Lawrence was born circa 225 AD in Spain. While studying he met the future Pope Sixtus II who was then a teacher. When Sixtus became Pope, Lawrence became one of the seven deacons of Rome. In 258 AD Valerian ordered all clergy to be put to death immediately. Pope Sixtus II was captured in the catacombs of Saint Callixtus while celebrating the Eucharist and was executed forthwith. The Prefect of Rome ordered Lawrence to surrender the treasures of the Church. In answer Lawrence collected all the blind, lame, widows, orphans and aged, who were supported by the Church in Rome, and presented them to the Prefect, as being, on account of their prayers, the greatest of the treasures of the Church. After much suffering from scourging with whips set with iron or lead from hot metal plates, he was slowly burnt to death on a gridiron. But to the end Lawrence showed a sense of humour, reputedly telling his executioners, “I’m done on this side. Turn me over.” Saint Lawrence’s remains were buried by blessed Hippolytus (a Christian converted by Saint Lawrence) and the priest Justin in the cemetery of Cyriaca in the Veran field.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
“Once the mother of false gods, but now the bride of Christ, O Rome, it is through Laurence you are victorious! You had conquered haughty monarchs and subjected nations to your empire, but though you had overcome barbarism, your glory was incomplete till you had vanquished the unclean idols. This was Laurence’s victory, a combat bloody yet not tumultuous like those of Camillus or of Caesar. It was the contest of faith in which self is immolated and death is overcome by death. What words, what praises suffice to celebrate such a death? How can I worthily sing so great a martyrdom.” Thus opens the sublime poem of Prudentius composed little more than a century after the Saint’s martyrdom. In this work the poet has preserved to us the traditions existing in his own day by which the name of the Roman deacon was rendered so illustrious. About the same time Saint Ambrose, with his irresistible eloquence, described the meeting of Sixtus and his deacon on the way to martyrdom.
But, before both Ambrose and Prudentius, Pope Saint Damasus chronicled the victory of Laurence’s faith in his majestic monumental inscriptions which have such a ring of the days of triumph. Rome was lavish in her demonstrations of honour towards the champion who had prayed for her deliverance on his red-hot gridiron. She inserted his name in the Canon of the Mass, and moreover celebrated the anniversary of his birth to Heaven with as much solemnity as those of the glorious Apostles, her founders, and with the same privileges of a Vigil and an Octave. She has been dyed with the blood of many other witnesses of Christ, yet, as though Laurence had a special claim on her gratitude, every spot connected with him has been honoured with a church. Among all these sanctuaries dedicated to him, the one which contains the martyr’s body ranks next after the churches of Saint John Lateran, Saint Mary’s on the Esquiline, Saint Peter’s on the Vatican, and Saint Paul’s on the Via Ostiensis. Saint Laurence outside the Walls completes the number of the five great basilicas that form the appendage and exclusive possession of the Roman Pontiff. They represent the patriarchates of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem which divide the world between them, and express the universal and immediate jurisdiction of the Bishops of Rome over all the churches. Thus, through Laurence the Eternal City is completed, and is shown to be the centre of the world and the source of every grace.
Just as Peter and Paul are the riches, not of Rome alone, but of the whole world, so Laurence is called the honour of the world, for he, as it were, personified the courage of martyrdom. At the beginning of this month we saw Stephen himself come to blend his dignity of Protomartyr with the glory of Sixtus II’s deacon by sharing his tomb. In Laurence it seemed that both the struggle and the victory of martyrdom reached their highest point. Persecution, it is true, was renewed during the next half century and made many victims, yet his triumph was considered as the death-blow to paganism.
“The devil,” says Prudentius, “struggled fiercely with God’s witness, but he was himself wounded and prostrated forever. The death of Christ’s martyr gave the death-blow to the worship of idols, and from that day Vesta was powerless to prevent her temple from being deserted. All these Roman citizens brought up in the superstitions taught by Numa hasten, O Christ, to your courts, singing hymns to your martyr. Illustrious senators, flamens and priests of Lupercus venerate the tombs of Apostles and Saints. We see patricians and matrons of the noblest families vowing to God the children in whom their hopes are centred. The Pontiff of the idols whose brow but yesterday was bound with sacred fillet, now signs himself with the cross, and the Vestal Virgin Claudia visits your sanctuary, O Laurence.”
It need not surprise us that this day’s solemnity carries its triumphant joy from the city of the Seven Hills to the entire universe. “As it is impossible for Rome to be concealed,” says Saint Augustine, “so it is equally impossible to hide Laurence’s crown.” Everywhere, in both East and West, churches were built in his honour and, in return, as the Bishop of Hippo testifies, “the favours he conferred were innumerable and prove the greatness of his power with God. Who has ever prayed to him and has not been graciously heard?” Let us then conclude with Saint Maxinius of Turin that “in the devotion with which the triumph of Saint Laurence is being celebrated throughout the entire world, we must recognise that it is both holy and pleasing to God to honour, with all the fervour of our souls, the birth to Heaven of the martyr who by his radiant flames has spread the glory of his victory over the whole Church. Because of the spotless purity of soul which made him a true Levite, and because of that fullness of faith which earned him the martyr’s palm, it is fitting that we should honour him almost equally with the Apostles.”
“Laurence has entered the lists as a martyr, and has confessed the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Such is the Antiphon with which the Church opens the first Vespers of the feast. And in fact, by this hour he has already entered the arena. With noble irony he has challenged the authorities, and has even shed his blood. On the very day of the martyrdom of Sixtus II, Cornelius Secularis, Prefect of Rome, summoned Laurence before his tribunal, but granted him the delay necessary for gathering together the riches required by the imperial treasury. Valerian did not include the obscure members of the Church in his edicts of persecution. He aimed at ruining the Christians by prohibiting their assemblies, putting their chief men to death, and confiscating their property. This accounts for the fact that on the sixth of August the faithful assembled in the cemetery of Praetextatus were dispersed, the Pontiff executed, and the chief deacon arrested and ordered to deliver up the treasures which the government knew to be in his keeping.
“Acknowledge my just and peaceable claims,” said the Prefect. “It is said that at your orgies your priests are accustomed according to the laws of your worship to make libations in cups of gold, that silver vessels smoke with the blood of the victims, and that the torches that give light to your nocturnal mysteries are fixed in golden candlesticks. And then you have such love and care for the brotherhood: report says you sell your lands in order to devote to their service thousands of sesterces; so that while the son is disinherited by his holy parents and groans in poverty, his patrimony is piously hidden away in the secrecy of your temples. Bring forth these immense treasures, the shameful spoils you have won by deceiving the credulous; the public good demands them. Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, that he may have wherewith to fill his treasury and pay his armies.” Laurence, untroubled by these words and as if quite willing to obey, gently answered: “I confess you speak the truth. Our Church is indeed wealthy. No one in the world, not even Augustus himself, possesses such riches. I will disclose them all to you, and I will show you the treasures of Christ. All I ask for is a short delay, which will enable me the better to perform what I have promised. For I must make an inventory of all, count them up, and value each article.” The Prefect’s heart swelled with joy and gloating over the gold he hoped soon to possess, he granted him a delay of three days. Meanwhile Laurence hastened all over the town and assembled the legions of poor whom their Mother the Church supported: lame and blind, cripple and beggars, he called them all. None knew them better than the Archdeacon.
Next he counted them, wrote down their names, and arranged them in long lines. On the appointed day he returned to the judge and thus addressed him: “Come with me and admire the incomparable riches of the sanctuary of our God.” They went together to the spot where the crowds of poor were standing, clothed in rags and filling the air with their supplications. “Why do you shudder?” said Laurence to the Prefect, “do you call that a vile and contemptible spectacle? If you seek after wealth, know that the brightest gold is Christ, who is the light, and the human race redeemed by Him, for they are the sons of the light, all these who are shielded by their bodily weakness from the assault of pride and evil passion. Soon they will lay aside their ulcers in the palace of eternal life, and will shine in marvellous glory, clothed in purple and bearing golden crowns on their heads. See here is the gold which I promised you — gold of a kind that fire cannot touch or thief steal from you. Think not then that Christ is poor: behold these choice pearls, these sparkling gems that adorn the temple, these sacred virgins I mean, and these widows who refuse second marriage. They form the priceless necklace of the Church, they deck her brow, they are her bridal ornaments, and win for her Christ’s love. Behold then all our riches: take them. They will beautify the city of Romulus, they will increase the Emperor’s treasures and enrich you yourself.”
From a letter of Pope Saint Cornelius written a few years after these events we learn that the number of widows and poor persons that the Church of Rome supported, exceeded 1500. By thus exhibiting them before the magistrate, Laurence knew that he endangered no one but himself, for the persecution of Valerian, as we have already observed, overlooked the inferior classes and attacked the leading members of the Church. Divine Wisdom thus confronted Caesarism and its brutality with Christianity which it so despised, but which was destined to overcome and subdue it.
This happened on the ninth of August 258. The first answer the furious Prefect made was to order Laurence to be scourged and tortured on the rack. But these tortures were only a prelude to the great ordeal he was preparing for the noble-hearted Deacon. We learn this tradition from Saint Damasus, for he says that, besides the flames, Laurence triumphed over “blows, tortures, torments and chains.” We have also the authority of the notice inserted by Ado of Vienne in his martyrology in the ninth century, and taken from a still more ancient source. The conformity of expression proves that it was partly from this same source that the Gregorian Antiphonal had already taken the Antiphons and Responsories of the feast. Besides the details which we learn from Prudentius and the Fathers, this Office alludes to the converts Laurence made while in prison, and to his restoring sight to the blind. This last seems to have been the special gift of the holy deacon during the days preceding his martyrdom.
The August sun has set behind the Vatican, and the life and animation which his burning heat had stilled for a time, begins once more on the Seven Hills. Laurence was taken down from the rack about midday. In his prison, however, he took no rest, but wounded and bleeding as he was, he baptised the converts won to Christ by the sight of his courageous suffering. He confirmed their faith and fired their souls with a martyr’s intrepidity. When the evening hour summoned Rome to its pleasures, the Prefect recalled the executioners to their work. For a few hours’ rest had sufficiently restored their energy to enable them to satisfy his cruelty. Surrounded by this ill-favoured company, the Prefect thus addressed the valiant deacon: “Sacrifice to the gods, or else the whole night long will be witness of your torments.” “My night has no darkness,” answered Laurence, “and all things are full of light to me.” They struck him on the mouth with stones, but he smiled and said “I give you thanks, O Christ.” Then an iron bed or gridiron with three bars was brought in and the Saint was stripped of his garments and extended on it while burning coals were placed beneath it. As they were holding him down with iron forks, Laurence said: “I offer myself as a sacrifice to God for an odour of sweetness.” The executioners continually stirred up the fire and brought fresh coals, while they still held him down with their forks. Then the Saint said: “Learn, unhappy man, how great is the power of my God, for your burning coals give me refreshment, but they will be your eternal punishment. I call you, O Lord, to witness: when I was accused, I did not deny you. When I was questioned, I confessed you, O Christ. On the red-hot coals I gave you thanks.” And with his countenance radiant with heavenly beauty, he continued: “Yes, I give you thanks, O Lord Jesus Christ, for that you have deigned to strengthen me.” He then raised his eyes to his judge and said: “See, this side is well roasted. Turn me on the other and eat.” Then continuing his canticle of praise to God: “I give you thanks, O Lord, that I have merited to enter into your dwelling-place.” As he was on the point of death, he remembered the Church. The thought of the eternal Rome gave him fresh strength, and he breathed forth this ecstatic prayer: “O Christ, only God, O Splendour, O Power of the Father, O Maker of Heaven and Earth and builder of this city’s walls! You have placed Rome’s sceptre high over all. You have willed to subject the world to it, in order to unite under one law the nations which differ in manners, customs, language, genius and sacrifice. Behold the whole human race has submitted to its empire, and all discord and dissensions disappear in its unity. Remember your purpose: You willed to bind the immense universe together into one Christian Kingdom. O Christ, for the sake of your Romans, make this city Christian, for to it you gave the charge of leading all the rest to sacred unity. All its members in every place are united — a very type of your Kingdom. The conquered universe has bowed before it. Oh may its royal head be bowed in turn! Send your Gabriel and bid him heal the blindness of the sons of Julius that they may know the true God. I see a prince who is to come — an Emperor who is a servant of God. He will not suffer Rome to remain a slave. He will close the temples and fasten them with bolts forever.”
Thus he prayed, and with these last words he breathed forth his soul. Some noble Romans who had been conquered to Christ by the martyr’s admirable boldness removed his body: the love of the Most High God had suddenly filled their hearts and dispelled their former errors. From that day the worship of the infamous gods grew cold. Few people went now to the temples, but hastened to the altars of Christ. Thus Laurence, going unarmed to the battle, had wounded the enemy with his own sword.
The Church, which is always grateful in proportion to the service rendered her, could not forget this glorious night. At the period when her children’s piety vied with her own, she used to summon them together at sunset on the evening of the ninth of August for a first Night Office. At midnight the second Matins began, followed by the first Mass called “of the night or of the early morning.” Thus the Christians watched around the holy deacon during the hours of his glorious combat. “O God, you have proved my heart, and visited it by night, you have tried me by fire, and iniquity has not been found in me. Hear, O Lord, my justice. Attend to my supplication” (Psalm xvi.). Such is the grand Introit which immediately after the night Vigils hallowed the dawn of the tenth of August at the very moment when Laurence entered the eternal sanctuary to fulfil his office at the heavenly altar.
Later on certain churches observed on this feast a custom similar to one in use at the Matins of the commemoration of Saint Paul. It consisted in reciting a particular Versicle before repeating each Antiphon of the Nocturns. The Doctors of the sacred Liturgy tell us that the remarkable labours of the Doctor of the Gentiles and those of Saint Laurence earned for them this distinction. Our forefathers were greatly struck by the contrast between the endurance of the holy deacon under his cruel tortures and his tender-hearted, tearful parting with Sixtus II three days before. On this account they gave to the periodical showers of “falling stars,” which occur about the tenth of August, the graceful name of Saint Laurence’s tears: a touching instance of that popular piety which delights in raising the heart to God through the medium of natural phenomena.Epistle – 2 Corinthians ix. 6–10
Brethren, he who sows sparingly, will also reap sparingly. And he who sows in blessings, will also reap of blessings. Every one as he has determined in his heart: not with sadness, or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound in you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work, as it is written: ‘He has dispersed abroad. He has given to the poor. His justice remains forever.’ And he that ministers seed to the sower will both give you bread to eat and will multiply your seed, and increase the growth of the fruits of your justice.Thanks be to God.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
“He has dispersed abroad, he has given to the poor: his justice remains forever.” The Roman Church loves to repeat these words of Psalm cxi. In honour of her great archdeacon. Yesterday she sang them in the Introit and Gradual of the Vigil. Again they were heard last night in the Responsories, and this morning in the Versicle of her triumphant Lauds. Indeed, the Epistle we have just read, which also furnishes the Little Chapters for the several Hours, was selected for today because of this same text being quoted by the Apostle. Evidently the choice graces which won for Laurence his glorious martyrdom were, in the Church’s estimation, the outcome of the brave and cheerful fidelity with which he distributed to the poor the treasures in his keeping. “He who sows sparingly, will also reap sparingly. And he who sows in blessings, will also reap of blessings.” Such is the supernatural economy of the Holy Ghost in the distribution of His gifts, as exemplified in the glorious scenes we have witnessed during these three days. We may add with the Apostle: What touches the heart of God, and moves Him to multiply his favours, is not so much the work itself as the spirit that prompts it. “God loves a cheerful giver.” Noble-hearted, tender, devoted, and self-forgetful heroic with a heroism born of simplicity no less than of courage, gracious and smiling even on his gridiron: such was Laurence towards God, towards his father Sixtus II towards the lowly. And the same he was towards the powerful and in the very face of death. The closing of his life did but prove that he was as faithful in great things as he had been in small. Seldom are nature and grace so perfectly in harmony as they were in the young deacon, and though the gift of martyrdom is so great that no one can merit it, yet his particularly glorious martyrdom seems to have been the development, as if by natural evolution, of the precious germs planted by the Holy Ghost in the rich soil of his noble nature.Gospel – John xii. 24–26
At that time Jesus said to His disciples: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remains alone but if it die, it brings forth much fruit He that loves his life will lose it, and he that hates his life in this world keeps it to life eternal. If any man minister to me, let him follow me. And where I am, there also will my minister be. If any man minister to me, him will my Father honour.”Praise be to you, O Christ.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
The Gospel we have just read was thus commented by Saint Augustine on this very feast: “Your faith recognises the grain that fell into the earth, and having died was multiplied. Your faith, I say, recognises this grain, for the same dwells in your souls.” That it was concerning Himself Christ spoke these words no Christian doubts. But now that that seed is dead and has been multiplied, many grains have been sown in the earth. Among them is the blessed Laurence, and this is the day of his sowing. What an abundant harvest has sprung from these grains scattered over all the earth! We see it, we rejoice in it, nay, we ourselves are the harvest. If if so be, by His grace we belong to the granary. For not all that grows in the field belongs to the granary. The same useful nourishing rain feeds both the wheat and the chaff. God forbid that both should be laid up together in the granary although they grew together in the field, and were threshed together in the threshing floor.
Now is the time to choose. Let us now, before the winnowing, separate ourselves from the wicked by our manner of life, as in the floor the grain is threshed out of the chaff, though not yet separated from it by the final winnowing. Hear me, ye holy grains, who, I doubt not, are here; for if I doubted, I should not be a grain myself: hear me, I say; or rather, hear that first grain speaking by me. Love not your life in this world: love it not if you truly love it, so that by not loving you may preserve it; for by not loving, you love the more. “He that loves his life in this world will lose it.” Thus because Laurence was as an enemy to himself and lost his life in this world, he found it in the next. Being a minister of Christ by his very title, for deacon means minister, he followed the Man-God as the Gospel exhorts. He followed him to the altar, and to the altar of the Cross. Having fallen with Him into the earth, he has been multiplied in Him. Though separated from Saint Laurence by distance of time and place, yet we are ourselves, as the Bishop of Hippo teaches, a part of the harvest that is ever springing from him. Let this thought excite us to gratitude towards the holy deacon, and let us all the more eagerly unite our homage with the honour bestowed on him by our heavenly Father for having ministered to His Son.
“Thrice blessed are the Roman people, for they honour you on the very spot where your sacred bones repose! They prostrate in your sanctuary, and watering the ground with their tears they pour out their vows. We who are distant from Rome, separated by Alps and Pyrenees, how can we even imagine what treasures she possesses, or how rich is her earth in sacred tombs? We have not her privileges, we cannot trace the martyrs’ bloody footsteps. But from afar we gaze on the heavens. O holy Laurence! It is there we seek the memorial of your passion: for you have two dwelling-places, that of your body on Earth and that of your soul in Heaven. In the ineffable heavenly city you have been received to citizenship, and the civic crown adorns your brow in its eternal Senate. So brightly shine your jewels that it seems the heavenly Rome has chosen you perpetual Consul. The joy of the Quirites proves how great is your office, your influence and your power, for you grant their requests. You hear all who pray to you, they ask what they will and none ever goes away sad. Ever assist your children of the Queen City. Give them the strong support of your fatherly love, and a mother’s tender, fostering care. Together with them, O you honour of Christ, listen to your humble client confessing his misery and sins. I acknowledge that I am not worthy that Christ should hear me, but through the patronage of the holy Martyrs, my evils can be remedied. Hearken to your suppliant. In your goodness free me from the fetters of the flesh and of the world” (Prudentius).Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:
At Rome, the martyrdom of one hundred and sixty five holy martyrs who were soldiers under the emperor Aurelian.
At Bergamo, St. Asteria, virgin and martyr, in the persecution of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian.
At Alexandria, the commemoration of the holy martyrs, in the persecution of Valerian under the governor Æmilian. They were a long time subjected to various excruciating torments and won the crown of martyrdom by different kinds of deaths.
At Carthage, the holy virgins and martyrs Bassa, Paula and Agathonica.
At Rome, the holy confessor Deusdedit, a labouring man, who gave to the poor every Saturday what he had earned during the week.
In Spain, the Apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, under the name of our Lady of Ransom, foundress of the Order for the Redemption of Captives.
And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.
Thanks be to God.
