A Movement in Crisis

Fr. Larry Hart

First A Vignette Regarding Wealth
Saint Lawrence was one of the seven deacons of Rome in the time of Pope Sixtus. The Emperor Valerian issued an edict that all bishops, priests, and deacons should immediately be put to death and their goods confiscated by the Imperial Treasury. Pope Sixtus was arrested while celebrating the liturgy and immediately executed. After the death of Sixtus the Prefect of Rome demanded that Lawrence turn over the riches of the Church. He was given three days in which to complete the task. During that three days he distributed as much of the Church’s property as possible to the poor. On the third day he presented himself before the Prefect, and when ordered to turn over the treasures of the Church he presented the indigent, the blind, the crippled, and the suffering he had gathered, and declared that here were the true treasures of the Church. I would tell you that this act of holy defiance led to the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence the last of the seven deacons, but then you would think that is the point of the story.

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