Deacon Lawrence Shares the Church's Wealth With Emperor Valerian
Until about 300 A.D. and the coming of Constantine the treatment of the rapidly spreading Christian faith was always varying. Jacob's wages were always changing, so to speak. There were times of tolerance for the Christians, interspersed with times of brutal oppression. Persecutions both small and large were endured in those early centuries as Rome tried to decide if they should like or hate, fear or embrace this strange new faith with its 'new' soft and gentle God Jesus who said that the old Gods were actually no gods at all! Rome was large and in charge, and when an edict against Christians was issued, the empire largely obeyed. One day your community called you neighbor, then an edict from a far away Emperor arrived and suddenly it was open season on you and your land and your belongings.
In 258 A.D. the Emperor Valerian agreed that Christians were "Odium Humani Generis".... that the Christian had 'hatred for the human race'. The church leaders in Rome were to be captured and killed. The property and wealth of the church would be confiscated.
The Bishop of Rome (Pope) at that time was named Sixtus, and he had 7 deacons. Sixtus and six of the Christian deacons were caught and summarily executed...beheaded. The leader among the deacons, a man named Lawrence, remained at large for a time. He was the youngest deacon, only 32, but had been placed at the front by Sixtus who had known him for a good while from their time working in Spain together.
Emperor Valerian was greedy for lucre as well as blood, and it seemed sensible to him to extend an olive branch of sorts to Lawrence, who was now the ranking church authority in Rome. Lawrence could remain alive if he would gather the wealth of the church and present it to the Emperor. The Emperor was willing to extend some mercy if the Christian church in Rome would honor him in this way.
Lawrence, to the pleasure of Valerian, asked for 3 days time to gather the church's wealth. This was granted, and Valerian waited in anticipation for this great addition to his fortune.
Lawrence used this time to gather the poor, the lame, and the widowed from all parts of the city of Rome, and he gave away the assets of the Christian church to these desperately poor citizens. He gave away the silver, the gold, the valuable objects that were in possession of the church so that the poor, as Jesus had commanded, were cared for in a way that would truly help them to live out their days in the world.
After three days