Sowing Ourselves Bountifully as Grains of Wheat, Feast of St. Lawrence, August 10, 2015

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Feast of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr
August 10, 2015
2 Cor 9:6-10, Ps 112, Jn 12:24-26

To listen to an audio of today’s homily, please click here: 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• The Feast of St. Lawrence the Deacon is somewhat unique on the Church’s calendar. Other than the Blessed Mother, St. John the Baptist and the Apostles, he’s the only saint or martyr whose annual celebration in the universal calendar of the Church is a feast. Everyone other great hero of the faith is celebrated either as a obligatory or optional memorial. Why is St. Lawrence so distinguished? The fundamental reason is because he is the third patron of the Church of Rome, together with Saints Peter and Paul, and insofar as we’re all Roman Catholics, his annual celebration takes on the character of the Church of Rome. But I think that we could say that there would be two other reasons of fittingness.
• The first is that it is a celebration of the diaconate, which is so important in the history and present of the Church.
• The second is because of what the diaconate does, which is the service of charity. In the early Church in Jerusalem, as we see in the Acts of the Apostles, the Apostles were no longer able to do the charitable service of tables and all the charity that was implied in that activity. So they ordained seven men to the service of charity. They did this not because such charity was less important than prayer and the ministry of the Word the apostles were doing but precisely because it was and the apostles wanted to ensure that it get done. Over the course of time in various ancient dioceses, the service of deacons expanded into diakoniai, the charitable centers of the Church (like Catholic Charities today). In Rome, these service centers were quite extensive and were run by a team of seven deacons. Even though there were many priests in Rome, there were just seven deacons, who were men of great charity and organizational ability, and it was from the deacons that popes were often elected (like Pope Saints Leo the Great and Gregory the Great, who would be ordained priests and then bishop of Rome). St. Lawrence, with St. Stephen the Protomartyr and St. Francis of Assisi later, are the three most famous deacons in Church history and it’s St. Lawrence who exemplifies best of all this service of charity.
• So it’s fitting to celebrate the feast of St. Lawrence for all of these reasons. But the point of this celebration is not merely to celebrate what he “stands for” but who he is and how we might imitate him. Jesus tells us in the Gospel that whoever serves him must follow him and that the Father will honor whoever serves him. To follow Jesus means to go the path of the grain of wheat, to die to oneself so as to bear fruit, something that Pope Benedict once described as the “essence of Christianity.” St. Lawrence is someone who did. He did so first by sowing himself bountifully, to use St. Paul’s image from today’s first reading, in the charitable service of the diaconate. He did so as well by the well he sowed himself so generously and cheerfully, falling to the ground as a grain of wheat in martyrdom. We’ll look at each in turn.
• St. Lawrence died in the persecution of Valerian in 258, four days after he Pope St. Sixtus and the other deacons of Rome were arrested in the Catacomb of St. Praetextatus during the celebration of Mass. St. Lawrence was given a few days to round up all of the Church’s “treasures.” The Romans were trying to decapitate the Church of Rome by killing off its leaders and amassing and destroying all its good. So St. Lawrence assembled all of the Church’s true treasures, which were not books or vessels but those for whom Christ died: all of the poor, but Christian and non-Christian. They were the pearls of great price that the early Church had sacrificed so much to serve. In the words of the Psalm, Lawrence “lavishly [gave] to the poor,” and now “his generosity shall endure forever.”
• The authorities were incensed at Lawrence’s not turning over the supposed real treasures of the Church. And so they wanted to execute him in a particularly grueling way. He was roasted on a gridiron, a terribly painful way to die. But just as St. Paul says that God likes a cheerful giver, he remained a cheerful giver as he was giving his life. As he was being burned alive, he turned to his executioners and said perhaps the most famous comic line in all of hagiography: “Assum est. Versa et manduca,” roughly translated, “This side is cooked. Turn me over and eat.”
• How was St. Lawrence able to sow himself as a grain of wheat so bountifully both in dying to himself in order to improve others’ lives in charity as well as in his famous martyrdom? It was because God had enriched him to do so. St. Paul tells us at the end of today’s first reading, “The one who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed and increase the harvest of your righteousness.” God had supplied Lawrence with what he needed to sow and Lawrence cooperated, increasing the “harvest of righteousness for God.” In the Opening Prayer, we noted this same point and begged God for a similar bountiful supply: “O God, giver of that ardor of love for you by which St. Lawrence was outstandingly faithful in service and glorious in martyrdom” — in other words, God gave him the seed for the sowing — “grant that we may love what he loved and put into practice what he taught.” We continue to pray for that grace to have the love to sow as bountifully as Lawrence himself practiced. And the greatest seed that God gives is his Son, the grain of wheat, who fell to the ground and died in order that we might receive the seeds of the fruit of redemption and bear great fruit. Christ, that grain of wheat, has become our Living Bread, and he sowed himself into Lawrence and motivated his charity and courage in martyrdom and wishes to do the same for us in the Holy Communion we’re about to receive.

The readings for today’s feast were: 

Reading 1
2 COR 9:6-10