For some reason, a lot of later-to-become saints were born in Ireland and then left the Emerald Isle to take their lives and ministries to France, never to return. I’m not sure why this was–were the Gallic areas a much richer mission field? Was the climate simply more to their liking? It may be similar to the migration patterns of Scottish coal miners, many of whom went from Scotland to Ireland to Western Pennsylvania and then ended up in Appalachian North Carolina.

Anyhow, very little is known about today’s saint, a woman named Syra. She was born in Ireland and then went to Meaux (not far from Paris), where she served as a spiritual “directress” for young women entrusted to her care. She is listed as a virgin, of course, and of possessing all the appropriate female traits for virgin saints of her ilk–“humility, meekness, charity, and devotion.”

What is truly fascinating about her is the phraseology used to describe that time when she was no longer walking among the living! Butler writes, rather cryptically, of Syra: “From her cell she was translated into paradise in the seventh century . . . .” Butler then writes about where and when she is honored annually, but not of any burial, any distribution of relics, or any hint that she left a physical body behind. In fact, being “translated” in this sense was reserved for biblical texts related to Enoch and Elijah (who reportedly did not die, but because of their faith were taken up, while still alive, to God). Even the Catholic Church decided that Mary was “assumed into heaven,” but only upon her bodily death!

But what about Syra? The etymology of “translate”–well before it meant to take words from one language and render it into another–meant “to remove from one place to another” and the plain meaning (a tip of the hat to putative SCOTUS originalists) is that Syra went directly to heaven–did not pass “death”/did not get a burial plot, but went directly to God’s presence while still living. She is, through my reading of now thousands of accounts of saints written by Butler, the only one whose departure from an earthly existence is described in this way.

It opens up interesting possibilities. Was Syra another Elijah or Enoch? Or did she just get fed up with convent life and leave, renouncing her religion as bullshit? If so, they would have had to scramble for some explanation for her absence! Ancient spin control! Desperate times call for desperate measures! For example, when I was estranged from my own parents for approximately eight years after I came out as gay, my mother (so I found out years later) told people in our small town that the reason they hadn’t seen me for so long was because I was doing missionary work in Africa! In order to cover what was, for my mother, shame, she offered me the patina of being a self-sacrificing missionary. Is that what happened with Syra?

We don’t know. But what makes Syra so worthy of our time is that she offers us the opportunity to imagine, to engage a mystery and to consider possibilities. Whether she was so very sanctified or whether she was a stunning midlife apostate, Syra’s untold story is well worth reading (into)!