Word to the Wise
Friday, August 10, 2007 - St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr
[2 Corinthians 9:6-10 and John 12:24-26]Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but it it dies, it produces much fruit.
There's an old joke about a hog and a hen on a farm who fell to arguing about who did the most to feed America at breakfast! The hog finally settled the argument by pointing out to the hen that for her it is a matter of contribution. For the hog it is a matter of ultimate commitment! St. Lawrence, of whom legend says he had a sense of humor, reputedly told his torturers who were roasting him to death: "Turn me over, I'm done on this side!" And there's no question that his commitment was an ultimate one! He also had a good sense of priorities as well because when asked to turn over the treasury of the church, he called together all the members of the community and told the authorities that this was the treasury! Our grade school Catholic comic books with their vivid pictures of tortured martyrs had a way of making martyrdom a sort of historical anomaly - at least not something Christians "do" anymore. Not so! We need not look too far back to find Archbishop Romero, the Jesuits in El Salvador, and the Maryknoll sisters in Central America. Martyrdom is not a romantic thing. It is ugly. Most martyrs don't go looking for martyrdom. They go to the real treasury of the Church - the faithful - at the risk of their lives. Their individual lives: "grains of wheat" do bear much fruit. One of the great church fathers said, "The blood of martyrs is the seedbed of the church." The martyrs remind us of what is ultimate: the love of God and neighbor. Martyrdom for any other reason, as St. Thomas Aquinas tells us (ST. q.124 a. 3), is not the real thing. AMEN
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