St Leo the Great's Words Are a Battle Cry of Hope

Today is the Feast of St Leo the Great, who faced down Attila the Hun when he was preparing to attack Rome in 452. He's also the Doctor of the Unity of the Church.

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From Aleteia

By Theresa Civantos Barber

St. Leo the Great's words are a kind of battle cry of hope: However hard things get, our victory is already won.

Pope Leo I led the Church through a really difficult time. 

Warfare and civil unrest were ugly and relentless. More than once, Pope Leo had to go out from Rome to meet the leader of an approaching army and beseech him to spare the city. 

He succeeded the first time, with Attila the Hun, but the second time — with the Vandal King Genseric, in 455 — he was only able to get him to spare the major basilicas, in which part of the terrified population took refuge, and to spare Rome from being totally burned to the ground.

We’re lucky today that most of us aren’t facing an invading army or attacking barbarians. But we’re fighting our own battles, large and small. Many of us are suffering and struggling right now, and the state of the world might make us feel hopeless at times.

That’s why looking to St. Leo the Great can help. 

During an incredibly dark and scary time, St. Leo kept his eyes firmly fixed on God. 

In God, he found the strength to lead the Church and the city of Rome. He found something sturdy and constant to rely on, even while it felt like the world was falling to pieces around him.

The business of hope

You don’t need me to tell you things are hard. You don’t come to Aleteia to hear the doom and gloom that fills the rest of the news cycle. Here, we are in the business of bringing hope. 

So we can’t point you to anything better than the words of St. Leo the Great, who wrote these confident words while living through an intensely challenging period in the early Church. 

His words are a kind of battle cry of hope: However hard things get, our victory already is won. Christ is on his throne. No defeat on this earth is final. In Christ, we will triumph in the end.

Read the full letter here. Here are the parts that especially speak of his unfailing hope in Christ:

No one, however weak, is denied a share in the victory of the cross. No one is beyond the help of the prayer of Christ…

The Christian people are invited to share the riches of paradise. All who have been reborn have the way open before them to return to their native land, from which they had been exiled… 

The business of this life should not preoccupy us with its anxiety and pride, so that we no longer strive with all the love of our heart to be like our Redeemer, and to follow his example… 

Again, who cannot recognize in Christ his own infirmities? … 

The body that lay lifeless in the tomb is ours. The body that rose again on the third day is ours. The body that ascended above all the heights of heaven to the right hand of the Father’s glory is ours. 

If then we walk in the way of his commandments, and are not ashamed to acknowledge the price he paid for our salvation in a lowly body, we too are to rise to share his glory. 

This hope in paradise and in the resurrection is ours, too. We know that — no matter what we face — our God will never leave us.