8/10/26: St. Lawrence and the Cheerful Giver

Monday Mass. 8.10.26. Today we celebrate St. Lawrence, deacon and martyr, who gave everything away to the poor and was cooked alive on a grill—yet still had the humor to tell his executioners to turn him over. In this homily I look at Jesus' words in John's Gospel: "unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat." I talk about what it means to lose our life for God rather than try to seize it for ourselves, and how that plays out not in dramatic martyrdom but in the small, daily fights of marriage, family, work, and our own hearts.