints Lucy and Geminianus on 16 September. This was removed in 1969, as a duplication of the feast of her dies natalis on 13 December and because the Geminianus in question, mentioned in the Passio of Saint Lucy, seems to be a fictitious figure, unrelated to the Geminianus whose feast is on 31 January.

Relics

Sigebert of Gembloux, in his sermo de Sancta Lucia, chronicled that her body lay undisturbed in Sicily for 400 years, before Faroald II, Duke of Spoleto, captured the island and transferred the body to Corfinium in the Abruzzo, Italy. From there it was removed by the Emperor Otho I in 972 to Metz and deposited in the church of St. Vincent. It was from this shrine that an arm of the saint was taken to the monastery of Luitburg in the Diocese of Speyer – an incident celebrated by Sigebert in verse.

The subsequent history of the relics is not clear. According to Umberto Benigni, Stephen II (768) sent the relics of St. Lucy to Constantinople for safety against the Saracen incursions. On their capture of Constantinople in 1204, the French found some relics attributed to Saint Lucy in the city, and Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice, secured them for the monastery of St. George at Venice. In 1513 the Venetians presented to Louis XII of France the saint’s head, which he deposited in the cathedral church of Bourges. Another account, however, states that the head was brought to Bourges from Rome, where it had been transferred during the time when the relics rested in Corfinium.

Parts of the body are present in Sicily in particular in Syracuse, which has preserved them from antiquity. The remainder of the relics remain in Venice: they were transferred to the church of San Geremia when the church of Santa Lucia was demolished in 1861 to make way for the new railway terminus. A century later, on 7 November 1981, thieves stole all her bones, except her head. Police recovered them five weeks later, on her feast day. Other parts of the corpse have found their way to Rome, Naples, Verona, Lisbon, Milan, as well as Germany and France.

Patronage

Lucy’s Latin name Lucia shares a root (luc-) with the Latin word for light, lux. A number of traditions incorporate symbolic meaning of St. Lucy as the bearer of light in the darkness of winter, her feast day being 13 December. Because some versions of her story relate that her eyes were removed, either by herself or by her persecutors, she is the patroness saint of the blind.

She is also the patron saint of ophthalmologists, authors, cutlers, glaziers, laborers, martyrs, peasants, saddlers, salesmen, stained glass workers, photogrammetry, and of Perugia, Italy. She is invoked against hemorrhages, dysentery, diseases of the eye, and throat infections.

St. Lucy is the patroness of Syracuse in Sicily, Italy. At the Piazza Duomo in Syracuse, the church of Santa Lucia alla Badia used to house the painting Burial of St. Lucy by Caravaggio. But it is now housed in the church of Santa Lucia al Sepolcro in Syracuse. She is also the patron saint of the coastal town of Olón, Ecuador, which celebrates with a week-long festival culminating on the feast day 13 December. She is also the patron saint of the town of Guane, Santander, Colombia.

The Caribbean island of Saint Lucia, one of the Windward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, is named after her.

What do you eat for the Feast Day of St. Lucy?

As this is an old and popular Saint Day, there are numerous traditions associated with St. Lucy’s Day. These feast day foods include, but are not limited, to Saffron bread, Ginger biscuits, Casarecce, Roasted meats, and light sweets. However, one traditional feast day food includes her name, so I am going to choose that one.

St. Lucy’s Crown

Ingredients

Coffee Cake

• 1/16 to 1/8 teaspoon crushed saffron or 2 or 3 drops yellow food color
• 1/2 cup warm milk (105°F to 115°F)
• 2 packages regular or fast-acting dry yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water (105°F to 115°F)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 4 1/2 to 5 cups Gold Medal™ Better for Bread™ bread flour or Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup chopped citron or lemon peel
• 1/4 cup chopped blanched almonds
• 1 tablespoon grated lemon peel

Glaze

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 to 2 tablespoons milk or water

Garnish, if desired

• Green and red candied cherries

Instructions

• Step 1Stir saffron into warm milk. In large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Stir in saffron-milk mixture, granulated sugar, salt, eggs, butter and 2 1/2 cups of the flour. Beat with spoon until smooth. Stir in citron, almonds, lemon peel and enough remaining flour to make dough easy to handle.
• Step 2Place dough on lightly floured surface. Knead about 10 minutes or until smooth and springy. Grease large bowl with shortening. Place dough in bowl, turning dough to grease all sides. Cover; let rise in warm place about 1 hour 30 minutes or until double in size. (Dough is ready if indentation remains when touched.)
• Step 3Grease 2 cookie sheets with shortening or cooking spray. Gently push fist into dough to deflate. Cut off one-third of dough for top braid and reserve. Divide remaining dough into 3 equal parts; roll each part into 25-inch rope. Place ropes close together on cookie sheet. Braid ropes loosely; shape into circle and pinch ends to seal.
• Step 4Divide reserved dough into 3 equal parts; roll each part into 16-inch rope. Place ropes close together on second cookie sheet. Braid ropes loosely; shape into circle and pinch ends to seal. Cover both braids; let rise in warm place about 45 minutes or until double in size.
• Step 5Heat oven to 375°F. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from cookie sheets to wire rack. Cool completely, about 1 hour.
• Step 6In small bowl, mix glaze ingredients with spoon until smooth and thin enough to drizzle. Drizzle glaze over both braids. Make holes for 5 candles in small braid. Place small braid on large braid. Garnish with cherries. Insert candles.

What is a prayer to say for the Feast Day of St. Lucy?

via catholicfaithstore.com

Prayer to Saint Lucy

Saint Lucy,
whose beautiful name signifies light, 
by the light of faith which
God bestowed upon you
increase and preserve His
light in my soul
so that I may avoid evil and
be zealous in the performance 
of good works, 
and detest nothing so much as
the blindness and the darkness
of evil and sin. 

Obtain for me, by your
intercession with God
perfect vision for my bodily eyes
and the grace to use them for God’s 
greater honor and glory
and the salvation of souls.
St. Lucy, virgin and martyr
hear my prayers and obtain my petitions. 

Amen.

When is the Feast Day of St. Lucy celebrated?

St. Lucy’s Day is celebrated annually on 13 December.

I hope all who celebrate have a wonderful day!