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Exhibition Mass on 29 May 2005 was a Mass of St Laurence the Roman Martyr, the patron of Ampleforth Abbey and the patron of the school, a Mass celebrated by Fr Abbot [Abbot Cuthbert Madden]. The relic of the arm of St Laurence was placed on the High Altar of the Abbey Church with two candles burning.
At Mass, Fr Abbot recalled how Laurence was martyred on 10 August 258 in Rome. On 6 August 258, Pope Sixtus II and two deacons were martyred. St Laurence who was the Treasurer of the Church in Rome and who after the death of Sixtus was the senior person in the Church of Rome. In the four days after 6 August 258, Laurence gave the trasury away to the poor. When the soldiers asked him for the treasury of the church, Laurence pointed to the people. Laurence was taken to be roasted on a gridiron, and, as Fr Abbot recalled, said he was done on one side.
Fr Abbot went on to speak of the meaning of death, recalling the famous remark [believed to be by Fr Paul Nevill (OA00)] that an Ampleforth education was about preparing for death. He said that there were those who might consider this morbid, but Fr Abbot said that for him it was not that, and he spoke of the meaning of death for a Cathoic.
At the end of Mass a number of the people knelt before the relic of St Laurence. The Feast of St Laurence is on 10 August.
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Miscellaneous
