Burned for daring to speak out

The Roman Church commends to us today the anniversary of the triumph of Saint Lawrence.

That was the beginning of a sermon St. Augustine gave all the way back around the start of the fifth century on this date, Feast of St. Lawrence, when he was burned to death for so energetically teaching about Christ and his Church.

For on this day he trod the furious pagan world underfoot and flung aside its allurements, and so gained victory…

over absolutely evil attacks on his faith.

So then Augustine goes on to exhort all Christians to follow his path, understanding the faith and then acting on it.

There are countless stories of Christians still being martyred for that, or persecuted.

And then there are the everyday battles people wind up in when they speak out about moral truths, and furious people want to silence them. That’s why so many cultural Christians are afraid to speak truth to evil publicly, because they’ll be accused of being ‘intolerant’….one of society’s biggest ‘public sins’, a strange concept for a society which barely believes in sin anymore. But it’s even stranger still that the accusers are the most intolerant of all.

Like the crowd that burned St. Lawrence, to shut him up.