Virgin Martyr Lucy of Syracuse

Lucy was a young Christian of Syracuse in Sicily, born to a noble family and secretly vowed to virginity. When her mother Eutychia, long ill with a hemorrhage, was healed at the tomb of St Agatha in Catania, Lucy revealed her vow and persuaded her mother to distribute her dowry to the poor. The pagan youth to whom she had been betrothed denounced her as a Christian during the persecution of Diocletian. Before the prefect Paschasius she confessed Christ boldly; sentenced to a brothel, she was, according to her acts, made immovable by the power of God, so that neither men nor teams of oxen could drag her away. Fires kindled around her did not harm her, and she was finally slain by the sword in 304. Her name means 'light,' and her feast near the winter solstice is kept with love in both East and West.