Saint Lucia Lux

It is the year 304 AD. It is the first day of winter. And it is the longest, darkest night.

It is even darker under the hills of Syracuse, Sicily, in the depths of the catacombs.

This is a labyrinth of sacred silence. This is where secrets gather in gloom to give glory to a young man sacrificed to an old prophecy.

It is the longest, darkest night because Lucia is not coming.

Before tonight, Lucia would be busy into the evening, preparing her basket of breads and cheeses, cured meats, and dried fruits. Lucia filled her arms with the bounty, perhaps humming, perhaps singing a low melody to make her work light and cheerful. Her destination, night and dreary. The shadows called to her. The crevices of cool limestone, carved to make a bed for the longest sleep, the millennial sleep of the dead.

But– Lucia was visiting the living. She was bringing a bounty to the people calling the catacombs home, safe harbor, hidden in the maze of manmade twists, turns, tunnels, and turnabouts. She knew the passages to take: left, right, left, left, right. Winding her way in her robe of white.

And upon her head, a crown of candles, shining bright.

To keep her hands free to carry the load, Lucia crafted a headdress of candles to spill a warm, golden glow before her, illuminating the pale stone beneath her feet and arching overhead. Carefully, she gathered her bundle to slip into the silvery streets of Syracuse and make her way to the city’s edge to dip beneath the earth, to bring food to those being hunted by those in power.

But tonight, nothing.

Because Lucia was not coming.

Lucia was dead.

Lucia was betrothed to a wealthy man but Lucia wanted only to live chastely and help the people hidden away from hateful eyes. So with his powerful connections, the wealthy man arranged for Lucia to be punished for her piety.

They came for her, soldiers trampling through the quiet night, ready to snatch Lucia and take her away for defiance. They came for Lucia, a twenty-year-old girl with the candles in her hair, arms full of food for the hungry people hidden away in the dark, dark catacombs.

They came and they could not budge her from where she stood. They should have been able to lift her bodily from the sturdy stone beneath her feet and yet… they could not. It was as if she herself was made of the stuff of catacombs, limestone rock, a hundred thousand-thousand years of compression, all the dust and dreams of a changing surface cemented for what seemed an eternity.

And she did not move. She was mountain steadfast.

So the soldiers came again, now with a team of oxen. The beasts grunted and murmured, disturbed from their rest, weary perhaps from a full day’s work in the fields. Yoked, then roped to the girl, the oxen were commanded to plow ahead, to pull Lucia away to her imprisonment. First, two oxen could not move her. So they brought two more. Yoked and roped, made to plow, made to fail. Lucia stood as stone. Another two, and another two, until twelve oxen were teamed to take the girl away.

They could not move her. Lucia’s candles burned brightly where she stood. The soldiers were given another command. If she would not be moved, her demise would be brought to her.

The catacombs remained dark, shadowed, no glow from Lucia’s candles to warm the walls.

The oxen were dismissed. In their place, kindling was piled around Lucia. She was to become a candle herself, a light in the dark, a symbol of burning disobedience. They stacked the sticks upon the stone around the girl who was now a statue of defiance. She was not in despair. Her candles flickered and twinkled and shone.

A soldier took from the flame of her crown and lit a stick like a match for the blaze. He set the pyre on fire about the feet of the girl standing in faith. The flame jumped from stick to stick, seeking purchase, seeking sanctuary, seeking to start a symphony of crackling, snapping, singeing, burning, charring, blazing.

Orange, red, yellow, smoke.

Fire burning, stone below.

The girl did not catch flame. Lucia, light, Lucia, lux, Lucia was untouched. She shone brighter than the blaze. Her crown of candles held high.

Lucia, the brightness in the darkest of nights, the longest sleep of the sun in the year.

Then Lucia met her end at the tip of a soldier’s silvered sword, her throat now red, her crown of candles cascading, extinguished.

The darkness swept in like the wings of a great owl, suffocating the light.

Lucia would come to the catacombs again, but she would not be bringing bread, nor would her path be cast in candlelight. She would be there to sleep the millennial sleep.

Saint Lucia lux. Saint Lucia: the light in the darkest of nights.