My Saint was a Spaniard

 

 He was born as Laurentius in Huesca, when Spain was the Roman colony called Hispania. His parents, Horentius and Patientia, were wealthy farmers who had courageously taken the Christian faith, which they taught their son.

Early in the 3rd century, Lawrence went to Italy and entered the service of the bishop who was later proclaimed Pope Sextus II, as his Deacon.  He was the treasurer who cared for the Church’s offerings and manuscripts, and distributed alms to the poor and sick. 

The Emperor Valerian persecuted the Christians violently, and he believed that they possessed great wealth, of which he was in desperate need. The Empire was going bankrupt, due to the excesses of its rulers. Valerian demanded that the Pope deliver to him the Church’s treasures, and when the Pope refused, condemned him to have his head cut off.

Before the soldiers seized him, the Pope secretly instructed Lawrence to give away the Church’s hidden wealth, which was much more modest than the Romans presumed, among the poor, and to hide away the relics. When Valerian’s henchman, the Prefect of Rome, discovered what Lawrence was doing he commanded him to bring to his door all the riches of the Church, without delay.

The next day, Lawrence gathered together a crowd of beggars, cripples and blind men and led them to the greedy Prefect saying proudly, “These are the true riches of the Church”. Furious at having been cheated out of his booty, the Roman ordered that Lawrence should be roasted to death on an iron grid over a slow-burning fire. 

But his atrocious suffering only increased the joy of Lawrence’s martyrdom, for he longed to join the departed Pope in Heaven. He was chained to the iron rack,  which was placed on a bed of red-hot coals, under the gaze of a vast crowd. 

He lay there a while in the smoke that rose from his own body, without a sigh or a moan.  Then, legend maintains, he spoke out to his torturers.  To help them better perform their task, he said kindly, “Turn me over, so that my flesh will be roasted on the other side too”.

A good number of those who witnessed his death, some of them illustrious Senators, were so awed by his fortitude that they secretly converted and sought baptism.  The Romans, in their crumbling Empire, were so disillusioned with the old pagan gods that they readily embraced the barefoot Messiah that people loved dying for.

But it was not until the next century that Christianity was sanctioned by the Emperor Constantine, who built a church over Lawrence’s grave.  He was martyred in the year 258, on the 10th of August, which is his official Saint’s Day.

The Italians call the shower of meteorites seen in the sky around that date “the burning tears of Saint Lawrence”, in memory of his ordeal by fire. But Spaniards overlook the “burning” and know these falling stars simply as las lágrimas de San Lorenzo.

Lawrence is the patron saint of librarians because he cared for the Church's manuscripts, but, due to a popular misunderstanding, he is also the patron saint of cooks. Since he is shown holding a small grill in his hand, or standing before a pit of coals with a large grill above it, many simple folk were led to believe that he was famous for roasting meat!  

 

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