Feast day: August 10

St. Lawrence

Deacon & Martyr · d. 258

Patron of Cooks, comedians, the poor, librarians

Deacon of Rome ordered to surrender the Church's treasures; he presented the city's poor instead — and was roasted alive on a gridiron.

Lawrence was one of the seven deacons of the Church of Rome and a victim of the persecution under the Emperor Valerian in 258. As deacon he was entrusted with the care of the Church's goods and the relief of its poor — a charge that would shape the story of his death. When Pope Sixtus II was led away to execution, Lawrence, longing to share his fate, was told he would follow in three days.

In those three days, according to St. Ambrose, who recorded the story not long after, Lawrence gathered up the treasures in his keeping and distributed them swiftly among the poor, the sick, and the widows of the city. When the prefect of Rome demanded that he hand over the wealth of the Church, Lawrence asked for time, then presented to him instead the crowd of the poor, the crippled, and the blind, declaring, 'These are the treasures of the Church.'

Enraged at the defiance, the prefect is said to have ordered him put to death slowly over a fire on an iron gridiron. The tradition, beloved for its courage and its humor in the face of agony, holds that after a time he told his torturers, 'Turn me over; this side is done.'

Lawrence was buried on the road to Tibur, where Constantine later raised a church over his grave — one of the seven great basilicas of Rome. Since the fourth century he has been among the most honored of all the Roman martyrs, and he remains the patron of deacons, cooks, and the poor.

Mid-martyrdom, he reportedly told his executioners: 'Turn me over — this side is done.' The Church made him patron of both cooks and comedians.

“Behold, these are the treasures of the Church.”
— St. Lawrence

Image: Fra Angelico (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/09089a.htm