O Lord our God, grant that thy Church, following the teaching of thy servant Leo of Rome, may hold fast the great mystery of our redemption, and adore the one Christ, true God and true Man, neither divided from our human nature nor separate from thy divine Being; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever
Leo (who led the western church from AD 440 to 461) is one of only two popes to be called (officially) the Great. Gregory (590-604) being the other. Some folks are clamoring for John Paul II to be added as a third, but so far there are only two. And Leo (the first) fully deserves that rare honor. He is my favorite pope of all time.
I’m glad that many of his immortal sermons are still extant, and have stood the test of time remarkably well. Leo is perhaps best known for two things: first, for negotiating a deal with the savage barbarian Attila the Hun, bribing him not to sack and burn “the eternal city,” since there was no civil authority capable of saving Rome.
But more importantly in terms of church history, Leo is gratefully remembered for his intervention in the Fourth Ecumenical Council (AD 451) that issued the famous Chalcedonian decree that defined the boundaries of proper Christology in terms of Jesus Christ being fully divine and yet fully human. Although Leo wasn’t present in person, his emissary read aloud his long, eloquent Tome on the subject that exhorted the assembled bishops (mostly eastern) to adopt that classic definition of orthodoxy and argued cogently for it.
There is a delightful story, probably apochryphal, that when the reading of the Tome was finished there was an awed hush, and then the council of bishops joyfully cried out, “[i]Peter has spoken![/i]” In Leo’s words, they rightly recognized the genuine voice of apostolic Christianity and a worthy successor of the prince of apostles.
And if that’s not exactly the way it happened historically, it’s what should have happened!
David Handy+