{"id":107,"date":"2012-01-21T00:18:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T07:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2012\/01\/girls-in-love-lambs-to-the-slaughter\/"},"modified":"2016-05-02T11:16:07","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T17:16:07","slug":"girls-in-love-lambs-to-the-slaughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2012\/01\/girls-in-love-lambs-to-the-slaughter.html","title":{"rendered":"Girls in Love, Lambs to the Slaughter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
<\/div>\n

It\u2019s the Eve of St. Agnes, and it\u2019s cold.\u00a0Cold as the beginning of Keats\u2019 long lyric poem, set on and named for this night:<\/p>\n

St. Agnes\u2019 Eve \u2014 Ah, bitter chill it was!<\/span>
\nThe owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;<\/span>
\nThe hare limp\u2019d trembling through the frozen grass,<\/span>
\nAnd silent was the flock in the wooly fold . . .<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you were a young unmarried European woman on this night, in times past, you\u2019d be preparing yourself like Keats\u2019 heroine Madeline to receive a rapturous vision of your husband-to-be. The ritual involved fasting from dinner, undressing, and lying naked on your back in bed with your hands tucked under the pillow, never allowing your eyes to stray around behind the bed. Fall asleep in that position\u2013if you could, in the cold\u2013and you\u2019d be guaranteed a dreamy visitation, complete with ghostly kiss, from the spouse picked out for you by the patron saint of virgins, who earned that title by rejecting all the spouses picked out for her.<\/p>\n

If you are a couple of lambs in the \u201cflock in the woolly fold\u201d of the Trappist monks of Tre Fontane in Rome tonight, you are looking forward in your woolly way to tomorrow morning, when, crowned with roses, you will be placed in a beribboned basket and carried to the Church of Sant\u2019Agnese fuori le Mura (St Agnes Outside the Wall) in Rome. Escorted by veiled young girls in white dresses and guarded by Rome\u2019s elite and stylish military police, the carabiniere<\/i>, you will be led to the altar, where you will be incensed and sprinkled with holy water. Your journey will continue to the Vatican, where you will be blessed by the Holy Father himself (this<\/a> is what it looked like for last year\u2019s lambs) and entrusted, in a kind of passing of the religious baton, to the Benedictine nuns of the Convent of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome\u2019s old Jewish quarter. The good sisters will fatten and groom and spoil you, and on Holy Thursday they\u2019ll shear your wool and turn it over\u2013grab that baton!\u2013to the Oblates of St Frances of Rome, who will weave it into the white wool band embroidered with crosses known as the pallium<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

The Oblates will weave as many pallia as there are new metropolitan archbishops in the world since last June. On the 28th of June, the pallia will spend the night in the Confessio<\/i>, the shrine containing the altar built over the tomb of St Peter in the Basilica that bears his name. The next morning, on the Feast of St Peter and St Paul, the pope will present the blessed pallia to the new archbishops as a sign of their authority and a yoke of their service. But you, little lambs, emblems of the patron saint of chastity (because your name in Latin, agnus<\/i>, is so similar to hers, Agnes<\/i>, from the Greek for pure and chaste) will not be there to see your wool go out into the world, for you will long since have served as Easter dinner for the nuns at St Cecilia\u2019s.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Girls in love and lambs to the slaughter. They\u2019re both bound up in the legenda<\/i>, the exemplary life, of St Agnes, whose feast the Church celebrates on January 21. By tradition, Agnes was a third-century Roman tween\u2013about 12\u2013of noble Christian background who angered an official by refusing to marry his son, on the grounds that she was in love with Someone else. She also announced that she\u2019d be refusing any other offers of marriage, thank you very much, and was not going to be doing any of that sacrificing to idols thing, either. This early-Church equivalent of putting on a purity ring cost Agnes everything. The frustrated official avenged his family pride by having Agnes condemned to death as a traitor to the Empire and its gods. The Romans were squeamish about executing virgins, so the story goes, but not above dragging Agnes naked through the streets to imprisonment in a brothel, where the impediment to execution would presumably be removed pretty quickly.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Under divine protection, however, Agnes\u2019 virtue was preserved through all attempts to separate her from it. The efforts were many, and\u2013as with rape and child prostitution and human trafficking in any age\u2013horrific, but (as doesn\u2019t happen nearly as often as it should) the attempted rapists were rebuffed and struck blind. In a prison vision of grace as welcome as a St Agnes Eve visit from a dream lover, Agnes\u2019 hair grew to cover her nakedness, and an angel of God wrapped her in a robe of purest white lambs\u2019 wool.\u00a0Agnes\u2019 invincible chastity having become apparent, the no-virgin-killing law was waived. The officials tried burning her, but the flames ran away from her body. Finally, she was either beheaded with a sword or had her throat cut with a dagger.<\/p>\n

United after death with her heavenly Bridegroom, Agnes is apparently like every girl happy in love\u2013she wants to fix her friends up, too. So she\u2019ll send you a soulmate if you\u2019re serious about asking. At least, that\u2019s how the story goes. Me, I\u2019m out here in the cold with the lambs, wondering in my own woolly way why it is with us humans\u2013even among the best of us, even in love, even in an incense-clouded church\u2013that what begins in innocence so often ends in blood.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/b> Here, courtesy of Deacon Greg Kandra, is this year\u2019s lamb blessing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s the Eve of St. Agnes, and it\u2019s cold.\u00a0Cold as the beginning of Keats\u2019 long lyric poem, set on and named for this night: St. Agnes\u2019 Eve \u2014 Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp\u2019d trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1086,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nGirls in Love, Lambs to the Slaughter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It's the Eve of St. Agnes, and it's cold.\u00a0Cold as the beginning of Keats' long lyric poem, set on and named for this night: St. Agnes' Eve -- Ah, bitter\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2012\/01\/girls-in-love-lambs-to-the-slaughter.html\" \/>\n<meta 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