Saint Barbara was born and lived in northern Egypt, in the city of Heliopolis. This was the city through which Our Lady and Saint Joseph carried Our Lord on the Flight into Egypt, and where all the pagan idols crashed to the ground when the Holy Family walked through the streets. Saint Barbara was a most beautiful girl. Her father kept her locked up in a tower, where she had three windows in honor of the Blessed Trinity. She was secretly baptized a Catholic. Her tyrannical father hated her for this. He denounced her. He had her tortured, and then martyred her himself by cutting off her head with a sword. Before her death she had destroyed all the idols in her father’s house. Her father was later struck by lightning and killed. Saint Barbara is one of the fourteen Holy Helpers, and is invoked against lightning.
Saint Barbara Altarpiece, by Wilhelm Kalteysen von Aachen (1420–1496), National Museum in Warsaw (source)
