Rev. José Mario O. Mandía
jmom.honlam.org
He was born in Rome, though we do not know the exact date of his birth, but “Leo I’s pontificate, next to that of Saint Gregory I, is the most significant and important in Christian antiquity. At a time when the Church was experiencing the greatest obstacles to her progress in consequence of the hastening disintegration of the Western Empire, while the Orient was profoundly agitated over dogmatic controversies, this great pope, with far-seeing sagacity and powerful hand, guided the destiny of the Roman and Universal Church” (“Pope St Leo I (the Great)” Catholic Encyclopedia, https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09154b.htm).
He became a deacon in 430 AD and ten years later, on 29 September 440, he was consecrated Pope, and was the first one to take the name ‘Leo’. Because of his achievements, he would later be called ‘Leo the Great’, just like Gregory I would later be known as ‘Gregory the Great’.
He died on 10 November 461 and his relics are in one of the altars in Saint Peter’s Basilica.
As mentioned above, Leo had to deal with problems in the Western as well as the Eastern Roman Empire. As the West was disintegrating, the Germanic tribes were migrating into the Empire and settling there. This was the period of the barbarian invasions (375-700 AD). Pope Benedict XVI notes that “the gradual weakening of imperial authority in the West and the long, drawn-out social crisis forced the Bishop of Rome – as was to happen even more obviously a century and a half later during the Pontificate of Gregory the Great – to play an important role in civil and political events. This, naturally, could only add to the importance and prestige of the Roman See” (General Audience, 5 March 2008).
One particular event that attests to this happened in 452, “when the Pope, together with a Roman delegation, met Attila, chief of the Huns, in Mantua and dissuaded him from continuing the war of invasion by which he had already devastated the northeastern regions of Italy. Thus, he saved the rest of the Peninsula,” (General Audience, 5 March 2008).
Pope Leo was not so successful with the Vandals who invaded and plundered Rome in 455. But the Pope did go out to meet Genseric, leader of the Vandals, whom he convinced not to burn Rome and to respect the Basilicas of St Peter, St Paul and St John where many people had taken refuge.
Leo I also had to wrestle with dogmatic controversies, especially Pelagianism, Manichaeism and Monophysitism. The Pope vigorously refuted these doctrines.
The Pelagian heresy (from its originator Pelagius) denied original sin and insisted that man, by himself, could attain heaven by his own efforts – he does not need the help of God’s grace. In theory, many Christians reject Pelagianism, but in practice, they accept it because they fail to make frequent use of the means by which we attain grace: prayer and the sacraments.
Manichaeism taught that there were two principles in the world: light or goodness on one hand, and darkness or evil on the other. All material creation is evil because it comes from darkness, according to them. This obviously ignores what Sacred Scripture teaches: the world comes from God and “God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:10,12,18,21,25) – “very good” (Genesis 1:31). This is why “the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). If the world were evil, God would not want man to cultivate it.
Monophysitism was a heresy that denied Christ’s human nature. The monophysites denied, or at least watered down Christ’s human nature. But if Christ were not a true man, He could not have redeemed us: without his human nature he would not suffer or die. In a letter known as Leo’s Tome, the Holy Father reaffirmed the hypostatic union – the union of two natures in one Person. The Council of Chalcedon (451) took the Pope’s teachings as its own, thus continuing the teachings of previous councils: Nicea (325), Constantinople (381) and Ephesus (431). In the sixth century these four Councils were already being compared to the four Gospels (cf. Gregory the Great, Letter I, 24).
Pope Leo was not only a theologian but also a pastor. His preaching has been preserved and passed on to us. His sermons, inspired by the Sacred Scriptures, were a call to holiness and at the same time showed awareness of the daily concerns of his flock.
“He enlivened charity in a Rome tried by famines, an influx of refugees, injustice and poverty. He opposed pagan superstitions and the actions of Manichaean groups. He associated the liturgy with the daily life of Christians: for example, by combining the practice of fasting with charity and almsgiving above all on the occasion of the Quattro tempora, which in the course of the year marked the change of seasons. In particular, Leo the Great taught his faithful – and his words still apply for us today – that the Christian liturgy is not the memory of past events, but the actualization of invisible realities which act in the lives of each one of us. This is what he stressed in a sermon (cf. 64, 1-2) on Easter, to be celebrated in every season of the year ‘not so much as something of the past as rather an event of the present’” (Benedict XVI, General Audience, 5 March 2008).
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