No, I did not win Tuesday night's Mega-Millions Powerball drawing with its potential to claim billionaire status. (I would, as a first step, have needed to purchase a ticket!) But earlier this summer I did win first prize in our parish's raffle to support its annual Project Appalachia field service trip. To my amazement, the prize was delivered as a fat wad of cash. Who uses cash anymore? What a delight to sit at my kitchen table making up envelopes to donate back -- no name, please -- much of the proceeds to various ministries in the church and to then use the remainder for 'treats' like picking up the full tab for lunch when we met with our pre-Cana couple and leaving an extra-large tip for our server. Yes, I know I my generosity flowed from out of my surplus, but my month of July was filled with the encouragement that Paul gives to the Corinthian community in today's first reading: "God loves a cheerful giver." 

How appropriate that this first reading is chosen for us as we celebrate the Feast of Saint Lawrence, one of seven deacons martyred during the persecution of the early Christian church ordered by Roman emperor Valerian in 258. Only twenty-two years old when he was ordained by Pope Sixtus II, Lawrence was soon named the Archdeacon of Rome with responsibility for the church treasury and the distribution of alms to the indigent. When the Pope was executed, Lawrence was given three days to make preparations for the mandatory confiscation of all goods by the Imperial Treasury -- the prelude to his own execution. He used those days to distribute the Church's wealth to the poor and then presented himself to the prefect and, famously, the city's poor, crippled, blind, and suffering as the Church's true treasures. 

Our Gospel from John picks up the theme. Jesus, predicting his own death, gives a more serious encouragement, one that must have comforted Saint Lawrence on his three day journey to death. "Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life." The measure of our discipleship is not what we have, but what we are willing to give away. Grains of wheat, broken open to bring new life. God's abundant grace provides abundant opportunities for good works and the harvest of righteousness.

Saint Lawrence is the patron saint of Canada. In 1535, on his second voyage, the French explorer Jacques Cartier arrived at the river estuary of the North American Great Lakes on August 10th -- the Feast Day of St. Lawrence. Cartier named it the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the seaway river so wide there that it swept from horizon to horizon, the Saint Lawrence River. The legacy of generosity that comes from Jesus and the blood of the martyrs is as wide and full as the mighty St. Lawrence. With money in my pocket, I saw endless opportunities for my own small trickles of generosity. Let July turn to August and September as I strive to be steadfast as a cheerful giver.