Well, friends, we've reached the end of our little romp through the saintly alphabet as Yvette of Huy takes on Zechariah. Luckily(?) for you, however, there are 32 saints in the first round and only 26 letters of the alphabet. So prepare to catch some ZZZZZs next week.

Yesterday, Francis Xavier left Wenceslaus out in the cold 64% to 36% to advance to the Saintly Sixteen.

This is, of course, the final matchup of the week. We'll see you first thing Monday morning as Katharina Zell takes on Zenaida.

Vote now!

Yvette of Huy

Born in 1158 into a wealthy family in Huy, Belgium, Yvette of Huy’s life “seemed to be planned out for her.”

“She was a daughter, then she would be a wife, then a mother, and if she were lucky she would live long enough perhaps to be a widow,” explains Lestra R. Atlas in “And She Learned from Experience: Motherhood and Womanhood in the Authority of Yvette of Huy” (10). By the time she turned eighteen, Yvette had checked all the boxes.

She’d already lost her husband, one of her three children and, as Atlas puts it, any clear road map for a young woman in medieval times. So she charted her own course. She went to Mass regularly, gave extravagantly to those who needed it, and declined offers to remarry.

But blazing new trails never comes without obstacles.

Yvette’s father—who had arranged her marriage against her will when she was thirteen—now took her youngest sons from her, concerned that she might give away all her children stood to inherit. He brought  Yvette before the local bishop, thinking that he would encourage her to remarry. The bishop instead was moved by her prayers and consecrated her as a “holy widow.”

Still, sainthood seemed reserved for the virginal in the Middle Ages. And even though new monastic orders were proliferating amid the religious reforms of the time, many excluded women.

Finding “no real place for women,” in Atlas’s words (6), Yvette went to those who also found themselves on the margins of church and society. She spent ten years caring for people in a leper community in nearby Statte. Eventually, she became an anchoress, joining a growing, informal movement of women withdrawing from the world to live a solitary life of prayer. She was enclosed in a cell in the community’s chapel, where she remained until her death on January 13, 1228.

From her cell, Yvette reclaimed motherhood, miraculously leading her son Eustachius of Huy to the faith and becoming a spiritual mother to the community. Her reputation spread beyond the four walls that entombed her. Pilgrims traveled from across the Low Countries to seek her mystical insight and maternal wisdom.

Both Yvette and her son Eustachius are considered “blessed” by the Catholic Church, and her feast day is celebrated on January 13.

Collect for Yvette of Huy

O God, by whose grace your servant Yvette of Huy, kindled with the flame of your love, became a burning and a shining light in your Church: Grant that we also may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline, and walk before you as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

— Emily Miller

Zechariah

As Luke opens his Gospel, he is careful to tie the Christ event to Israel’s larger story. The first person we are introduced to is the aged priest, Zechariah.

Zechariah is identified as a priest during the reign of King Herod, descending from the priestly order of Abijah. He is married to Elizabeth, who shares priestly lineage as a descendent of Aaron. They are old and childless.

Zechariah is chosen by lot to enter the sanctuary to offer incense. As he makes the offering, the angel Gabriel appears to him with the promise of a child. Unsurprisingly, as often happens in these types of stories, Zechariah is incredulous, and asks Gabriel, “How can I know that this will happen?” before going on to note that he is an old man and that his wife, Elizabeth, “is getting on in years.” For his lack of belief, Gabriel makes him mute and deaf until the day “these things occur.”

Zechariah is slow to emerge from his service, leading people to wonder about the delay. When at long last he emerges, he cannot speak, and they realize that he has received a vision while in the sanctuary.

He returns home to Elizabeth and, as Gabriel promised, she conceives. Nine months later, after the baby is born, on the eighth day after his birth, Zechariah and Elizabeth take him to be circumcised. “They” (who “they” are is frustratingly ambiguous in Luke’s tale) insist that the baby be named Zechariah after his father, but Elizabeth repeatedly refuses, stating that his name be John, and in so doing, fulfills the words from Gabriel. Finally, Zechariah approaches them with a tablet, on which he writes, “His name is John.”

At this moment his lips are loosed, and he utters the beautiful Benedictus, echoing promises of God found in the Scriptures.

John the Baptist will grow to become an important prophet who prepares the way for the Messiah.

In a later, apocryphal text, the Gospel of James, Zechariah bravely refuses to tell Herod’s soldiers where his child is hidden during the Slaughter of the Innocents. In a rage, they kill him. (According to Muslim  traditions, which consider him a prophet, some hold that he, like the prophet Isaiah, was sawn in half).

Collect for Zechariah

Almighty God, you have surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses: Grant that we, encouraged by the good example of your servant Zechariah, may persevere in running the race that is set before us, until at last we may with him attain to your eternal joy; through Jesus Christ, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

— David Creech