A Short History of Confirmation Day
At St. Thomas’ school for girls it was time for Maman’s class to choose their confirmation names. ‘St. Teresa!’ said the first girl. It was such a pretty name the others joined in too. ‘St. Teresa!’ said another girl. Soon there was a chorus of St. Teresas as the girls sat smiling and wide-eyed in their straight black skirts and white socks. ‘St. Agnes,’ said Maman. ‘Agnes. I like Agnes.’ She knew the other girls would laugh at such an ugly name.
Who are you, St. Agnes? Are you really so unappealing? In truth she was thought so lovely that she had to fend off young men in order to preserve her chastity. Agnes the wanted and untouched. Agnes of the Roman Empire whose Feast Day alone remains, while the years she lived and died are forgotten. Many men have argued over St. Agnes, elaborating on the stories of her martyrdom, her age, her virginity, the details of her heroism.
St. Ambrose: The poor girl was twelve years old when she became a martyr. She was taken by sword, it was an execution.
Pope Damascus: There was more, much more. When the edict came for the persecution of the most holy, she pronounced herself a Christian of her own free will. She was placed in a fire, and the only pain it caused her was that the assembled hordes might glimpse her naked, untouched body. She arranged her hair so that her modesty would be protected. A sword would have been too easy.
Prudentius: They tried to force her into a brothel to wipe the smug look off her face. She would no longer be able to wear her virginity as a badge of honour. But when a young man looked upon her sinfully he was struck blind and lay still on the ground as if dead. For some there could be no mercy.
St. Augustine: She was thirteen when she ascended into Heaven. Definitely thirteen.
She was untouched by the flames and then decapitated. She was beaten and set alight. She was rescued by angels then dropped from a great height. Her beauty shone from the flames. She smiled through her ordeal. She sang, laughed, struck men dead.
At the ceremony the girls sat in a row, hands pressed between knees. ‘Our Father,’ said the Bishop. ‘Lead us from evil.’ There was the laying on of hands. Olive oil was traced onto foreheads. The names were read out. Teresa. Teresa. Teresa. Teresa. Agnes.
Maman went to the front.
‘Do you promise to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour and reject all evil?’
‘Yes Bishop.’
‘Are you in the state of grace brought about through prayer and study, and the anointing of oil?’
‘Yes Bishop.’
‘Do you accept the miracles of St. Agnes and entreat her to be your special patron from this day forth?’
‘Her miracles, yes Bishop.’
The other girls did not know the motto of St. Teresa: Lord, either let me suffer, or let me die. They had not seen her in the Rubens painting, a creased, plain face bent over a book and quill, years of study ahead of her, a cold cell for company. Her entire life was filled with physical illness, a malarial fever that brought about periods of ecstasy, hard won, carefully documented by her in her manuals of hunger and of sinlessness, her treatises on no comfort, terror, sin, in that we are born sinful, on horsehair and thistles, planks of thin wood, pain, how to accept Mary as your true mother, given that hers died when she was young and left a terrible void, how to love the void and pretend it is full, how to see angels and light from stars falling onto stone floors and empty rooms, how to suffer gladly when angels thrust fiery lances into your heart, merciless, over and over, letting heaven in through the torn matter, tissue, open mouth, laying you low with pain so you can better see the cracked tiles and insects, thank you Jesus, help me Mary, how to be blessed with fever, how to mortify the flesh if you are not blessed with fever, how to attract the attention of the Inquisition for an unholy addiction to suffering, how to bow, crawl, kneel. One time, she asked God why He made her life such a misery.
He answered, ‘But this is how I always treat my friends!’
They laughed and shared a joke.
‘No wonder you don’t have many friends!
To the girls at Sunday school she was Teresa of Avila, 1515 – 1582, undoubtedly a raven-haired beauty, not left to languish in obscurity. But Agnes was the glamorous one, who never suffered a hair out of place. Down with St. Teresa!
Chelsea Cargill lives in Edinburgh and has been included in Stand, Poetry Scotland and FuseLit, and is currently in the anthology New Writing Scotland. She is also a songwriter and you can hear some of the tracks from her album at www.succotash.org.
