Homily for Thursday, 10 August 2017‒ Feast of St. Lawrence

Thursday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 9:6-10; Psalm 112:1-2, 5-6, 7-8, 9; John 12:24-26

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Lawrence, a deacon and martyr of the Roman Empire’s persecution of Christians under the emperor Valerian. Yet when we celebrate feasts of martyrs in our Church, people who have literally given their lives for Christ and have been killed out of hatred for our faith, I often ask how we might relate to these martyrs. Are our chances of being killed for our faith not slim to nil?

Of course, more Christians have been killed for our faith in the past century than in all the previous centuries of Christianity combined. But here in Canada, while we may encounter misunderstanding, incredulity, and even ridicule if we are truly living our faith, our lives are more or less safe. And so how might we relate to martyrs like St. Lawrence? What are common aspects of our lives with those of martyrs like St. Lawrence?

The readings we hear today might give us clues to answering these questions. Our Gospel reading from John is a classic call to martyrdom; Jesus’ glorification of anybody who would give up their lives for his sake, as he himself was about to when he spoke those words: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains… a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

St. Lawrence died indeed, and a gruesome death at that. Let me suggest, though, that his death alone was not what made him a martyr. Before his death, St. Lawrence had practiced for many years a kind of living martyrdom. The most important ministry of deacons of the time in Rome was to ensure that the necessities of life of the poor were met. This St. Lawrence did with distinction. Legend has it that, when St. Lawrence was arrested and brought before the Roman prefect, he was ordered to bring with him the treasures of the Church to be confiscated. Lawrence presented to the prefect a large group of poor people of Rome, saying: “Here are the treasures of the Church”!

We say in our Psalm response today, “Happy the merciful who give to those in need.” And in our first reading, from 2 Corinthians, we hear that “God loves a cheerful giver.” St. Lawrence was certainly “the merciful” and “cheerful giver” to anybody in need. He gave his life to this ministry, long before he was killed for his and our faith. It is foremost in these works of mercy and in his regard for the poor as “the treasures of the Church” that St. Lawrence is an example to us. St. Lawrence’s free acceptance of a martyr’s death only flowed from the martyr’s example of the rest of his life.

God calls us, as he called St. Lawrence, “happy” insofar as we “give to those in need. God calls us still to give cheerfully; to ensure that the least well off among us are not in need of necessities of life and human dignity. God calls us to value the least among us as “treasures”; to challenge social structures that marginalize and dehumanize many while enriching a few. This is living martyrdom; a true counter-culture we are called to live as St. Lawrence did, dying to ourselves in the process, as humble grains of wheat fall “into the earth” to die and, only so, to “bear much fruit.”