If anyone is ashamed of me and of my words, of him the Son of man will be ashamed when he comes in his own glory and in the glory of the Father and the holy angels. The Church celebrates today the life and discipleship of St. Agatha, a third century virgin martyred in Sicily during the persecution of emperor Decius. She is among the few women saints whose names appear in the Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer 1). 
While there is not a lot of information about the circumstances of the martyrdom of St. Agatha, the one thing of which we can be sure is the fact that she was not ashamed of Jesus. Like most of the early Church martyrs, St. Agatha must have willingly gave her life for the cause of the faith. It was considered not only an honor to a Christian family and/or community when one of their own heroically gave his/her life as a martyr, but it was also a show of one’s undying love for Jesus. A denial of one’s faith was equated to denying Jesus himself (it was an understanding that led some people to go “seeking” for martyrdom). And while circumstances have certainly made martyrdom as it was found in the early Church not so common today, the one thing about which we can be assured is that standing up for our faith and for Jesus will at times require that we move out of our comfort zones and make some tough choices. The message of the Gospel will always remain countercultural, for in every age there will rise a certain way of doing things that will be opposed to the Gospel values. Standing up against such anti-Gospel values will, without any doubt, subject an authentic disciple of Jesus to ridicule, rejection, and even persecution. Perhaps this is the martyrdom that is today required of us. Perhaps this is the only way we can ensure that the faith for which St. Agatha gave her life is passed on to future generations.