Aglae

“Aglae at the House of Mary” by Lorenzo Ferri, based on the indications of Maria Valtorta. Extract from the book “Valtorta and Ferri”.

Aglae is a provocative woman of 26 years, very beautiful, with a swaying walk and slender hands, whom Jesus meets in Hebron in the house that once belonged to John the Baptist.

She is the mistress of Shammai, a Herodian, occupying the premises. The only daughter of the steward of a great Roman lord from Syracuse (Sicily), she gradually shifted from her love of dance to prostitution from the age of 14, before ending up in Hebron.        

But her encounter with Jesus gives her the courage to act: she flees from Shammai’s house and radically changes her life. The valuable jewelry she gives to Jesus, once sold by Judas, is used to bribe the jailer of the Baptist, who was arrested for the first time and imprisoned in Machaerus.

Constantly veiled and very discreet, she follows Jesus and hides to listen to his teachings at Clear Water, even sleeping in a hut made of branches in the rain and cold.

At the end of a sermon on purity, without naming her, Jesus addresses her directly:

“Make for yourself a new name before God (Aglae means ‘radiant with brightness’). This is what has value. You are the vice. Become honesty. Become the sacrifice. Become the martyr of your repentance. You have well martyrized your Heart to purify the flesh. Now, learn to martyr your flesh to give eternal Peace to your Heart.”

Wandering, she finds a home with the Virgin Mary, entrusting her with tearful confessions of her troubled past and imploring her mercy. Since her house is too frequented for Aglae’s safety, Mary temporarily entrusts her to Susanna, the young married woman from Cana, one of the Women Disciples.

But harassed by the Pharisees, she must take refuge, at Jesus’ request, in a deserted place where she will end her short life:  

“You will join me without delay where I will be after my sacrifice and yours. In the solitude where you will be and where Satan will assail you with hateful Violence as you belong more and more to Heaven, you will find one of my Apostles who was once a sinner, then redeemed (without doubt Matthew).

- So, it wasn’t the blessed apostle who spoke to me of You (Andrew the Apostle)? He is too honest to have been a sinner.

- Not that one, another. He will join you at the right time. He will tell you what you still cannot know.”  

Jesus gives her as an example to his Disciples:

“I gave her life, not in her entrails but in her Soul dried up by paganism and sin, and I made her fruitful in justice, freeing her from what held her back, helped by her good will. And I give her to you as a model. Do not be scandalized. Truly I say to you that she deserves to be cited as an example and imitated, for there are few in Israel who have made as much progress as this pagan sinner to reach the springs of God.

- And where is she now?

- God alone knows. In severe [[Penance, fasting|penance], certainly. Pray to support her…”

Her name

This name means, according to her own words, "vice". But it is actually a moral irony of its Greek etymology: "aglaïa = radiant with brightness".

Where is she mentioned in the work?

EMV 77 EMV 79

EMV 81 EMV 82

EMV 112 EMV 116 EMV 118 EMV 119 EMV 121 EMV 122 EMV 123 EMV 124 EMV 127 EMV 129 EMV 130 EMV 132 EMV 133 EMV 137 EMV 138 EMV 156 EMV 168 EMV 198

EMV 200 EMV 211 EMV 242 EMV 243 EMV 262

EMV 346 EMV 398

EMV 437 EMV 442 EMV 468

EMV 596

EMV 647

Learn more about this character

Excerpts from the Dictionary of Gospel Characters, based on Maria Valtorta, editor Salton (Mgr René Laurentin, François-Michel Debroise, Jean-François Lavère, Salvator Editions, 2012):

In a vision dated February 25, 1946, Aglae appears to Maria Valtorta. She informs her of the end of her life:

“I endured in spirit the reminiscences of the flesh, its screams of madness… My Soul was higher, and did not consent to it. Below, my flesh howled like a she-wolf. Its cries sometimes even prevented me from praying. I offered the Lord the prayer of my patience. I fixed the eyes of my Soul on the Savior and silently repeated his words.”

In the same vision, Maria Valtorta’s “inner adviser” informs her that Aglae is part of the saints:

“she is mentioned, but no longer well known today”. The calendar now only knows a namesake from the 4th century, celebrated on May 14.

In the article of the Osservatore Romano commenting on the Index

The anonymous author denounces: “Some pages are rather risqué and, through some descriptions and scenes, recall modern novels; thus, to give only a few examples, the confession made to Mary by a certain Aglae, a bad-life woman.”

Notes and references

Note: Quotations from the work of Maria Valtorta on this page currently use machine-translated text and will gradually be replaced by the official English translation. Until then, the official translation may be consulted through the reference link provided with each quotation.