A life spent serving ordinary people.
February 23
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Priest
Confessor
Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 123 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.
S. Lazarus was priest, monk, and painter. During the persecution by the emperor Theophilus against sacred images and monks, Lazarus, as a painter of pictures for churches, was imprisoned, and his right hand was fearfully burnt by the application of red-hot iron plates. On the death of the emperor he recovered his liberty, and painted two celebrated pictures, one at Constantinople, of S. John the Baptist, the other at Chalcis, of the Saviour, on a wall, where there had been a similar picture, which had been scraped off by the Iconoclasts.
Stay faithful when it costs you. This account is about holding firm under pressure.
Learn from the kind of life it was. A life spent serving ordinary people.
S. Lazarus was priest, monk, and painter. During the persecution by the emperor Theophilus against sacred images and monks, Lazarus, as a painter of pictures for churches, was imprisoned, and his right hand was fearfully burnt by the application of red-hot iron plates. On the death of the emperor he recovered his liberty, and painted two celebrated pictures, one at Constantinople, of S. John the Baptist, the other at Chalcis, of the Saviour, on a wall, where there had been a similar picture, which had been scraped off by the Iconoclasts. He was sent to Rome by the Emperor Michael the Stammerer, with some magnificent corporals and altar vestments, minutely described by Anastasius the Librarian. On a second expedition to Rome he died.
Feast: February 23
One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Lazarus's story, and a nudge to keep going.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897), digitized text from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897), digitized text from Project Gutenberg. Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.