Today is one of my favorite feast days in the Church year. I grew to love St. Lawrence largely through my affiliation with the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center in Lawrence, KS (that’s a lot of Lawrence’s). He was martyred by being grilled to death in the early days of the Church. While being grilled he is reported to have said “You can turn me over now. I’m done on this side.” If you know the story then you might have picked up the connection with the first reading at Mass today, “The Lord loves a cheerful giver.” Msgr. Krische, the founder of the St. Lawrence Center always taught us that St. Lawrence is the patron of the poor, students, and brewers. This made him an ideal patron of a campus center with a bunch of poor college students infatuated with beer.

The pictures included in this post are of a pilgrimage to Rome in February and March of 2005 and show the church of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls. St. Lawrence is buried here along with St. Stephen and St. Justin. It is told that when the bones of Stephen were brought from the Holy Land that the bones of St. Lawrence rolled over in the tomb to make room. St. Stephen is my confirmation patron so I find it rather fitting that his remains lie along side those of St. Lawrence and the first Christian apologist (defender of the faith), St. Justin.

As I come closer to the day when I will be ordained a deacon my prayer to St. Lawrence continues to increase. I pray that I may have his courage and his charitable heart that helped him to see the treasure found in the poor. There are a couple more pictures below, but I’m also trying out a new photo site. If you want to see more pictures of San Lorenzo, click the ling below.

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Inside the Church

The Tomb of St. Lawrence (and Sts. Stephen and Justin)

The Blood-Stained Slab on Which the Body of Lawrence Rested