Cecilia: Name Day and Patron Saint

St Cecilia was a young Roman woman of a noble family who came to believe in Christ and resolved to give her whole life to Him. Under her costly clothes she wore a rough hair shirt, and when her parents betrothed her to a pagan nobleman, Valerian, she wept and prayed that God would keep her for Himself. On their wedding night she told her husband that an angel guarded her. She sent him to the hidden bishop Urban, who baptized him, and on his return Valerian saw the angel beside her holding crowns of roses and lilies. Soon his brother Tiburtius also believed and was baptized. The two brothers gave to the poor, cared for the sick and buried the bodies of the martyrs, until they were arrested and beheaded; Maximus, the officer who led them out, believed as well and died for Christ. Cecilia, who had given her wealth to the poor and brought some four hundred people to the faith, was shut for days in an overheated bath and came out unharmed. The executioner struck her three times with the sword, and she lived three more days, encouraging those around her, before she gave her soul to God. The Church keeps her memory, with Valerian, Tiburtius and Maximus, on 22 November (5 December on the Old Calendar). She is honoured as the patron of church music, and the faithful ask her prayers for purity, for a marriage built on Christ, and for those who sing God’s praise.

What the faithful pray for

• those who sing in church and all church musicians
• purity of heart and body
• husbands and wives, that they may lead each other to Christ
• young women facing marriage
• courage to confess the faith