August 10: Saint Lawrence the Archdeacon celebratestranslated

Today, August 10, the Church commemorates the Hieromartyr Xystus (or Sixtus) II, Pope of Rome, from Athens, and the Martyrs Lawrence archdeacon and Hippolytus, who were martyred during the persecution in the year 253 AD. Saint Martyr Lawrence the Archdeacon

Lambros Skontzos, Theologian, writes

The orthodox Christian West has to show us a large, comparable number of martyrs, with the orthodox East. For more than three centuries, the cosmopolitan Rome was the center where the struggle of the old and aged pre-Christian world took place with the new and robust Christian world, the new hope of humanity. There took place the great conflict between dying idolatry and the Church of Christ. The Roman power had declared the total extermination of Christianity, subjecting it to untold persecutions.

The majority of the Christian Martyrs of the ancient Church were Romans, because as citizens of the capital of the vast Roman state, they were close to power and therefore easier to arrest and testify for their Christian faith, which was considered a crime. One of them was the holy Martyr...