Memorial of Saint Lucy, Virgin and Martyr
I grew up a few blocks from the gritty steel mills of Youngstown. In fact my grandmother would ritually sweep graphite off of our front porch every morning. “That's good,” she'd say in her thick Scots brogue. “That means that the men are working.” We didn't even mind the brightly red colored sky that lite up the night throughout the Mahoning valley each evening.
My father was a steel worker and I knew lots of them as they populated our neighborhood and our parish. These were tough guys and Youngstown was a hard town. Nearly every kid had a father who was a steel worker.
Thousands of steel workers entered the gates of Youngstown Sheet & Tube in nearby Campbell everyday. And they had to pass by the Church of St. Lucy in order to do so. Now this wasn't a church front like any other. It was covered by a massive mosaic of Lucy gleaming bright and gold like the sun for all to see. It couldn't be missed. And there she was in all her glory---holding her eyes on a plate.
Lucy has “gleamed” with her light since the 300s and that's a long time! She even made it into the Roman canon, one of the few women saints to do so (now Eucharistic Prayer I). In today's collect we invoke Lucy's intercession, as it has been invoked for 1800 years--- to see with our spiritual vision and eventually our bodily eyes “the light of life” who is Christ.
Lucy's (who's name means “light”) feast used to be appropriately on the shortest day of the year. But it is well that today we remember her in the middle of Advent. Advent is a season (or ought to be) of purposefully dimmed lights---a vigil time as we await the bright light that is the incarnate Christ. Like Advent, Lucy was counter-cultural and in Roman times that could even get you killed, as it did her. Trouble comes for those who stand before the tide.
Advent is counter-cultural and keeping it finds us standing against the tide. Society races head long into Christmas when the last trick-or-treater has left the front porch. Yes, waiting is a yoke, a burden. We Americans have talents for many things but waiting isn't one of them.
When I was a kid I'd ask my parents why we had to wait so long to put up the tree. It seemed like all the other kids, were already weeks into Christmas. My mother explained that when Christmas comes it ought to be a “burst” of light.
Today in the Book of Numbers the prophet Balaam announces that “a star will advance out of Jacob, a staff shall rise out of Israel.” A star that is a mass of light---the burst of light that is Christ.
The past 18 months have been a long difficult winter. We are worn and we are tired---like Israel waiting for the Promised One. We long for the star, the warmth, the light that is Christ. Perhaps the prayer of American mystic Thomas Merton sums up our longing:
“Martyr, whose short day sees our winter and our Calvary,
Show us some light, who seem forsaken by the sky:
We have so dwelt in darkness that our eyes are screened and dim,
And all but blinded by the weakest ray.
Hallow the vespers and Decembers of our life, O martyred Lucy… Console our solstice by your friendly day.”
-Tim Cronin