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Mother and daughter · CATANIA, Sicily, 301 AD

The cure St. Lucy prayed for was already hers

After four years of bleeding, St. Lucy's mother was well again, and St. Lucy asked for her wedding money to give to the poor.

Edition of · 3 min read

Saint Lucy of Syracuse
A church interior with a stone tomb monument at the centre; St. Lucy, in a yellow gown and red cloak, faces her mother Eutychia in white while a kneeling woman, a group of figures and a priest at the altar on the left fill the room, and on the right the poor receive alms at a doorway.
St. Lucy prays at the tomb of St. Agatha in Catania in 301 AD, where her mother, Eutychia, is healed. The same painting, by Lorenzo Lotto (1523–1532 AD), shows the family's inheritance being given to the poor.

CATANIA, Sicily, 301 AD — According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, Saint Lucy of Syracuse went to a tomb at Catania, in Sicily, in 301 AD. She went to pray for her mother, who had been bleeding for four years. St. Lucy was a Christian girl from a noble family of Syracuse, on the east coast of the island.

While she was still very young, St. Lucy had made a vow to Christ never to marry, and she hadn’t told her mother. Her father had died when she was a child, and her mother, Eutychia, looked after the money he left.

Then a young man from a noble Syracusan family, who wasn’t a Christian, asked to marry St. Lucy. Eutychia thought he was a good match and kept urging her daughter to say yes. St. Lucy kept finding reasons to put the wedding off. Eutychia wanted her daughter married. St. Lucy wanted to give her life to God and her goods to the poor. Eutychia had arranged the match, and Eutychia held the money.

Eutychia was ill, too. She had tried doctors and costly treatments, and nothing had stopped the bleeding. The tomb of Saint Agatha was at Catania, less than fifty miles away. St. Agatha was a young woman who had been put to death there in the time of the emperor Decius. Crowds came to her grave, and many miracles had already happened through her prayers. St. Lucy persuaded her mother to make the journey.

At the Mass at the tomb, the Gospel reading told of a woman who had been bleeding. She was healed when she touched the hem of Christ’s clothes. As soon as St. Lucy heard it, she turned to her mother and said she would be healed at once. All Eutychia had to do was believe the Gospel story was true. She also had to believe that St. Agatha had died for Jesus Christ and was with him now. Then she had to touch the tomb with that belief.

A dream beside the grave

After Mass, once the people had gone, the two women knelt at the grave. They prayed and cried. St. Lucy prayed for two things: that her mother would be cured, and that she could give her own life to God. She fell asleep praying, and in her sleep she saw St. Agatha standing among the angels, covered in jewels.

St. Agatha said to her: “Lucy, my sweet sister, devout virgin to God, wherefore prayest thou to me for thy mother, for such thing as thou mayest thyself right soon give to her?” St. Agatha was asking why St. Lucy prayed to her for her mother’s cure. St. Lucy could soon give her mother that cure. Then St. Agatha gave the reason: “For I tell thee for truth, that for thy faith, and thy good, thy mother is safe and whole.”

The cure was already St. Lucy’s to give. Because of St. Lucy’s faith, her mother was healed.

St. Lucy woke up frightened and told her mother she was healed. In the same breath, she begged Eutychia never to talk to her about a husband again. She also asked her mother for her dowry, so that she could give it to the poor.

Eutychia asked her daughter to wait until she had died. After that, St. Lucy could do as she liked with the money. St. Lucy’s father had died nine years before. In all that time, Eutychia said, she hadn’t spent the family’s money but had added to it.

Back home in Syracuse, St. Lucy kept asking her mother to give the money away while Eutychia was still alive. St. Lucy told her: “That which thou givest when thou shalt die, thou givest it because thou mayest not bear it with thee. Give then for God’s sake whiles thou livest.” After that, mother and daughter gave alms every day. In the end they had sold almost all of what St. Lucy’s father had left them, and the family jewels too.

About this story

Catholic Saints News tells the lives of the saints as news from their own time and place. This story was written with AI from the historical record, and we read and approved it before it ran.

The Saints' words. This newspaper will never make a saint say something the historical record does not preserve.

Junior Report. Written for readers ten to twelve, from the same sources and under the same rules as the rest of the paper. The words are shorter, hard terms are explained, and the question at the end is for the reader to think over.

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Image. Pala di Santa Lucia, predella, first compartment - St. Lucy at the tomb of St. Agatha: the healing of Eutychia, and the dedication of her goods to the poor, Lorenzo Lotto (photograph by Francesco Bini, Sailko), 1523-1532 AD, Pinacoteca Civica e Galleria di Arte Contemporanea, Jesi — see the original.

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Also in the kids edition of Sunday, 4 October 2026