St. Cunegundes was the daughter of a King. She was married to the Emperor, St. Henry II. This holy couple leg virgin lives, like brother and sister. Even though she was the Empress, St. Cunegundes spent a great deal of her time in prayer and in works of charity. She gave up all the good times she could have had in the palace. She visited the poor and the sick in the hospitals and also cared for lepers.
St. Cunegundes and her husband, St. Henry loved each other very much. They never quarreled. And they gave one another good example in the practice of every virtue. But the devil was jealous of their goodness and he tried to cause trouble between them. Wicked people accused the Empress of having committed a shameful sin. Since she remained silent about it, her husband believed them and felt very bad. For this reason, she asked to be permitted to go through the trial by fire, according to the custom of those days. She walked barefoot on red-hot pieces of metal for quite some time. Yet she was not burned at all! By this miracle God showed her husband and all the people that she was innocent.
When her husband, St. Henry, died, Cunegundes sold all that she owned and gave it to the poor. Then she followed the call of Christ to the convent.
There, for fifteen years, she was the most humble and obedient of all the nuns. She seemed to have forgotten completely that she was ever an Empress. She even begged her Superiors to give her the hardest and most lowly work to do.
St. Cunegundes was made Patroness of Poland.
We can always keep ourselves pure, even in the midst of many dangers. But we have to pray and to avoid bad companions, bad books and magazines, bad movies and TV shows. We also have to mortify our senses, especially our eyes and our sense of touch - whether we are alone or with others.
