August 10, Feast of St. Lawrence, Deacon, Martyr.

St Laurence ( - 258)

Lawrence was one of the seven deacons of the Church of Rome and was executed on 10th August 258, four days after Pope Sixtus II and his companions. It's thought that he was a Spaniard, from Toledo.

St, Lawrence was executed by being roasted on a gridiron and is said to have told those roasting him "Turn me over now, that side is done."

A basilica was built over Laurence’s tomb fifty years after his death, by the Emperor Constantine, and the anniversary of his martyrdom was kept as a solemn feast – with considerably more solemnity than that of Pope Sixtus II (we do not know why). By the sixth century, it was one of the most important feasts throughout much of western Christendom. His name occurs (with St. Sixtus’s) in the Roman Canon of the Mass.

St. Lawrence is patron of librarians, archivists, cooks, and deacons. He is most often represented in art handing out the treasures of the Church, roasting on a gridiron, or with a gridiron, the Gospels, or a bag of money for the poor.