Hunolt Sermons/Volume 12/Sermon 54
FIFTY-FOURTH SERMON
ON ST. LAWRENCE.
Subject.
1. Lawrence proved himself, while undergoing pains and torments, a prodigy of virtue and of the love of God; 2. Our love of God and our virtue, to be sincere, must be tried by adversity and contradictions. Preached on the feast of St. Lawrence.
Text.
" As gold in the furnace He hath proved them. (Wis 3:6)
Introduction.
What St. Chrysostom said of the great St. Paul I may well apply to-day to him in whose honor we are now assembled here, the great martyr St. Lawrence. " If you wonder at the exploits of Paul when you consider him calling the dead to life, much more do I wonder at him when I behold him manacled and confined in a gloomy prison." Such are the words of the holy Father. And I say in turn: If the city of Rome wondered long ago at the virtue of Lawrence when she beheld him leading a life of chastity in the bloom of youth, giving all his treasures to the poor, fighting so zealously for the glory of God, and restoring the blind to sight by the mere sign of the cross, much more do I wonder at Lawrence lying bound on the glowing coals, and suffering the most atrocious torments. For miracles and exterior works of devotion are not infallible tests of true virtue and holiness; but crosses, sufferings, persecution, adversity these are the furnace in which God tries the true love of men, like gold in the fire, and makes His saints glorious and admirable before the world, as He has shown in a special manner in Lawrence, and as I, to his honor and glory, now mean to prove in detail.
Plan of Discourse.
Lawrence proved himself, while undergoing pains and torments, a prodigy of virtue and of the love of God; the first part of this panegyric. Our virtue and love of God, to be sincere, must be tried and preserved by adversity and contradictions; the second part, for our instruction.
Give us, Lord, Thy light and grace, through the intercession of the Queen of angels and martyrs, and of Thy admirable martyr Lawrence, who is now triumphant in glory with Thee! Amen.
To bear great pain and sorrow without murmuring, readily and patiently, is in itself a sure sign of a no small degree of virtue in a man in this world. To accept great pain and sorrow with thankfulness, to bear it with joy and exultation requires an uncommon and extraordinary virtue from a man in this world. To sigh for still greater pain and sorrow, and to desire and wish for it as a joyous and agreeable thing must indeed be the result of a surprising virtue in a man in this world. How seldom nowadays do we find, even among Christians, men of the first class, who bear trials with patience and constancy! How very rare to find any of the second class, who rejoice in their trials! And where is there one to be found who may honestly take his place in the third class, as one who longs for more trials?
This feast presents us with a prodigy of the kind in St. Lawrence. No miser ever stretched out his hand for gold, no ambitious man ever strove for the honors of the world, no voluptuary ever longed for pleasures and delights so eagerly as Lawrence longed for and exulted in pains and torments. His eager desires in this direction cannot be expressed fully by any one except himself, or else St. Ambrose, who has handed down to us the following well-known words of his, in which he uttered a bitter complaint to Pope Sixtus: " Where, father, dost thou go without thy son? Whither, holy priest, dost thou hasten without a deacon? Thou art wont never to offer sacrifice without a minister; have I displeased thee, father? Hast thou found me unworthy to attend on thee? Now thou art going, and leavest me here! What fault have I committed? Hast thou found any thing displeasing or unbecoming in my conduct that thou wilt no longer admit me to be thy companion? Try me and see if I shall not be thy true servant in all places, at all times." Where was Sixtus going, my dear brethren? If he had been setting forth on a party of pleasure or to a banquet, could Lawrence have been more pressing in his entreaties to be taken with him? And to our minds his complaints would have then been more seasonable. But the journey was for a far different purpose; Sixtus was surrounded by fierce soldiers, laden with chains, and was being dragged to the place of public execution, to be beheaded by the sword, as we learn from the Roman Martyrology, or, as Prudentius says, to be hung on a gibbet. This was the aim of the ardent desires of Lawrence; he complained at being excluded from a similar death.
And therefore he ran after the Pope, crying out with tears in his eyes: "Take me with you, father, and see whether he to whom thou hast entrusted the dispensation of the flesh and blood of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, be not ready to offer up his own flesh and blood for his faith and for God's sake. If thou hast pity on me as thy disciple, then remember that Abraham was prepared to slay even his only son, that Peter sent Stephen to a most painful death. Do this now with me, too. All the treasures thou hast entrusted to me are already distributed to the poor; I have nothing left but my life; be not so cruel as to prevent me from offering that up to my God." Be of good heart, Lawrence, thy wish will soon be fulfilled! Thy thirst for suffering for the love of Christ will soon be satiated! " Grieve not, my son," was the answer of St. Sixtus to his sighs, "I do not desert thee! Thou shalt follow me after three days; thou hast a greater combat to sustain." What a wonderful consolation! exclaims St. Augustine; who ever heard that a man should comfort and console himself at the thought of coming torments? "He does not say: Do not grieve, my son; the persecution will soon cease, and thy life will be safe; but: Do not grieve; thou shalt come after me where I am going;" the news of his being freed from suffering would rather have saddened him all the more, and therefore the holy Pope said: Grieve not, for greater torments await thee.
And so it happened in reality. I do not mean to describe at length the atrocious torments inflicted on him by the Emperor Valerian, nor to dwell on the rods and scourges that tore and wounded his whole body from head to foot; on the hot iron plates that burnt him while he was hanging in mid-air; on the clubs and whips, loaded with lead, wherewith he was so mangled that, as we read in his Life, his flesh looked as if it had been pounded in a mortar; on the cruel rack on which, since all former efforts to make him renounce his faith had proved fruitless, his torn, body was stretched out by the hands and feet, and then hacked with hooks and pincers until the flesh fell off his bones in pieces. Reflect on this, my dear brethren; was it not enough to quell the courage of even the bravest hero, and to reduce him to a humble silence? But how was it with Lawrence in his torments? Was his hunger for suffering stilled? Not by any means; what he was suffering seemed to him, as it were, mere rods fit for children, not torments to try the virtue of a true servant of God, whose heart was inflamed with charity. With cheerful mien and smiling face he turned to his tormentors, and actually laughed at them: "He cried out and said: I worship my God, and therefore I do not fear your torments." Do what you wish; do not leave off; if I might beg a favor from you it be that you do not spare me, but rather torture this body of mine as long as you can; " I do not fear your torments." Therefore, tyrant, since such is his wish, grant it; exhaust on him the resources of your cruelty; show what you can do, that he may at last learn to fear you!
Finally the wrathful emperor, to glut his fury, thought of a new species of torture which had never before been heard of, and could only have been imagined in hell itself. This was the grid-iron, on which the torn and mangled body of Lawrence was laid, to be slowly roasted to death. The mere imagination of this makes me shudder, although it did not inspire the least sentiment of horror in him who suffered it. What a torment it is, my dear brethren, to burn in fire! What an incomprehensible, terrible torment to be thus roasted in fire! Fire is the greatest, most severe, and searching of all tortures that can be inflicted on man. Steel and iron, rocks and stones are not hard enough to withstand its action. Try how long you can hold your finger in the flame of a candle. Even a drop of heated wax falling on your hand causes great pain, so that you shake it off at once. Yet there is this advantage, that if the pain caused by fire is sharp it cannot be long continued; for its power is too great, its action too violent and penetrating; it destroys the sufferer in a brief space, takes away his life speedily, and so puts an end to his torments.
But when an inventive cruelty knows how to tame the power of the flames and restrain it, so that it burns indeed the unhappy man, but only slowly, then there are two circumstances to be considered, which make the torment almost intolerable and unconquerable; that is, to have to suffer pain, and to have to suffer it for a long time. Such was the case with Lawrence, that his admirable virtue might be made manifest to the whole world,
- ind proved beyond a doubt. He was not burned at the stake, as
is done to poor wretched criminals nowadays when they are burnt alive, and who are smothered by the smoke and flames, and reduced to ashes before they have time to feel the sharpness of the fire. No; far different was the cruelty practised on the servant of Christ; so speedy a death seemed too mild for him. " For," as St. Augustine says of our holy martyr, "he was not slain at once, but was tortured by fire, and compelled to die slowly. And how could it be otherwise? He lay on the gridiron, over the coals, which burned a long way under him; he had to see his own skin crackling and shrivelling up with the heat, to feel his nerves and sinews drawing together, the marrow in his bones, the blood in his veins, the entrails in his body simmering and boiling and falling in drops on the fire, hissing and spitting when they came in contact with the burning coals; and in the midst of these long-drawn torments he had to feel the slow approach of death that was to put an end to them. My God, what a terrible torment to have to suffer by that slow fire!
Heroic martyrs who have suffered so much for the honor of Jesus Christ, I admire your patience under torments when I consider the racks on which you were flayed alive, the ice-cold water in which you were drowned, the arrows and spears with which you were pierced, the swords and axes with which you were beheaded, the crosses and wheels on which you were fixed, the lions and tigers whose teeth mangled and tore you; and I ask myself in amazement: How is it possible for weak flesh and blood in such a frail nature to bear all this so bravely, and to overcome it with patience and joy? Yet forgive me if I say, without the least wish to lessen your glory, that your torments, no matter how glorious your triumph over them was, were only small and trifling compared to what Lawrence had to suffer. Water, arrows, spears, crosses, swords, wheels, lions, tigers were merely the instruments that quickly placed on your heads the crown of martyrdom; the combat lasted only a few minutes; the victory was speedily won; but the fiery bed of Lawrence protracted his combat and pains, so that every moment he had, as it were, to die a new death, and thus to gain, not a single, but a manifold victory. For, as St. Cyprian says: "He conquers but once who suffers quickly, " and by a speedy death soon puts an end to his torments, while he who has to sustain long and severe pains wins many crowns.
And what dost thou say now, great Saint, on thy bed of torture? Is thy courage quelled at last? Hast thou not yet begun to moan, to sigh, to scream, and beg for mercy? for the mere sight of thy scorched and roasted body should of itself move the hearts of thy tormentors. Hear his cries to the tyrant; they were nothing but the laughter with which he mocked him: "I am roasted on the one side; turn me over and eat!" and still your cruel thirst for blood. Turn me over, so that the other side may be roasted too! See what I care for thy fire: " Learn, wretched man, that thy coals seem to me a refreshment," although you think you are torturing me by them! Hear his sighs to heaven, which were nothing but sheer songs of joy and thanksgiving for the grace the good God had bestowed on him in thus allowing him to suffer for the glory of His name: "I thank Thee, Lord, that I have merited to enter Thy gates." Eternal praise to Thee, since by these coals Thou hast deigned to prepare the way for me to enter into everlasting joys. " Receive, Lord, this sacrifice in the odor of sweetness." What I am, what I have I have received from Thee; behold, it is all now to be consumed in this fire for Thy honor and glory! Who is it who speaks thus, my dear brethren? Is it an angel without feeling and senses, or a mortal man with sensitive flesh? Or is it a man who has lost all feeling? Oh, no! Well could he have said, with Job: " My strength is not the strength of stones, nor is my flesh of brass." Truly, he felt the pain; but, as St. Ambrose says, the inward flame of the love of God burned his soul with a greater desire of suffering more than the material flame consumed his flesh. The inward joy that came from that divine fire of love caused him to find only pleasure in the outward flames, and to congratulate himself on being allowed to be thus burned and tormented. And hence St. Augustine says: " In comparison with the flame that consumed his heart, the material flame of the persecutors seemed cold." Truly, Lawrence, thou art a prodigy of virtue! And if thou hadst given no other proof of it, the fire alone would have sufficed. But the more glorious thy victory over pains and torments, the more we are put to shame by it. We shall consider this, my dear brethren, in the
Second Part.
Our virtue must be proved by fire by the fire of the crosses and trials of this life to see whether it be a true virtue, a true love of God. " The furnace trieth the potter's vessels," says the Holy Ghost by Ecclesiasticus, " and the trial of affliction just men." Such was the beautiful answer given by that heroic champion of the faith, Minucius Felix, to the infidel heath ens and idolaters of his time, when they upbraided him with the many hardships and cruel persecutions that the Christians had to suffer everywhere. Their idea was that the God of the Christians had no power or strength, since He could not help His servants, or no mercy, since He did not wish to help them. Truly, you are altogether in the wrong, said he: " The God whom we adore is wanting neither in the power nor the will to help us." But how does He act? " He tries us all by adversity; He examines our hearts; He looks into the nature of the life of each one." By what means? By adversity; by sending us trials, crosses, and contradictions; by depriving us of worldly goods; by weakness and sickness and other calamities; as if the Lord wished to say to each just man: Show what you are; let Me see what you can do; hitherto I have not been able to form a right idea of your worth; I must learn from yourself how I am to value you. As long as everything prospered with you, and you lived in peace, plenty, and pleasure, you said to Me a thousand times that you wished to serve Me, to love Me, to be and to remain Mine; but I may not trust too much to these bare words of yours; in prosperity you yourself cannot say whether you love Me or yourself most; whether you do not serve Me more for My gifts than for Myself; whether you are not still a mere child in virtue, that must be fed with milk, or a man who can digest solid food. But now when I send you the bitterness of life to taste, now in sickness, in poverty, in misfortune, in that loss occasioned by death, in that trouble that I have prepared for you; now that you think all the evils of the world are pressing on your shoulders, now is the time in which you can give Me the surest proof of your faithfulness and love. If while you are in that state I see that you are as constant as ever in My service; if I hear you praying daily with as much fervor as before; if you appear before My altar to praise, adore, and thank Me as before then I will believe you without hesitation, and will know for certain that you mean honestly by Me; then I will know that you have a true love and sincere virtue. " He scrutinizes the life of man." Thus it is by adversity that God sees what we are made of.
And truly, my dear brethren, what opinion should we form of the bravery of the soldier who always boasts of his valor, and yet is never seen facing the enemy outside the walls of the for tress? What great merit is there in being virtuous if the virtue is not subject to any opposition? How can any one prove his strength if there is no enemy to overcome? Is there any great merit in being meek if no one opposes you? in being patient when you have nothing to suffer? in praising and thanking God when He gives you all you can wish for, and heaps good things into your hands? If a man of that kind tried to boast to me of his virtue and piety I would give him the same answer that Satan gave to the Lord in a contemptuous manner about Job. Thou speakest to me wonders of the virtue of Thy servant Job; he fears and loves and honors Thee, that is true indeed; but is there anything to wonder at therein? " Hast Thou not made a fence for him and his house, and all his substance round about, and blessed the works of his hands, and his possession hath in creased on the earth?" Thou showest him nothing but favor and grace: " Doth Job fear God in vain?" Not without reason does he honor, fear, and love Thee; he is a hypocrite, who deceives Thee; he is a mercenary, who serves Thee for a daily wage; Thou canst find thousands like him in the world, who will praise and serve Thee at the same rate. But show Thyself otherwise to him; turn Thy back on him for a time, and then Thou wilt no longer have reason to praise him: " Stretch forth Thy hand a little, and touch all that he hath; " take the rod in Thy hand, and let him feel the weight of it; strike boldly, and then Thou shalt see what becomes of his virtue: " And see if he blesseth Thee not to Thy face." Then he will show whether his service was only an outward one or not. So that not even the foul spirit would believe in the reality of the virtue of Job, although there was none like him on earth, unless it was first tried in the furnace of tribulation, and that, too, by the severe trials that he afterwards showed such patience in bearing. Job's love of God and his virtue, says St. Chrysostom, did not shine so brightly when he was opening his palace gates to receive strangers and the poor as when he saw all his houses and possessions destroyed, and still remained constant in his love of God; it was not so evident when he daily offered sacrifice to God for his children as when he sought for their bodies under the ruins of their homes, and with patient, quiet content, and praising God, committed them to earth; his merits were not so clear when he was an eye to the blind, a foot to the lame, a refuge of the afflicted, a protector of the innocent as when, suffering the most violent pain, robbed of everything, abandoned by all, poor, naked, and needy, overrun with sores and ulcers, and seated on the dunghill, he raised his eyes to heaven, and said: Blessed be the name of the Lord. Then the devil, in spite of his hatred and envy, was forced against his will to acknowledge that Job was justly praised, that the Lord had reason to extol the sanctity of His servant, and he had to confess with shame that he was indeed a holy and virtuous man. Truly, then, it is necessary that the gold of the love of God be tried, proved, and verified in the furnace of tribulation.
we may From this, my dear brethren, we may see of what kind is our not endure virtue and love of God, and whether our heart is of lead or gold martyrdom, in His sight. Are we in the same dispositions as St. Lawrence, whose feast we celebrate to-day? Are we, too, prepared to shed our blood, to give our lives for Christ? Do we find in us a desire to suffer more and more for His sake, and to bear even a part of the torments in which Lawrence so joyfully conquered? Alas, I must not press that question; the bare thought of such sufferings makes me shudder. Eternal thanks and praise be to Thee, God of mercy, that Thou hast changed the times now, and that the persecution of Thy Church has come to an end in this land; that there is no Valerian to torture us for our faith! For if he came amongst us, and treated us as he did the martyrs long ago, we have great reason to fear that many of us Christians would renounce our faith through terror. For how could they bear to give up all they have for the sake of the faith who can hardly bring themselves to give an alms to a poor man? How could they undertake any such thing who knowingly possess the property of others, which they have acquired by unjust means? How could they deliver up their bodies to the rods, the scorpions, the loaded clubs, the iron hooks, to be flayed and torn, who pamper their weak and luxurious flesh until they cannot bear the prick of a needle; to whom a fast-day, early rising, an hour's kneeling in the church seems difficult? How could they bear to writhe and twist on a glowing gridiron whom a hard or an ill- made bed robs of sleep? How could they rejoice in suffering, and sigh and long for greater pains,. who fear the cross as if it were the foul fiend himself, who moan and murmur in the least pain, who curse and swear and storm at the least contradiction? Eternal thanks and praise be again to Thee, God of goodness, that Thou hast not exposed us to such grievous temptations, to which many of us would succumb, under which many of us would become renegades instead of martyrs!
Oh, no! we do not want any Valerian or Diocletian to come against us with fire and sword, with glowing gridirons, and similar instruments of torture, to prove our faith, our virtue, our love of God! Of sorrow, trouble, pain, and difficulties we find more than enough daily, more than we wish for, indeed, to prove our virtue, if we only bore them with patience and resignation for Thy sake! We have opportunities enough to mortify our eyes, ears, tongue, senses, and inclinations every hour and moment; but even this is often too much of a martyrdom for us, and our dread of that mortification, without any tyrant to compel us, is frequently enough to deter us from keeping the commandments of God. A slight chagrin, a word of opposition is often all that is required to upset our patience, to turn it into anger and discontent! great martyr St. Lawrence, what a vast difference there is between thy virtue and love of God and ours! Good reason have we to mingle our tears with thy praises when we think that what has served for thy undying renown only puts us to greater shame, since we who admire thy exalted virtue find so little of it in ourselves!
What remains for us, my dear brethren, but to humbly acknowledge that we are still far from true devotion and from the virtues of the saints, and to resolve to follow them in some degree, at least, making this earnest resolution: If I find no desire in myself to suffer much for God's sake, as St. Lawrence had; if I am not so far advanced in virtue as to fervently pray to God for pains and crosses, in order to prove my love for Him, then at least I will bear for His sake whatever crosses, trials, and difficulties occur daily in my state and profession, and whatever may in future be ordained for me. If my love of God is not so strong as to enable me to bear with spiritual joy and gladness the contradictions that I must suffer and cannot avoid, then at least I will bear them with patience, resignation to the will of God, and with a good intention. If my corrupt nature now and then shows signs of murmuring and obstinacy, against my natural will I shall always think: Blessed be the name of the Lord; and I shall say, with the Prophet David: " Prove me, Lord, and try me." Only continue to preserve me with the proofs with which Thou art wont to try Thy elect; that is, with crosses and trials. But grant me patience at the same time, that I may one day make a worthy appearance in that place where the gold Thou hast here tried in the furnace will shine forever. Help us here in, holy St. Lawrence. Amen.