A Homily for the Memorial of Saint Agnes
by Deacon Tracy Jamison, OCDS, PhD
“As Christians we have a profound respect for authority, both the authority of the church and the authority of the state. We also recognize, however, that ‘We must obey God rather than men.’ …it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘An unjust law is no law at all.’”
“How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust….”
“One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. …Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire…”
These are not my words. Everything that I have said to you thus far has been a quotation. Whose words are they? Do you not know? Do you not recognize them? They are the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., which he wrote in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail in 1963. You can easily find it on the Internet. If you have never read it, take some time today to read it and pray about it. Civil disobedience has always been a necessary component of Christian discipleship. It is not my intention to canonize Martin Luther King or to issue a blanket endorsement of everything that he said and did. But he did teach well on the moral duty of civil disobedience, and he consistently lived and died for a just cause which required civil disobedience. All Christians should aspire to such virtue, though we often fall short. We might imagine for a moment that we were young white Christian college students in our nation in the Sixties. Would we have been willing to protest? Maybe. Would we have been willing to go to jail for the sake of justice for our African-American brothers and sisters? Probably not. Would we have been willing to risk violent retaliation and assassination? It is quite unlikely.
Or let us imagine that we were born into the early Church under Roman persecution, like St Sebastian and St Agnes were. What would we do? Would we put our lives on the line for Christ, or would we compromise and submit to the unjust laws of the Roman Empire? St Ambrose tells us that St Sebastian was a native of Milan who set out for Rome specifically because he wanted to suffer martyrdom with the Roman Christians under the persecution of the emperor Diocletian (303-312). St Agnes was one of those Roman Christians. She was born into Roman nobility and was therefore required by the Roman state to accept marriage. But at twelve years old she had already consecrated her virginity to Christ, and thus she refused all the Roman noblemen who were her suitors, who then in anger denounced her as a Christian to Diocletian. Listen to the description of her witness and her death, as recorded by St Ambrose:
“The cruelty that did not spare her youth shows all the more clearly the power of faith in finding one so young to bear it witness. …Though she could scarcely receive the blow that killed her, by faith she could rise superior to it. Many girls of her age cannot bear even the frown of their parents…. Yet Agnes showed no fear of the blood-stained hands of her executioners. She stood undaunted by the heavy, clanking chains. She offered her whole body to be put to the sword by fierce soldiers. She was too young to know of death, and yet she was ready to face it. …She put her neck and her hands in the iron chains, but no chain could hold fast her tiny limbs. …In the midst of tears, she shed no tears herself. The crowds marveled at her recklessness in throwing away her life untasted, as if she had already lived life to the full. All were amazed that one not yet of legal age could give her testimony to God. She succeeded in convincing others of her testimony about God, even though her testimony in a Roman court could not yet be accepted. What was beyond the power of nature, the witnesses argued, must have come from its creator. …What menaces there were from the executioner, to frighten her! What promises were made, to win her over! What influential people desired her in marriage! She answered: ‘To hope that any other will please me does wrong to my divine Spouse. I will be his who first chose me for himself. Executioner, why do you delay? If eyes that I do not want can desire this body, then let it perish.’ She stood still, she prayed, she offered her neck to the sword.”
— St Ambrose of Milan (340-397)
What would we have done in such circumstances? Would we have publicly opposed the Roman authorities and the government, as St Agnes and St Sebastian did? Would we have given our lives for Christ? Or let us imagine that a law were passed in our own country, as has been passed in many others, a law outlawing our attendance at Mass. What would we do? Certainly campaigns could be launched to change the law, to challenge the law in court, and to elect new leaders who would reject such a law. But those processes could take years. The question is this: what should we do in the meantime? Should we not go to Mass anyway? If you were a priest, would you not celebrate Mass anyway? Are there not times when we must disobey civil law for the sake of justice? Isn’t civil disobedience against an unjust law morally justified?
Now let us imagine that we are Catholic parents living in poverty in Mexico, Guatemala, or Haiti. There are no jobs, we do not have enough to eat, and our children’s lives are being threatened by gangs. We would have a manifest and urgent need to cross the border into the United States and to find work and to keep our family safe and alive. If there were in fact a reasonable process to allow people with manifest and urgent needs to immigrate into the US, then we would comply with the legal requirements and not cross the border illegally. But as things currently stand in US immigration law, we would have no hope that the US government would recognize our basic human needs and grant us permission to enter the country and find employment and feed our family. What would we do in such circumstances? Would we not break the law and enter the country illegally? Would we not take the risk? And would we not be morally justified?
The Catholic position is that the legal permission to immigrate is owed to families in such circumstances as a matter of justice, not merely as an act of charity or compassion. It is also true that a nation has the right to secure its borders, to enforce immigration laws, and to deport criminals. So in this matter there is a fundamental conflict of rights, and the principles for resolving such a conflict must be used to decide whether a nation has the right to exclude and deport migrant families in need. Following the doctrine of St Thomas Aquinas, if there were in fact a reasonable legal process in our nation to allow families with manifest needs to immigrate, then it would be true that they ought not to enter the country illegally. But there isn’t. As things currently stand, aliens who want to become law-abiding US citizens and clearly have a manifest need to immigrate have no hope that the US will grant them permission to enter, even when there is no good reason to exclude them. US immigration law is unjust and must be changed. The moral right of such families in manifest need to immigrate is being denied, and their illegal border-crossings are not morally wrong or criminal acts. Calling them criminals on that basis is like calling parents criminals because they broke the speed-limit in order to rush an injured child to the hospital. Those of us who respect and defend the manifest need and human right of the unborn to be born ought to be the first to respect and defend the manifest need and human right of impoverished families to immigrate.
Moral inconsistency and unjust discrimination come in many forms. As St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther King, and many other Christian leaders have insisted down through the ages, “An unjust law is no law at all.” There are many just causes that require civil disobedience. The Church is simply asking us to advocate for the legal reform of unjust laws and to attend to the basic human needs and rights of people who are neglected and unwanted, both the born and the unborn. All such endeavors are met with resistance and require a certain amount of risk, if only the risk of being thought foolish. But St Paul tells us that “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31). And St James tells us that our faith is dead if we do nothing to help our brothers and sisters in need. He also sternly warns us that “Judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful” (James 2:12-16).
About Deacon Tracy Jamison, OCDS, PhD
Deacon Tracy Jamison was raised in a Christian family as the son of a Scotch-Irish evangelical minister in the Campbellite tradition. As an undergraduate he majored in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Cincinnati Christian University, where his parents had been educated. At this institution he met Joyce, who was completing a degree in Church Music, and after graduation they entered the covenant of Christian marriage in 1988. Through the study of philosophy and the writings of the Early Church Fathers, Tracy was received into the full communion of the Catholic Church in 1992. Under the influence of the theological writings of St. John Paul II he began to study the works of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross and entered formation as a Secular Carmelite of the Teresian Reform. In 1999 he completed the doctoral program in Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, and in 2002 he made his definitive profession as a Secular Carmelite. In 2010 he was ordained as a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Currently he is an associate professor of philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary of the West.
© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC
Yes, very good questions to ask oneself & ponder on. Near 80 now, the questions become easier to decifer as my Lord has granted me such a full life...Thanks for posting.