ADVENT · 13 DECEMBER
Saint Lucy
Virgin & Martyr · She Whose Name is Light · d. 304 · Patron of the Blind
Lucy — LOO-see (from Latin lux, lucis: light) · Syracuse — SIR-ah-kyooz · Diocletian — dy-oh-KLEE-shun · Paschasius — pas-KAY-zee-us · Agatha — AG-ah-tha · Dante — DAN-tay
O God, who didst give to thy servant Lucy the grace to bear the light of thy Name in the darkest season of the year; Grant that her witness may kindle in us the fire that no darkness can extinguish, and that we may walk, as she walked, by the light of faith toward the one who is the Light of the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Her name means light — from the Latin lux, lucis — and she dies on 13 December, in Advent, twelve days before Christmas, at the very depth of the year’s darkness, and her feast in the Scandinavian tradition is celebrated by the eldest daughter of each household rising before dawn and processing through the dark house wearing a crown of candles, bringing the light before the light has come. Lucy (LOO-see) of Syracuse (SIR-ah-kyooz) died in 304 during the Diocletianic (dy-oh-KLEE-shun) persecution, the last and most severe of the Roman campaigns against the Church. She was a young woman of good family who had consecrated her virginity to God and distributed her goods to the poor, and who was denounced to the governor Paschasius (pas-KAY-zee-us) and condemned when she refused to sacrifice to the gods. The tradition that she was blinded before her death, or that she put out her own eyes to preserve her consecrated state, gave her the patronage of the blind and the name that means light: the woman who saw by a light that no Roman sword could extinguish.
Her placement in the Calendar on 13 December is among the most theologically resonant in the whole year. She dies in Advent, twelve days before the Light of the world is born at Christmas, three days after the feast of the Immaculate Conception, four days before the Ember Days of winter, eight days before Thomas (who confessed the Lord as the Light in the darkness of his doubt) and twelve days before the Nativity. In the old Julian Calendar, before the Gregorian reform, 13 December was the winter solstice — the shortest day, the longest night, the day from which the light begins its return — and Lucy’s feast was placed there with deliberate theological intent: on the darkest day of the year, the Church commemorates a woman whose very name is light, whose death was the darkness that could not overcome the light she bore, whose witness in the depths of winter is the promise that the light is already returning even when it cannot yet be seen. Dante placed her in the third heaven of the Paradiso, one of the three Blessed Ladies who set his journey to God in motion — Lucy the illuminating grace who carried him when he could not walk, the light that moves between God and the soul in the dark passage before the dawn.
The Scandinavian tradition of St Lucia — the girl in the white dress with the crown of candles processing through the darkness before dawn, carrying saffron buns to the sleeping household — is not hagiographically reliable as an account of the historical Lucy, but it is theologically profound as an account of what she means: the young woman who carries the light before it has arrived, who walks through the dark house so that when the family wakes the light is already there, who is herself the announcement of the dawn. This is precisely what Advent requires: not the passive waiting in darkness but the active carrying of the light that has been given, the walking through the dark places with the candle burning, the preparation that is itself a form of witness. Lucy does in her death what Advent does in its season: she holds the light in the darkest place so that those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death may see it coming.
The Latimer connection is worth noting here: Hugh Latimer, whose feast and whose words about the candle light the whole Anglican series, died on 16 October, in Trinity-tide, in the full light of the afternoon. Lucy dies in Advent, in the dark. But they say the same thing: that the light cannot be put out, that the candle lit for God burns beyond the extinction of the body that held it, that the darkness has not overcome it and will not. The archive began with Latimer’s candle and it finds in Lucy, in the darkest days of Advent, the same fire burning in the same darkness, twelve days before the one who said I am the light of the world is born in a stable in Bethlehem. She is in the cloud of witnesses with her crown of candles, and the light she carries is the light of the world she died for, and it has not gone out.
O Almighty God, who on the darkest day of the year didst raise up thy servant Lucy to carry thy light before the Light had come; Grant that in every season of darkness we may walk as she walked, not waiting for the dawn before we lift our candle, but carrying the light we have been given into the dark places that need it most; through Jesus Christ our Lord, the true light that lighteth every one that cometh into the world, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.