St. Laurence
Deacon and Martyr
Abbot Dom Guéranger
From the Liturgical Year, Volume XIII
FIRST VESPERS
Laurence has entered the lists as a martyr, and has confessed the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Such is the antiphon wherewith 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 August 6, 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 upon their heads.
See, here is the gold which I promised you-gold of a kind that tire 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 ears, 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 St. 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 1,500. 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 August 9, 258.
The first answer the furious prefect made was to order Laurence to be scourged and tortured upon 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 St. 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, begin once more upon 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 baptized 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 shall 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 Thee 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 upon 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 Thee, O Lord, to witness: when I was accused, I did not deny Thee; when I was questioned, I confessed Thee, O Christ; on the red-hot coals I gave Thee thanks.' And with his countenance radiant with heavenly beauty, he continued: Yea, I give Thee thanks, O Lord Jesus Christ, for that Thou hast 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 Thee thanks, O Lord, that I have merited to enter into Thy 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. Thou hast placed Rome's sceptre high over all; Thou hast 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 thy purpose: Thou didst will to bind the immense universe together into one Christian Kingdom. O Christ, for the sake of Thy Romans, make this city Christian; for to it Thou gavest the charge of leading all the rest to sacred unity. All its members in every place are united-a very type of Thy Kingdom; the conquered universe has bowed before it. Oh may its royal head be bowed in turn Send Thy Gabriel and bid him heal the blindness of the sons of lulus 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 for ever.' 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 swords. 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 August 9 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, Thou hast proved my heart, and visited it by night, Thou hast tried me by fire, and iniquity hath not been found in me. Hear. O Lord, my justice; attend to my supplication. Such is the grand Introit which immediately after the night Vigils, hallowed the dawn of August I0, 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 St. 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 St. 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 August 10, the graceful name of St. Laurence's tears: a touching instance of that popular piety which delights in raising the heart to God through the medium of natural phenomena.
