SAINT CHRISTINA THE ASTONISHING

Feast Day - July 24

Lived (3rd Century)

Patron Saint of Millers and People with Mental Illness

Almost nothing is known of Saint Christina but, she lived in the third century and was the daughter of a rich and powerful magistrate who's name may have been Urbain. He was a staunch Pagan, having lots of golden idols, which he distributed to the poor.

Saint Christina had drawn the eye of many suitors as at 11-years-old, but her Father wanted her to be a heathen Priestess. So he locked his daughter in a room filled with gold and silver idols, then ordering her to burn incense before them.

She often peered at the world outside her window and decided there must have been a supreme being, who created the world. Turning to the idols, she came to believe they could only be false as they were forged by man.

She began to pray to the creator of the world, asking Him to reveal himself to her. That was when she felt an intense love, burning from deep within her heart. So she began to fast and continued to pray.

She had an apparition of an Angel, who taught her the Gospel of Christ. This Angel then called her a bride of Christ but warned that she would suffer for her faith.

Knowing the truth, Christina smashed the idols and threw them through the window. When her father visited the Shrine and noticed the missing idols, he asked what had happened but  Christina would not speak to him.

Urbain learnt of his daughter's new faith when he sent the servants to speak to her. Enraged, he began to slap her face until she spoke up - but her words were to proclaim her new faith and to share the truth. She also admitted to destroying the idols.

Urbain executed the servants who tended to Christina's wounds and scourged her cruelly before throwing her in prison. Saint Christina's mother came to the prison and pleaded for her daughter to renounce her faith but she refused.

The next day, Urbain took Saint Christina to trial and ordered her to worship the pagan gods and beg for forgiveness.

Rather than following her father's orders, Christina held fast to her Christian faith and was ordered to be tortured.

She was tied to an iron wheel above an extreme fire. As she was raked through the flames, her body was burned but she did not die. She was thrown into a prison cell and that night an angel appeared. Her wounds were healed and she was fed with the food the angel had brought.

The next day, when her father found her unharmed, he ordered a stone to be tied around her neck and she was thrown into a lake. As she sank, an Angel helped sustain and then untied her. When she reappeared on the surface of the water, her father attributed her survival to sorcery.

He decided to execute her the following morning but that night he died suddenly.

The region's governor was sent to execute Saint Christina's punishment in her father's stead but she survived every torture. When fellow believers discovered the miracles, they began to gather at her cell.

During her time in captivity, she converted about 300 people until a new governor arrived, who resumed her torture. When she survived five days in a red-hot furnace, she was finally executed with a sword.