The prefect of Rome had done his arithmetic. The Christians were collecting money, a great deal of it by the sound of things, and they had an official in charge of it: a young deacon named Lawrence, who kept the accounts, held the alms, and knew where everything was. In the summer of 258 the prefect sent for him and told him to hand over the treasures of the Church.

Lawrence asked for three days to gather them.

These are the treasures of the Church.St. Lawrence, as related by St. Ambrose

Four days in August

Some background, because the timing is the story.

The Emperor Valerian had issued an edict that year of a specifically administrative cruelty. Rather than persecuting Christians generally, it targeted the leadership: bishops, priests, and deacons were to be executed on identification, without trial. Decapitate the Church and the body would disperse. It was, as policy, quite intelligent.

On the sixth of August, Pope St. Sixtus II was arrested while celebrating the liturgy in the catacombs and killed on the spot, along with four of his deacons. Lawrence was his archdeacon, the senior man, and he was not with him. St. Ambrose preserves the tradition of what passed between them, Lawrence distraught at being left behind, Sixtus telling him he would follow in three days.

He followed in four. Which means the whole of what we know about St. Lawrence happened inside a single week, in a city where being found out was fatal, by a man who knew to the day roughly when his own turn was coming.

The treasures

He spent his three days doing two things. The first was giving away everything the Church had: distributing the entire treasury to the poor of Rome as fast as he could move, which had the double advantage of being what the money was for and of ensuring the state would never see a coin of it.

The second was making a list.

When the three days were up he came back to the prefect, as promised, with the treasures of the Church in tow. The blind. The lame. The lepers. Widows, orphans, the sick, the destitute of a city that had a great many of them. He had assembled them, and he presented them, and he said the sentence that has been repeated for seventeen hundred years: these are the treasures of the Church.

It is worth resisting the urge to hear this as merely a fine gesture, because Lawrence did not mean it as one. He was not being poetic. The claim is doctrinal and he is making it under interrogation, to a Roman official, on pain of death: that the Church's actual wealth, the thing she would be ruined to lose, is these people. Everything else in the building is furniture.

The prefect, understandably, did not take it well.

The gridiron

What happened next is the most famous execution in the Roman martyrology. He was stretched on an iron grill over coals and roasted slowly, and after some time on it he is said to have addressed his executioners.

This side is done. Turn me over and eat.

I should say honestly that some modern historians doubt the gridiron, on the grounds that Valerian's edict specified beheading and that is what the other Roman clergy received that month. The counter-argument is that St. Ambrose reports the gridiron within about a hundred and thirty years, and the poet Prudentius not long after him, which for an ancient martyrdom is close to the event. I do not know which is right, and it does not much change the man.

What is certain is what the Church chose to remember, and that is the joke. Not his courage, though he had it, and not his suffering, though it was real. A wisecrack, delivered in extremity, at his own expense. The early Christians could have preserved a noble speech. They kept the line about turning him over, and they made him the patron of cooks and, in due course, of comedians.

That instinct is worth understanding rather than admiring from a distance. Humour at the point of death is not bravado. It is a statement about who is actually in charge of the situation, made by someone who has concluded that the worst thing available to his enemies is not, finally, very frightening. He was not laughing because it did not hurt. He was laughing because it did not win.

At the hour of our death

Here is where he touches your beads.

You ask for this every time you pray a Hail Mary. Not occasionally. Every single one, fifty-three times in a full Rosary, however long you have been praying it: pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Most of us say it without hearing it. It is the most-repeated petition in Catholic life and it is a request for a specific grace, at a specific future moment, which will arrive.

Lawrence is what the answer to that prayer can look like. Not necessarily the gridiron, and please God not that. But the composure. The strange freedom of a man who has already given everything away and therefore has nothing left that anyone can take. He had spent three days emptying the treasury; when they came for him, there was nothing to confiscate but a body.

Praying for a happy death sounds morbid to modern ears, and it is the least morbid thing in the world. It is asking, in advance and repeatedly, for the grace to be like him at the end: unafraid, un-owned, and possibly even funny.

Keeping his feast

Two things, and the first one is unusual.

Go outside tonight and look up. The Perseid meteor shower peaks in the nights just after the tenth of August, and in Italy the meteors are called le lacrime di San Lorenzo, the tears of St. Lawrence, said to be the sparks of his fire still falling. It is one of the loveliest pieces of folk piety in the calendar and it costs you nothing but a dark field and some patience. Take your beads and pray a decade out there, under his tears, for a happy death for yourself and for whoever is on your mind.

The second thing is more in his line. Give something away today, quietly, to someone who needs it more than you do, and do not tell anyone you did it. He would recognise that as the whole point.

St. Lawrence, deacon and martyr, who gave away the treasury and kept the treasure, obtain for us a light hold on what we own and a steady heart at the end. Pray for us now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.

He is named in the Roman Canon at Mass, directly after Sixtus, the two of them side by side forever, four days apart. If you would like beads for your own hour, our handmade rosaries are made to be carried until they wear out.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was St. Lawrence?

A deacon of the Church in Rome, responsible for its treasury and its care of the poor, martyred on August 10, 258, during the persecution of the Emperor Valerian. He was the archdeacon of Pope St. Sixtus II, who had been executed four days earlier. He is one of the most venerated of the Roman martyrs and is named in the Roman Canon of the Mass.

When is the feast of St. Lawrence?

August 10, kept as a Feast on the Church's General Roman Calendar, a rank shared by very few martyrs who were not apostles.

What did St. Lawrence say about the treasures of the Church?

Ordered by the prefect of Rome to surrender the Church's wealth, he asked for three days, distributed the treasury to the poor, then presented the poor, sick, and disabled of the city and said, "These are the treasures of the Church." The episode is related by St. Ambrose in the fourth century.

Was St. Lawrence really roasted on a gridiron?

Tradition says so. St. Ambrose reports the fire within roughly 130 years of his death, and the poet Prudentius not long after, along with his reported words to his executioners: "This side is done, turn me over." Some modern historians think beheading more likely, since Valerian's edict prescribed it for clergy. The Church has never settled the question, and the gridiron remains his emblem.

What is St. Lawrence the patron saint of?

Deacons, the poor, cooks, and, on account of his last words, comedians. He is also a patron of librarians and archivists, from his care of the Church's records and registers of the poor.

What are the Tears of St. Lawrence?

The Perseid meteor shower, which peaks each year in the nights just after his feast on August 10. In Italian tradition the meteors are called le lacrime di San Lorenzo, the tears of St. Lawrence, imagined as sparks from the fire of his martyrdom.