Who was Saint Agnes?
Long ago in Rome, about the year 304, there lived a girl named Agnes. She was about twelve years old, with a kind face and a big heart, and she loved Jesus with all her heart. Agnes was young, but she knew exactly what she wanted: she said she already belonged to Jesus. When people tried to change her mind, she stayed gentle, but she stayed firm.
In those days it was hard to be a Christian in Rome. Agnes was brave: she gave her life for Jesus, and Jesus welcomed her home to heaven. The Christians of Rome loved her so much that they built a church to remember her, and more than sixteen hundred years later people still visit it and say her name with love.
Her name sounds like the old Roman word for lamb, so paintings and statues often show Agnes with a little lamb in her arms. Every year on her feast, two lambs are blessed at her church, and their wool is woven into the pallium, a white woolen band that new archbishops wear around their shoulders. It reminds them to care for their people the way a good shepherd cares for his sheep, the way Jesus cares for us.
When is Saint Agnes’s feast day?
Saint Agnes’s feast day is January 21. That day two lambs are blessed at her church in Rome, Sant’Agnese fuori le mura, and their wool is later woven into the pallium, the white band the pope gives to new archbishops.
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