Lawrence was one of the seven deacons of the Church of Rome under Pope Sixtus II. In the persecution of Valerian the Pope and his deacons were seized; Lawrence, who had charge of the Church's goods and of the care of the poor, was executed a few days later, on August 10 in the year 258. The account preserved by Saint Ambrose and celebrated in the hymns of Prudentius tells how, ordered to hand over the Church's treasures, he gathered the poor, the crippled, and the blind and presented them, saying that these were the Church's wealth. The gridiron of his martyrdom belongs to the same early tradition. His cult was immediate and immense. Constantine built a basilica over his tomb on the Via Tiburtina, now San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, one of the great churches of Rome; his name stands in the Roman Canon among the martyrs; and by the fourth century Rome kept his day with a vigil, an honor otherwise reserved to the apostles. That antiquity is why a Roman deacon holds the rank of feast in the General Roman Calendar, a distinction shared by very few saints who were neither apostles nor evangelists. The Mass is celebrated with red vestments and has proper readings that fit him exactly: Saint Paul's teaching that whoever sows bountifully will reap bountifully, for God loves a cheerful giver, and the Lord's word that unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies it remains just a grain of wheat. Lawrence is patron of deacons, of cooks, and of the poor, and the Perseid meteors of mid-August are known in many countries as the tears of Saint Lawrence.

Feast

feast

August 10

feast