Reflection by Br. Gregory Armstrong, O.F.M. Cap.
Caesar Russo was born in Brindisi in southern Italy on July 22, 1559. When he was 14 years of age, he met the Capuchins in Venice, and their austere example of the Franciscan life inflamed his already burning desire for perfection; in February of 1575, he entered the Capuchin novitiate in the Province of Venice as brother Lawrence of Brindisi and solemnly professed one year later in March of 1576 on the Vigil of the Annunciation–timing which must have been of tremendous significance to someone who devoted so much of his personal piety and public ministry to the praise of the Blessed Virgin. At sixteen years of age, the rest of his plan of life was set before him: he would strive to be a faithful son of St. Francis in a nascent but already quite large reform movement, living in intentional and intense poverty, fruitful chastity, and faithful obedience to the day of his death.
Like a new St. Paul, St. Lawrence’s religious life was one of tremendous activity and service. Within the Capuchin order, he was elected or appointed as provincial minister of five different provinces, general definitor of the order four times, and Vicar General (at that time, the title of the head of the entire order) once. In addition to this, he was commissioned to lead the expansion of the Order beyond the Alps into German-speaking lands and combat the spread of Protestantism through preaching. He died while on a diplomatic mission to Spain, in which he was trying to win relief for the citizens of Naples from the despotic Spanish Viceroy.
Even with all of the activity and complexity of Lawrence’s apostolic life, one ministry stands out above all the others: preaching. We can say that “While Lawrence of Brindisi was in every sense an apostolic person, namely, a missionary, diplomat, teacher, administrator, and writer, he was first and foremost a servant of the word of God.” He preached his first series of Lenten sermons in Venice in 1582 when he was still only a deacon. His success as a preacher only spread from that first series as a young Deacon: he was sought after in major cities throughout Italy and Germany, he was appointed papal preacher to the Jews by multiple Popes, and he was commissioned as a missionary to preach against the spread of Protestantism.
St. Lawrence lived an intense devotion to the Eucharist and Mary. His Masses would often take hours, as he would be lost in contemplation of the Eucharist at the moment of contemplation. He entrusted his entire life and vocation to Mary, and the teaching of his Marian sermons, collected in the Mariale, is a complete exposition of Marian doctrine, explicitly proposing the title “Mediatrix” and joyfully anticipating the declarations of Mary’s Immaculate Conception and Assumption. So central a place did he give to Mary in God’s plan of creation and re-creation that he ventured to proclaim “that it would be more advantageous for the world to be without the sun, moon, and stars, than to be without Mary.”
In 1959, Lawrence was declared a Doctor of the Church by St. Pope John XXIII, and given the title, “the apostolic doctor” with special reference to his disciplined and prayerful method of Scriptural interpretation, unmatched Marian theology, and positive exposition of the faith in the face of Protestant opposition.
His feast day is July 21. St. Lawrence of Brindisi, pray for us.