WEDNESDAY REFLECTION
Mid-week Reflection
11th November 2020
This week we celebrated the Feast of Pope St Leo the Great, Doctor of the Church, who died in the year of Our Lord, 461. The title of “the Great” is held by only three popes. Pope St. Leo I (reigned 440–61), Pope St. Gregory I (590–604), and Pope St. Nicholas I (858–67). The titles were not conferred by the Church but by popular acclaim of the people at the time of their deaths and by history itself. You hear people nowadays talking of Pope St John Paul II as the Great but I wonder if the title might in time be attached rather to Pope Benedict? So why, Leo the Great? Leo went to Africa as a young man and there met St Augustine. His papacy was marked by greatness: He preached against the heresies of Manichaeism, Pelagianism, Priscillianism, and Nestorianism. In the year of Our Lord 451, at the Council of Chalcedon, he taught that Jesus was human and divine, united in one person, “with neither confusion nor division”. Although this Council was the fourth ecumenical council it was the most important assembly ever to have been celebrated in the history of the Church and the 350 bishops who took part, declared, “This is the faith of the Fathers; this is the faith of the apostles; we all believe this; the orthodox believe this; anathema to him who believes otherwise. Peter has spoken through Leo.” He was a great spiritual authority and was also known for charitable works in a Rome beset by famines, an influx of refugees, and of poverty. He declared the primacy of the See of Peter and it is also thought that he saved Rome from being sacked by Attila the Hun and later persuaded the Vandal Genseric not to burn Rome. Although he spoke of the papacy as “a burden to shudder at,” Leo met the challenge with great fidelity and self-sacrifice. Just study the history of the time and you will discover why Pope St. Leo truly deserved the title “the Great.”
Let us Pray:
O God, who never allows the gates of hell to prevail against your Church, firmly founded on the apostolic rock, grant her, we pray, that through the intercession of Pope Saint Leo the Great, she may stand firm in your truth and know the protection of lasting peace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Monsignor Monaghan
