As I have received no further requests for Saint stories (the suggestion box is still open, by the way), today I will pick in honor of my niece, Cici, who is celebrating her birthday today.
St. Cecilia Is one of the four great virgin martyrs of the early Church (as mentioned in my earlier post on St. Lucy). Little is known about her life and death that was not enhanced and expanded in later centuries, so it is impossible to separate the fact from the fiction. The legend says that although Cecilia was born to Christian parents, they betrothed her to a pagan. She had taken a vow of perpetual virginity and prayed to the Saints and Angels to help her keep her vow. Upon her marriage, she told her husband that there was an angel guarding her that and that he would be able to see the angel if he believed in God and was baptized - which he did and could. None of my sources says how long they lived celibately as husband and wife before they were both martyred in a wave of anti-Christian persecution.
Cecilia is the patron Saint of music and musicians because she is said to have heard heavenly music at her wedding. She is often pictured playing an organ . . . however, the organ was not invented until centuries after her death. Her feast day is November 22.
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