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Good morning Ladies and Germs,
Well, later this month is the feast of St. Christina Mirabilis — Christina the Astonishing, they call her — and today seems like a good day to tell you all about her.
Christina the Astoning wasn’t a magician, though I hope that out there somewhere is a woman working birthday parties and doing card tricks, who has taken the moniker as a kind of quiet homage to the great lady.
And Christina was a great lady.
She lived almost 900 years ago in the city of Liege, in what is now Belgium. We don’t know much about her early life. Her parents died when was 15; she lived by tending sheep.
But she had epilepsy, and she had a seizure when she was 21 or 22. She was comatose after, and presumed dead. Her open casket was carried into her parish church for a requiem Mass.
But at the Agnus Dei, Christina sat straight up from the coffin. The congregation was surprised, as you’d also be.
They were also quite terrified — near everyone fled the church, save for Christina’s sister, and for the priest, who was resolved to finish the Mass.
We don’t know quite what happened, but the stories of
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