The Liturgical Calendar: The Church Remembers

Today the church remembers Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461.

Leo, Bishop of Rome, captured the imagination of generations of Europeans when he stood before the terrible horde of the Huns and persuaded them to withdraw to the Danube. He settled the most heated and dangerous theological dispute since Nicaea, when his legates ended the Eutychian controversy. He succeeded in getting imperial and ecclesiastical endorsement for his claim that the Bishop of Rome was primate of the Catholic Church in Western Europe. Leo the Great was "Founder of the Papacy." He appeared in a very troubled time in the Dark Ages of Western Europe and was a veritable savior not only of the church but of law and order of any kind, indeed, of Western civilization.

Leo's most famous written work, his Tome, remains a classic statement of Christian doctrine. His sermons and letters still reveal to us a clear, forcible, and intelligent pastor, though not an unusually brilliant or profound one.

Almighty, everlasting God, whose servant Leo steadfastly confessed the true faith of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to be Very God and Very Man: Grant that we may hold fast to this faith, and evermore magnify his holy Name; through the same your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit for ever, one God, world without end. Amen.

Read the Wikipedia article here.

O Lord our God, grant that your Church, following the teaching of your 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 your divine Being; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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