to celebrate today’s Feast of St. Lawrence, a deacon, here are 2 homilies:
Who Do You Say You Are? – John 12:24-26; The Feast of St. Lawrence
If President Obama summoned you to the White House and said, bring me all the riches of the Church, bring me all the Church’s wealth, what would you bring him?
Would you bring him all the art and all the stained glass?
Would you bring him the Catechism?
Would you bring him the Eucharist?
What do you think is most important about the Church, most defining?
We’re always talking about the Church. We’re always saying this about it or that. But what are we talking about really? What do we think the Church really is?
Here’s what St. Lawrence did in the fourth century—St. Lawrence, one of the early deacons–when the Emperor of Rome summoned him and demanded all the riches of the Church in Rome.
He went out and rounded up all the poor and the sick and the lame, and he took them and brought them to the palace, and he said to the Emperor, here, here is the wealth of the Church. And he meant it. He wasn’t joking. And for this he was martyred, roasted on a spit.