You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints.

This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute,

an Apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Welcome to Form Now. I'm Tim Gray, President of the Augustine Institute, and joining me is Dr. Michael

Barber, our professor of Scripture here at the Augustin Institute. And we're going to talk,

today is the feast date of St. Lawrence. And he's a remarkable martyr in the early church.

And we're going to talk a little Bible study about his main occupation

for the church. And so he was an archdeacon for the church in Rome. And that meant he was as the

role of deacons to take care and serve, especially those who are needy. And so one of the things that

the early Christians were particularly well known for was their almsgiving and their generosity to help widows,

to help the poor, the needy, the handicapped. And so the early Christian community was known for its

works of charity. And of course, the Catholic churches to this day with our hospitals, our Catholic

charities that help the poor, all the different wonderful things.

In fact, I think someone told me this at that there's no greater work of charity than the Catholic

Church in the world. If you take all the giving, the Catholic Church's services to the poor

and the needy outweigh every other government or any other organization.

It's really quite remarkable. But, you know, St. Lawrence, he was in charge as Archdeacon of Rome

of the giving, the alms giving to the poor. And during a persecution, you know, the emperor

had seized him and wanted him to hand over the treasures of the church, all that money.

And what he did is he gave, because he knew that the persecution was coming down,

he gave all those treasures and dispersed all those goods as alms to the poor and the needy.

And then he went to show the emperor and his

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