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St. Genesius — The Catholic Saint Who Converted in the Middle of His Own Joke · Everyday Saints: A Catholic Podcast

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A comedian is on a stage in front of the emperor. He's playing a dying man getting baptized,
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milking every gesture for laughs in a packed theater in Rome. Another actor playing a priest
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says the words of baptism over him, the same words as a joke, same as always. Genesius
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says them back, and for a second, he's not acting anymore. He means them.
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Hi, my name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday Saints. This is Saint number 14 in the series,
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so 14 weeks, 14 saints. If you are new, welcome to the porch. Stick around and if this hits
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you, subscribe so you don't miss next week, a new saint every Thursday. This week, we are
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back with another almost forgotten saint. Almost nobody has ever heard of Saint Genesius of
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Rome, but if you have ever mumbled a prayer before a meal or rattled off the Our Father
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or said, love you on your way out the door so many times the words have just lost their weight.
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And then one ordinary day, those same words just suddenly hit different. Like they finally
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meant something real. Well, you have already felt a little of what happened to this man.
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Genesius lived in Rome in the late third century, right around 300 AD. He was an actor. and a
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good one. He owned and directed his own theater group. In that world, that meant he wasn't
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scraping by in some black alley theater. He was booking real work in real venues for real
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money, and eventually, the kind of work that gets you noticed by the most powerful man in
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the empire. The emperor at the time was Diocletian. We have talked about him before, back in the
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Nicholas episode last week. He ran the worst crackdown on Christians in Roman history. Starting
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in the year 303, he issued a series of official orders, historians usually call them edicts,
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stripping Christians of legal rights, burning their scriptures, tearing down their churches,
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and eventually demanding that anyone suspected of being a Christian make a public sacrifice
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to the Roman gods or face arrest. People were tortured and killed for their faith. all across
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the empire and it wasn't hidden. It was public. The emperor wanted people to see it. Fear was
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the point. So when Diocletian wanted a night of entertainment in the middle of running that
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campaign, he could ask for anything. And what he asked Aeneas for, at least once, was a joke
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at the Christian's expense. The bit was simple enough. Genesius would play a sick man on his
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deathbed. Other actors would play priests around him, going through a mock version of a Christian
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baptism, the ceremony where a person is washed with water and formally becomes a Christian.
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The joke was in the exaggeration. Big, dramatic gestures, fake, solemn voices, pitched a
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little too high, a little too serious, so the crowd would catch the joke and laugh at the
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people they have been taught to see as foolish. Genesius had performed the scene before. He
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knew every step, every pause, every place the laughs always landed. By every account, he
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was good at it. Good enough that this wasn't just another night for him. This was something
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he'd done many times, and the crowd expected a performance. This time, in front of Diocletian,
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something went wrong. Or, depending on how you look at it, something finally went right. Before
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we get to that night, it's worth knowing what it actually meant to be an actor in Rome at
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that time, because it's not what you would guess. Today, an actor who performs for the emperor
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sounds like someone at the top of his field. Back then, it was closer to the opposite. Actors
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in the Roman world were looked down on. Many of them were slaves or former slaves. The law
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treated them as a lower class of citizen, sometimes barely as citizens at all. Respectable Roman
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families did not want their sons or daughters even marrying into that world. So, Genesius
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wasn't some celebrated star living a life of comfort and status. He was a working performer
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in a trade most people looked down their nose at, doing what that trade required to get booked,
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which, under an emperor like Diocletian, sometimes meant mocking the people that same emperor
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was trying to wipe out. Entertainment like this wasn't rare in that era. Making fun of Christians
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on stage was a normal part of Roman comedy at the time, especially with an emperor in power
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who wanted the public laughing at the very people he was having killed. These weren't quiet,
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small performances either. Roman theaters held thousands of people at once, and a acting theater
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such as Genesius's would have performed the same handful of popular bits over and over.
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city to city, the way a torn comedy act might work a circuit today. Laughing at someone,
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it is a short step away from deciding they don't matter. Diocletian understood that. So, did
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the people writing these plays. Genesius knew all of this. He built a career inside it. And
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on that one particular night, doing the exact same job he'd done plenty of times before,
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that career collided head-on with the thing he had been mocking. So now I want you to picture
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the scene. Torches lighting the stage, packed theater laughing along, waiting for the punchline
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they already know is coming. Genesius is lying on a fake deathbed, playing his part exactly
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the way he played it before. The other actors lean in, dressed up like priests, robes a
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little too big, and voices pitched a little too dramatic on purpose. They say the words
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of the baptism ceremony over him, the same words a real priest would say, but here is meant
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as a joke. And Genesius, still in character, still performing, says his line back, except
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this time the words don't come out like a joke. He says, according to the earliest accounts,
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that he saw something as the water touched him in the scene. Men in white robes standing where
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a moment ago there was nothing but stage lights and the edge of the crowd. A book held open
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in front of him with every wrong thing he'd ever done written down inside it. And then
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right as the mock baptism finished, the writing in that book being washed clean line by line
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until the page was blank. The laughter and the fear slows down before it stops completely.
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Something is off and the crowd can feel it before anyone understands why. A few people in the
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back keep laughing for a second, thinking this is still part of the bit, maybe a new twist
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on the old joke, before it becomes clear that the man on the stage has stopped performing.
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Genesius stops moving. He gets up off the fake deathbed, slowly, still in his costume and
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turns to face the emperor. and the rest of the theater. And in front of all of them, he says
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he believes the words that he just spoke, not as a joke this time, but for real. And he tells
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them he wants to be baptized because what he just said as a bit or a comedy show, he now
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means with everything in his soul. Sit with that room for a second. An emperor who has
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spent years killing people for exactly this belief is sitting in the crowd. watching his
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own hired entertainer stand up in his stage makeup and announce out loud that he is now
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one of them. Diocletian has him arrested before the scene is even cleared off the stage. What
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happens next doesn't take long. Genesius is brought before an official and told to take
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it back. Say it was a mistake. Say the joke got away from him. That was the standard offer
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during this persecution to almost anyone accused of being Christian. A way out, if they just
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deny it, usually by making a small offering to the Roman gods in front of witnesses. Plenty
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of people took that offer. Genesius does not. He's tortured in an attempt to change his mind.
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He's asked again. He refuses again. He's beheaded a short time later. likely still in the year
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303 or 304, right in the middle of the worst years of that persecution. Here's what gets
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me about this one. Most of the saints we've covered had years, sometimes decades, to grow
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into their faith. Genesius had minutes. He stood up in the middle of his own joke and said something
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he never planned to say. By the time that stretch of days was over, he was dead for it. I don't
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know many people who could hold a decision like that under that kind of pressure. A decision
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made in seconds with no time to think it through in front of the one man who could kill him
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on the spot for it. That's part of why the story has stuck with people for 1700 years. He didn't
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get years to prepare an answer. He gave one anyway right there and he never took it back.
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There's a reason actors of all people ended up claiming him. For most of the church's history,
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the acting profession carried the same low reputation it had in Genesius' own lifetime. Looked down
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on, sometimes even barred from receiving the sacraments in certain times and places. Genesius
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became the answer to that, proof that God could reach someone in the middle of the one profession
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everyone assumed he couldn't. actors have looked to him ever since, not as someone who left
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the stage behind for something holier, but as someone who found the real thing while he was
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still standing on that stage. His story didn't stay locked in old church records either.
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Centuries later, a Spanish playwright named Lope de Vega, one of the most famous writers
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of his time, wrote an entire play about Genesius. In English, the title is usually translated
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as that pretended truth. Think about that title for a second. That's the whole story of this
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man in three words. He was pretending, and then it was true. A quick word on how solid this
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story actually is, historically speaking. It comes from early Christian martyr accounts.
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The kind of records that the church kept about people who died for their faith, some more
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reliable than others. This one isn't the best documented story we have covered. It's closer
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to the Nicholas and Aria situation than the Nicholas in prison situation, if that comparison
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means anything to you from last week. Old, widely repeated, not something you can prove line
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by line. I'm telling it anyway because whether every detail happened exactly this way or not,
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the core of it, a Roman actor executed under Diocletian for converting on stage. sits on
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solid enough ground that the church has honored him as a martyr for over a thousand years.
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All right, back on the porch. Genesius, well, he spent his whole career playing other people,
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pretending on purpose for a living. And the one time it became real, it happened in the
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middle of a scene built to make fun of the very thing that ended up saving him. I think a lot
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of us do a smaller version of this without noticing. I know I do. We say things out of habit. A
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prayer before dinner. A line in church we said so many times it barely registers anymore.
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A God bless you we toss out without thinking twice. And every once in a while, without any
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warning at all, one of those lines catches us off guard. We say it, and for one second, We
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actually mean it. We feel the weight of it land the way it probably should have landed
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the first hundred times we said it. Genesius didn't plan for that moment. He couldn't have.
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That's kind of the whole point of what happened to him. Grace doesn't wait for you to be ready.
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It doesn't check your schedule first. It shows up in the middle of whatever you happen to
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be doing. Even when what you are doing is making fun of the very thing that's about to save
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you. There's something else worth sitting with here. Genesius wasn't looking for God that
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night. He was looking for a laugh. He was doing his job, the same job he'd done dozens of times
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before, with no plan to change anything about his life. And that's exactly when grace found
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him. Most of the saints on this show made some kind of choice to go looking for God. Genesius
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didn't go looking for anything. Grace came looking for him instead. In the last place, anyone
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would expect to find it. The middle of a joke. So here's the question this week. Is there
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a line in your own life, something you say out of habit, something you've said a hundred times
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without thinking about it, that might actually be true if you let it be? What happens if you
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stop performing it and start meaning it? And now it is time for the closing prayer. Lord,
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thank you for Genesius. Thank you for showing up in the middle of a joke and making it real.
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For anyone who has been saying the same words for years without feeling them, give them one
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honest moment, the way you gave him. And for anyone afraid of what it might cost them to
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mean it, give them his courage, even though it cost him everything. Amen. Genesius is the
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patron saint of actors, comedians, and lawyers. People whose work involves saying words that
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aren't fully their own. He's also the patron saint of converts, printers, and secretaries.
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His feast day is August 25th. Well, that is episode 14. If this one surprised you, send
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it to somebody who needs to hear it. And here's a real ask, not something I just tack on at
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the end. If you are listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, hit follow if you haven't yet.
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Then, if you've got just 30 seconds, please leave a rating. I know it sounds small, but
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it's not. That's how someone new finds their way to this porch. Apple shows the show to
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more people the more you follow and rate it. I'd to see this thing crack the top 200 in
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religion in the US someday. And that happens because of you, not me. So, If these stories
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have meant anything to you these past 14 weeks, that's the one favor I'd ask. And a big thank
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you to Spain, the Philippines, and Kenya for letting me break into the top 200 in your respective
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countries. Hopefully that didn't sound too pushy. I meant it as a nudge, not a push. Next week,
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we're back to a known saint. Someone you will recognize right away with a story most people
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never got the real version of. I'm John O'Connor. Thanks for sitting on the porch with me. and
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I will see you next week.