A Novena to Saint Lucy
Lux
Syracuse, 304
The Novena Prayer
Saint Lucy, whose beautiful name signifies light, by the light of faith which God bestowed upon thee, increase and preserve his light in my soul, that I may avoid evil, be zealous in the performance of good works, and abhor nothing so much as the blindness and the darkness of evil and of sin.
Obtain for me by thine intercession with God perfect vision for my bodily eyes and the grace to use them for God's greater honour and glory and the salvation of all. Saint Lucy, virgin and martyr, hear my prayers and obtain my petitions.
Lucy died at Syracuse in Sicily in 304, during the persecution under Diocletian, the last and most severe of the Roman persecutions of Christians. That she died there, and roughly when, is among the better attested facts about any early martyr.
Attested by Cult, Not by Story
The Novena Prayer
Saint Lucy, whose beautiful name signifies light, by the light of faith which God bestowed upon thee, increase and preserve his light in my soul, that I may avoid evil, be zealous in the performance of good works, and abhor nothing so much as the blindness and the darkness of evil and of sin.
Obtain for me by thine intercession with God perfect vision for my bodily eyes and the grace to use them for God's greater honour and glory and the salvation of all. Saint Lucy, virgin and martyr, hear my prayers and obtain my petitions.
Lucy's veneration is documented very early, well before the fifth century, and an inscription referring to her survives at Syracuse from the fourth or fifth century. The narrative details of her life, by contrast, come from legends written down considerably later, and the two kinds of evidence should not be confused.
Named in the Canon
The Novena Prayer
Saint Lucy, whose beautiful name signifies light, by the light of faith which God bestowed upon thee, increase and preserve his light in my soul, that I may avoid evil, be zealous in the performance of good works, and abhor nothing so much as the blindness and the darkness of evil and of sin.
Obtain for me by thine intercession with God perfect vision for my bodily eyes and the grace to use them for God's greater honour and glory and the salvation of all. Saint Lucy, virgin and martyr, hear my prayers and obtain my petitions.
Lucy is one of seven women besides the Virgin Mary named in the Roman Canon of the Mass, alongside Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Agnes, Cecilia and Anastasia. Gregory the Great, whose family knew Sicily well, is credited with inserting her name and Agatha's.
The Suitor
The Novena Prayer
Saint Lucy, whose beautiful name signifies light, by the light of faith which God bestowed upon thee, increase and preserve his light in my soul, that I may avoid evil, be zealous in the performance of good works, and abhor nothing so much as the blindness and the darkness of evil and of sin.
Obtain for me by thine intercession with God perfect vision for my bodily eyes and the grace to use them for God's greater honour and glory and the salvation of all. Saint Lucy, virgin and martyr, hear my prayers and obtain my petitions.
The legend has Lucy consecrate her virginity to God and refuse a marriage her mother had arranged, giving away her dowry to the poor. The rejected suitor denounced her to the authorities as a Christian, which under Diocletian's edicts was sufficient.
The Fire That Would Not Take
The Novena Prayer
Saint Lucy, whose beautiful name signifies light, by the light of faith which God bestowed upon thee, increase and preserve his light in my soul, that I may avoid evil, be zealous in the performance of good works, and abhor nothing so much as the blindness and the darkness of evil and of sin.
Obtain for me by thine intercession with God perfect vision for my bodily eyes and the grace to use them for God's greater honour and glory and the salvation of all. Saint Lucy, virgin and martyr, hear my prayers and obtain my petitions.
The legend says she was sentenced to be taken to a brothel and could not be moved, then sentenced to burn and the fire would not consume her, and that she was finally killed by a sword to the throat. Francesco del Cossa's painting shows the wound.
The Eyes
The Novena Prayer
Saint Lucy, whose beautiful name signifies light, by the light of faith which God bestowed upon thee, increase and preserve his light in my soul, that I may avoid evil, be zealous in the performance of good works, and abhor nothing so much as the blindness and the darkness of evil and of sin.
Obtain for me by thine intercession with God perfect vision for my bodily eyes and the grace to use them for God's greater honour and glory and the salvation of all. Saint Lucy, virgin and martyr, hear my prayers and obtain my petitions.
The story of Lucy's eyes being put out, and the dish of eyes she carries in art, is a later addition to the legend and does not appear in the earliest versions. It seems to have grown out of her name rather than the other way round, and it made her patron of the blind.
Lux
The Novena Prayer
Saint Lucy, whose beautiful name signifies light, by the light of faith which God bestowed upon thee, increase and preserve his light in my soul, that I may avoid evil, be zealous in the performance of good works, and abhor nothing so much as the blindness and the darkness of evil and of sin.
Obtain for me by thine intercession with God perfect vision for my bodily eyes and the grace to use them for God's greater honour and glory and the salvation of all. Saint Lucy, virgin and martyr, hear my prayers and obtain my petitions.
Lucy's name comes from the Latin lux, light. Nearly everything attached to her afterward, the eyes, the candles, the processions, follows from the name, which is an unusually clear case of a cult growing outward from a word.
The Darkest Day
The Novena Prayer
Saint Lucy, whose beautiful name signifies light, by the light of faith which God bestowed upon thee, increase and preserve his light in my soul, that I may avoid evil, be zealous in the performance of good works, and abhor nothing so much as the blindness and the darkness of evil and of sin.
Obtain for me by thine intercession with God perfect vision for my bodily eyes and the grace to use them for God's greater honour and glory and the salvation of all. Saint Lucy, virgin and martyr, hear my prayers and obtain my petitions.
Under the Julian calendar, 13 December fell on the winter solstice, and for more than a thousand years Lucy's feast was kept on the shortest day of the year. The Gregorian reform of 1582 corrected a ten-day drift and left her feast eight days short of it, but the association with light in deep darkness had already fixed.
Lucia in the North
The Novena Prayer
Saint Lucy, whose beautiful name signifies light, by the light of faith which God bestowed upon thee, increase and preserve his light in my soul, that I may avoid evil, be zealous in the performance of good works, and abhor nothing so much as the blindness and the darkness of evil and of sin.
Obtain for me by thine intercession with God perfect vision for my bodily eyes and the grace to use them for God's greater honour and glory and the salvation of all. Saint Lucy, virgin and martyr, hear my prayers and obtain my petitions.
In Sweden, Norway and Swedish-speaking Finland the feast is kept with processions led by a girl wearing a crown of lit candles. The custom belongs to countries where 13 December is genuinely dark, and it survived the Reformation in Lutheran territory where most other saints' days did not.
The prayer that opens each day is the traditional novena prayer to Saint Lucy, of unknown authorship and long in circulation, given here as it is commonly printed. ⚠ Very little about her can be established: she is one of the earliest and most securely attested martyrs by cult, and almost everything narrative about her comes from legends written down two centuries or more after her death. The days distinguish the two.
