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February 18

Our Father Among the Saints Leo the Great, Pope of Rome.

According to some, Saint Leo was born in Rome, but according to others in Tyrrenia (Tuscany), and was consecrated to the archiepiscopal throne of Rome in 440. In 448, when Saint Flavian, Archbishop of Constantinople, summoned Eutyches, an archimandrite in Constantinople, to give account for his teaching that there was only one nature in Christ after the Incarnation, Eutyches appealed to Saint Leo in Rome. After Saint Leo had carefully examined Eutyches’ teachings, he wrote an epistle to Saint Flavian, setting forth the Orthodox teaching of the person of Christ, and His two natures, and also counselling Flavian that, should Eutyches sincerely repent of his error, he should be received back with all good will. At the Council held in Ephesus in 449, which was presided over by Dioscorus, Patriarch of Alexandria (and which Saint Leo, in a letter to the holy Empress Pulcheria in 451, was the first to call “The Robber Council”), Dioscorus, having military might behind him, did not allow Saint Leo’s epistle to Flavian to be read, although repeatedly asked to do so; even before the Robber Council was held, Dioscorus had uncanonically received the unrepentant Eutyches back into communion. Because Saint Leo had many cares in Rome owing to the wars of Attila the Hun and other barbarians, in 451 he sent four delegates to the Fourth Ecumenical Council, where 630 Fathers gathered in Chalcedon during the reign of Marcian, to condemn the teachings of Eutyches and those who supported him. Saint Leo’s epistle to Flavian was read at the Fourth Council, and was confirmed by the Holy Fathers as the Orthodox teaching on the incarnate person of our Lord; it is also called the “Tome of Leo.” The Saint wrote many works in Latin; he reposed in 461. See also Saint Anatolius, July 3.

The above account is taken from the Great Horologion,
Copyright © 1997, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, MA, all rights reserved.
All reproduction of texts or icons on this website in any form
without prior written permission is forbidden.

We have many homilies by Saint Leo, and they are characterized by a brevity that is full of vigor and theological content. We give as example how he masterfully sums up in a few words the mystery of the Ascension:

[After the Lord’s Ascension, the Apostles] had turned the whole gaze of their soul upwards to the Divinity of Him Who sits at the Father’s right hand, and they were no longer held by the fact of His bodily presence from directing their mind’s eye towards that Being who, descending on earth, did not leave the Father, and ascending to Heaven, had not left His disciples. It was then, Dearly Beloved, that the Son of man, the Son of God, became known in a more perfect, a holier, manner: when He betook Himself to the majestic glory of the Father, and in an ineffable way began to be more present to us in His Divinity, as His humanity became more remote to us. Then a more instructed faith began, by way of the soul, to draw nigh to that Son Who was equal to the Father, without need to touch and handle the bodily substance in Christ, in which He is less than the Father.

St Leo the Great, Pope of Rome

Second Homily On the Lord’s Ascension, part IV

The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, Volume II, p. 453

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