saints we love to hate and slow progress ~

[lookingland]

from a cool link provided by codepoet:

Saint Maria Goretti Coloring Book <~

what better subject matter for a children's coloring book than the story of an 11 year-old girl sexually assaulted and then stabbed to death? while i'm sure the book is tastefully done and provides a positive message about purity, forgiveness, and redemption (it's one of my personally beloved saint stories to be sure ~ and i don't mean that facetiously at all), i still have rather mixed feelings about what a story like this can do to your psyche if you are a victim of sexual abuse.

there is an explicit message here that death is preferable to sin and that saint maria made the right choice by refusing alessandro and letting him kill her rather than submit to his advances.

all true and well, but what of the child who comes late to this story, who's already lost their purity, who realizes too late that they should have fought to the death rather than submit?

while i try to take away mostly positive thoughts from the example of saint maria goretti (and i do, or i wouldn't have a devotion to her), i am often frustrated that the story is presented as an easy choice to make when faced with the pressure (or threat) of sexual sin. i also find that the story doesn't teach how to recover from the "too late" scenario: how does one recover their purity (at least in heart) once they have been abused? someone needs to write a smart book that shows her shining saintly example and helps the rest of us non-saints to pick up where she left off, no matter the circumstances of our lives. i want to see a frank text that says: let's face it ~ holding onto one's purity in a world full of promiscuity and predators is nearly impossible without absolute faith, and for those of you who have already screwed up (or been screwed up through no fault of your own ~ and that's really the key because i think the story can tend to stigmatize those who have been abused and did not fight back), here are constructive ways to understand and apply saint maria goretti's lessons in your own life.

okay, this is not exactly what i had in mind when i woke up this morning and thought to myself: i really need to get a lot done today ~ hahahaha ~

off to work now. i finished the evil page. i'm committed to finishing the third page and at least drawing the fourth. we'll see how far i get. i really need to clean house and take a shower and this t-shirt i am wearing is officially a rag.

: o p

p.s. cool telling of the redemption of alessandro who lived out his life in a monastery after his prison sentence at a nice web site about saint maria ~> Alessandro Serenelli



a large bone fragment of saint maria's arm
(with which she warded off alessandro's attack),
is kept in a reliquery in Corinaldo.
interesting altar statuary, this.

Comments

[codepoet.livejournal.com]

hmmm... interesgting. *ponders*

I haven't thought about her in so many years, I think... my last mental-image of the story had her at what must have been my age at the time, probably not even close to high school yet.

As for the link, I caught part of the Great Adventure study on the radio this morning, continued to be impressed and decided to see just how expensive the set would be online... Hooray for froogle, and I guess I'll be waiting for Christmas. ;)

[magdalene74.livejournal.com]

From what i got from it, her sanctity is not so much because she fended him off, as because she forgave him afterwards, as she lay dying, and wished that he could join her in heaven... that wish lead ultimately to his conversion. That forgiveness is what we need to take from her lesson. Not that we should have fought harder, but that we should forgive those who hurt us.
With love,
Marie