10th AUGUST. MONDAY, WEEK 19

Feast: St Lawrence, deacon and Martyr

1.2Corinthians 9:6-10

2.John 12:24-26

MEDITATIONS AND REFLECTIONS

In this feast of St. Lawrence, we are reminded by our Mother church that he was one of the seven deacons of the Church of Rome and was martyred under the Emperor Valerian on the 10^th of August 258, four days after pope Sixtus II and his companions. Little is known of the life of Saint Lawrence. What in fact known about him is that he was immensely popular with the Christians of Rome. A basilica was built over St. Lawrence’s tomb in the field of Varano near the Via Tiurtina fifty years after his death, by the Emperor Constantine, and the anniversary of his martyrdom was kept in Rome as a solemn feast. By the sixth century, the Feast of Saint Lawrence was one of the most important feast throughout much of western Christendom. His name occurs in the Roman Canon of the Mass (Eucharistic prayer 1).

Eighteen centuries ago, St. Lawrence was the deacon in Rome responsible for the church’s treasury. When a hostile Emperor sought to confiscate the Church’s assets, Lawrence distributed everything to the poor. When an official demanded to see the church’s wealth, Lawrence gathered the poor before him and said “Behold, here is the Church’s treasure.” For that, he was cruelly executed. Lawrence’s witness, however, asks us the question: How do we see the poor? Do we see them as the church’s treasure? Or do we see and regard them otherwise? For instance do we look down on them as inferior, lower class, a public nuisance or a tax drain? It could be that we see them with our naked eyes yet in our hearts they don’t have any room to rest. St. Lawrence, deacon and martyr, challenges us to see the poor as brothers and sisters in the human family, to be treated, not with contempt or even pity, but with compassion, respect, generosity, and humility. As befits people with God-given dignity. As befits the treasure of the Church.

In dying we find life

In the gospel Jesus speaks of himself as the grain of wheat that falls on the ground and dies and in dying yields a rich harvest. Addressing us, his followers, he declares that, for us too, it is in giving our lives away, for his sake, that we find our lives. It is in serving the Lord, and in serving others through him, that we come to live with the Lord. “Wherever I am,” Jesus says, “my servant will be there too.” In the same note, Paul from his second letter to the Corinthians that if the Christians in Corinth give generously and cheerfully to the needy Church in Jerusalem, they will experience God’s blessings in abundance. As Paul says, “the more you sow, the more you reap.” This is core teaching of Christian faith. It is in dying that we find life, it is in giving that we receive, it is in serving the Lord and his people that we find honour from God.