Cecilia, martyr

Hosea 2:16-17,21-22; Ps 45 Listen to me daughter, see and bend you ear; Mt 25:1-13


Victor Frankl, a psychologist and a Holocaust survivor, in his book as he reflects on life in the prison camps during World War II, A man's Search for Meaning, speaks about the will to live. He noticed that when the men that were with him had no reason to live and nothing to hope in they quickly gave up and died, even committing suicide. But those who had hope, those who clung to the hope of being reunited with their families or being rescued, these were the ones who fought to survive.

He sums his experience up with one little line, "when we have a why to live, we can find a how to love."


Listen to the words of the prophet Hosea in today's reading as we celebrate the memorial of the life of St. Cecilia, "Thus says the Lord: I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart. She shall respond as in the days of her youth, when she came up from the land of Egypt. I will espouse you to me forever. I will espouse you in right and in justice, in love and in mercy; I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall know the Lord."

When we have a why to live, we can find a how to love!

As Jesus tell us in the gospel, "those who were ready went into the wedding feast with him."

When we have a why to live, we can find a how to love!

What is our purpose, what is our meaning. We have all been created and placed on a track to be espoused to God. Union awaits us. Why did God makes us? To love him, to serve in this life and to be with him in the life to come.

When we have a why to live, we can find a how to love!

Is this not what the saints teach us. They choose death because they have a reason to live. The martyr isn't one who dies but rather primarily a martyr is on who finds a "how" to love, who has a deep reason to live. A martyr is always the one who is alive.

St. Cecilia found a way to love. Perhaps this is why God allowed her body to be incorrupt. She was martyred in 230 and her coffin opened in the 16th century and her body was then as it was when she was laid in the cypress box upon her burial.

The incorrupt body of a saint points toward the reality of life and love.

Here is an excerpt written on the life of virtue:

"young parents need to be taught that love -- any love -- means more than sweet sentiments. Real love means the willingness and the ability to endure hardship, difficulty, sacrificial struggle for the sake of someone else's welfare and happiness. Love is sacrifice. A life lived in this way, giving one's whole self to others, is mankind's most noble achievement, and a sure road to real happiness".

St. Cecilia pray for us