November 10

Happy Memorial of St. Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church!

What does it mean to be great? St. Leo, whom the Church celebrates today, was the first Pope to receive the attribution of “the Great.” When we think of what it means to be great perhaps our minds turn to those whom our society most admires, for example, professional athletes, musicians, actors and actresses, and business moguls. Who we admire, who we think of as great, is important for a society, as it is precisely those who we develop a desire to imitate, for, as Aristotle taught, the human being is “the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation” (Poetics, 1444B). It is then worth asking what it was that made St. Leo “the great” as this will shed light on what it means, from a Christian perspective, to be great.

Around the year 400 AD, Leo was born to a Roman aristocratic family. “In about the year 430 A.D., he became a deacon of the Church of Rome,” in which Pope Benedict XVI tells us, “he acquired over time a very important position” (General Audience, March 5, 2008). Ten years later, in September 440 AD, Leo was consecrated as Bishop of Rome, succeeding Pope Sixtus III. Benedict XVI goes on to add that his papacy, which lasted more than 21 years “was undoubtedly one of the most important in the Church’s history” (ibid.). St. Leo’s papacy took place during a very tumultuous time in the life of the Church, threatened as she was by division within and violence from without. Examining the manner in which Leo responded to these difficult times will simultaneously shed light on why Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI believes St. Leo’s papacy to have been one of the most important in the Church’s history and just what it was that made him great.

The first element of St. Leo’s life to consider is the contribution he made to the theology and doctrine of the Church, which is perhaps his most lasting heritage. Leo’s time as the Bishop of Rome took place amid the most pivotal Christological debates in the Church’s history. Responding to the main heretical positions of Nestorian, who held the human and divine natures in Christ to be completely separate, and Eutyches, who taught that the Person of Christ was a tertium quid, i.e. some third thing that was a combination of human and divine natures, in June of 449 Leo penned his famous Tome to Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople. In it, Leo asserted that in the Incarnation of Christ, “the distinctness of both natures and substances”, i.e., human and divine, “is preserved, and both meet in one Person…” (Tome of Leo, 3). Two years later, the Council of Chalcedon followed Leo’s lead and pronounced the doctrine of the hypostatic union, teaching that in the Person of Christ, human and divine natures had been united “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.”

While this may seem uselessly abstract, this doctrine forms the very core of the Christian faith, and has a very practical implication for how we understand our day to day lives as Christians. The reason for this is that the doctrine asserts that human and divine natures do not exist in competition with one another, but rather, human nature becomes most fully itself when in perfect unity with the divine nature. The practical implication for the Christian life is twofold. First, it forms the very basis of our understanding of the Church. In one of his sermons, Leo explains this unity in this way:

There is no doubt therefore, dearly beloved, that man’s nature has been received by the Son of God into such a union that not only in that Man Who is the first-begotten of all creatures, but also in all His saints there is one and the self-same Christ, and as the Head cannot be separated from the members, so the members cannot be separated from the Head. For although it is not in this life, but in eternity that God is to be all in all, yet even now He is the inseparable Inhabitant of His temple, which is the Church (Sermon 63.3).

The second practical application, then, is that this corporate unity means that a great exchange has taken place between humanity and divinity, such that by passing through the waters of baptism, we partake of the divine nature. Thus, in another sermon, Leo exhorts his listeners and us: “Christian, acknowledge your dignity, and becoming a partner in the Divine nature, refuse to return to the old baseness by degenerate conduct…Recollect that you were rescued from the power of darkness and brought out into God’s light and kingdom” (Sermon 21.3). During the difficult times in which he lived, Leo saw it as absolutely imperative that Christians actually live out what they believe. The reason for this is that the life of a Christian has an evangelical force about it, to such an extent that Leo taught that two things, the Eucharist and the exemplarity of the Christian life, prove the reality of the Incarnation of the Son of God (Sermon 91.3).

The second element that made Leo great was that he practiced what he preached. For Leo, the life of a Christian was exemplified and taught by Christ and characterized by the beatitudes, which he understood simply as virtues (Sermon 95.3 & 8). While we might look to the life of Leo as an example of any of the beatitudes, he is most well-known for exemplifying the seventh, blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God (Mt 5:9). In 452 Attila, the chief of the Huns prepared to attack Rome, and Leo went out to meet him and eventually “dissuaded him from continuing the war of invasion by which he had already devastated the northeastern regions of Italy” (Benedict XVI, General Audience, March 5, 2008). Leo displayed the same courage and desire for peace when three years later in 455 Genseric, the king of the Vandals, prepared to invade Rome. Leo’s meeting was ultimately unable to dissuade Genseric completely, however he did convince him to refrain from burning Rome, “and assured that the Basilicas of St. Peter, St. Paul and St. John, in which part of the terrified population sought refuge, were spared” (ibid.). Whence this courage, whence this desire for peace? Leo himself taught that the peacemakers referred to in Matthew’s Gospel were those who “are in mind always with God, giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, never dissent from the eternal law, uttering that prayer of faith, Your will be done as in heaven so on earth” (Sermon 95.9). It is precisely those who live in such a manner, Leo taught, who were fit to be called the children of God.

Today, as we too face the threat of division within the Church and chaos and division in the world at large, Leo reminds us that to be truly great is nothing less than to be a child of God. More to it, he exemplifies that those who live in accord with their great dignity as Christians have the power to foster peace even in the face of the longest odds.

St. Leo, courageous exemplar of peace, pray for us that we might be graced with the courage to live out our dignity as children of God, so that we might draw all those we meet into the one lasting and loving bond of peace we were all created for, the loving embrace of our Triune God.

Your servant in Christ,

Tony