Secular Sunday - Saint Lucy, Pray for Us!

I feel I must apologize for missing Fun Fact Friday. I like to imagine you, dear reader, sitting at home in your scuffies yelling, "Where the fuck are the fun facts?" at your computer screen. This is probably not how you spent your Friday. I spent mine with dysentery. By which I mean, I didn't actually have dysentery - my doctor just told me to eat like I did. Now that we've delved into the inner-workings of my digestive system, I feel fully ready to move into the blasphemous portion of the program.

Today's focus: one of Catholicism's (few) leading ladies, Saint Lucy. They have never really been fans of vagina-ed people. (See genesis for the beginning.)

Lucy with some delicious eye soup for dinner.

I must offer a brief prelude for this particular shred of secularism, though. I used to be a Catholic but am not anymore for many reasons that I will not go into fully now, but my secularism is largely the result of a bear, leather, and semen. A religious cliché, I know!

My family, however, remains largely - and in some cases rather staunchly - Catholic. I say this in way of explaining that on my eighteenth birthday I received from one of my aunts - who shall, for my own protection, be henceforth referred to only as the Jesus Aunt - the prayer card of Saint Lucy, the patron saint of people with afflictions of the eyes. Given my own near-sightedness, it was a great gift. Her feast day is also my birthday.

I learned those two facts from the note my aunt enclosed with the prayer card. Jesus Aunt, though she did manage to ask Saint Lucy to pray for us, failed to mention why Saint Lucy is the patron saint of those with afflictions of the eyes. There are two stories:

1) Lucy (not her real name) consecrated her virginity to God. All the cool kids were doing it! Unfortunately she was betrothed to a pagan, as is so often the case. Spurned, her betrothed denounced her. Surprisingly she was not raped, but Sicilian guards did try to burn her. Failing that, they stabbed her in the eyes with forks.

2) Lucy (still not her real name) consecrated her virginity to God. Her betrothed pagan thought she had beautiful eyes, so - of course - Lucy plucked out her eyes to give to pagan admirer so she could spend more time with God.

A modern artist's rendering of Lucy. At least she looks happy.

There are valuable lessons to be gleaned from these stories. I, for one, have discovered that God is better served by virgins. Also, apparently the church doesn't think a person qualifies as insane when she plucks her own eyes out of her face. I was further surprised to learn that Lucy got to keep her boobs. That is not often the case with lady saints of the Catholic Church. True story.