Apolonia, the "Fuck You!" Saint

I chose the name Apolonia for myself when I was confirmed in the Catholic church. The exact procedure is unclear to me, but I know that some of the sacraments require names and godparents and some do not. When I lived in Peru, every life event qualified for a godparent: birthdays, dance recitals, anything. This was generally because godparents were expected to donate a little cash for their godchild, so the cost of every celebration and every child was spread through the community. Rich foreign godparents were especially coveted, so it was not uncommon for people to request that perfect strangers be the godparents to their children. However, even in Peru not every event required a new name, naming events are rarer. This, naturally, produces a feeling of weightiness attached to a naming event.

I felt pressured to pick a good name for myself for my confirmation, something that was meaningful to me. Ideally, it would be aspirational, represent a person or an attribute that I wanted to emulate. The religious significance of the confirmation had me trying to be a pious person. I dutifully looked through names of saints for my new moniker. For this task, my catechism teacher loaned me a large, hardcover, illustrated history of the Catholic Saints. I flipped through the pages with diminishing enthusiasm. There are an ungodly number of saints.

Would I choose Teresa of Jesus, who founded a humble religious order against the opposition of the established church? Or Joan of Arc, who led her men into righteous battle? No. I chose instead a minor martyr who was terrorized by the Romans when Christians were hated minorities. She lived in Alexandria, and was done in by mob violence in a riot over something or other. The mob was vicious, and cruelly killed and tortured many Christians. Poor Apolonia had all of her teeth pulled out. Pithily, the Church has made her patron saint of dentists.

The mob wasn't satisfied by torturing her, they also built a bonfire and threatened to burn her if she didn't renounce her faith. She was an older woman, and at this point she had no teeth. She was being restrained, and asked for her restraints to be loosened. Her captors obliged, perhaps shamed because they were hurting a poor old lady. As soon as they eased up on her, she bolted and jumped straight into the fire. When I read this account of her life and martyrdom, I felt a flicker of recognition. It seemed to me that she was flipping her antagonists the bird by jumping on that fire, and that her stubborn recklessness was a good philosophy.

Within the church, I think the reaction to Apolonia and other martyrs who killed themselves to avoid denouncing their faith or to preserve their chastity is ambiguous. After all, suicide is a sin, but clearly, these were brave and pious people. My own feelings about Apolonia are also problematic. Is it good to identify with self destructive behavior, with scorn in the face of public opinion, with an iconoclast? Why couldn't I have felt moved by the saints who day by day showed kindness and devotion, instead of a saint who made one showy move at the end of her life? What did it say about me?