Spirituality: Purity and victory over the devil.
Reflection: Margaret was the daughter of a pagan priest in Antioch of Pisidia, raised
in the faith by a Christian nurse. She refused to marry the governor and to renounce
Christ. Her legend says that in prison the devil appeared to her as a dragon and
swallowed her, but the cross she held burst it open, and so she became patroness of
women in childbirth. She was beheaded. Hers was one of the voices St. Joan of Arc
heard. Margaret’s story reminds us that the Cross of Christ is stronger than every evil
that seems to swallow us.