Part 78: DoC: St. Leo I, the Great continued...

From several sources found here and there. The assumption here is that we all can be pure and holy: that is, perfect. The Great Doctor of Doctrine calls his flock, and us, in these Lenten sermons, to perfection.

Although, dearly-beloved, as the Easter festival approaches, the very recurrence of the season points out to us the Lenten fast, yet our words also must add their exhortations which, the Lord helping us, may be not useless to the active nor irksome to the devout. For since the idea of these days demands the increase of all our religious performances, there is no one, I am sure, that does not feel glad at being incited to good works. For though our nature which, so long as we are mortal, will be changeable, is advancing to the highest pursuits of virtue, yet always has the possibility of falling back, so has it always the possibility of advancing. And this is the true justness of the perfect that they should never assume themselves to be perfect, lest flagging in the purpose of their yet unfinished journey, they should fall into the danger of failure, through giving up the desire for progress.

One of the key points here is that we cannot ease up on our pursuit of holiness. This road is not one from which we can break for a side-road to a vacation. 

If we are not advancing, we shall be sliding back. This is a truism we have heard many times. How do we keep up the pursuit, among so many stresses and distractions? By prayer and by encouragement from those around us who want to also become perfect.


And, therefore, because none of us, dearly beloved, is so perfect and holy as not to be able to be more perfect and more holy, let us all together, without difference of rank, without distinction of desert, with pious eagerness pursue our race from what we have attained to what we yet aspire to, and make some needful additions to our regular devotions. For he that is not more attentive than usual to religion in these days, is shown at other times to be not attentive enough.

If you want to know why he is called "Great", look here.

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This section below is so important. By wicked imaginings, Leo does not merely mean temptations of the carnal sort, but the entertaining of false teachings, false seers, gnosticism and so on. I have written many times on this blog that one CANNOT begin the long and difficult journey towards perfection without first being orthodox.

Having a mind like the mind of Christ means having a mind in keeping with the teaching of Christ's Church. 

If one has any area of one's life which is not following the moral or doctrinal teachings of the Church, one cannot be perfected.

We know indeed, dearly-beloved, your devotion to be so warm that in the fasting, which is the forerunner of the Lord's Easter, many of you will have forestalled our exhortations. But because the right practice of abstinence is needful not only to the mortification of the flesh but also to the purification of the mind, we desire your observance to be so complete that, as you cut down the pleasures that belong to the lusts of the flesh, so you should banish the errors that proceed from the imaginations of the heart. For he whose heart is polluted with no misbelief prepares himself with true and reasonable purification for the PaschalFeast, in which all the mysteries of our religion meet together. For, as the Apostle says, that all that is not of faith is sin Romans 14:23, the fasting of those will be unprofitable and vain, whom the father of lying deceives with his delusions, and who are not fed by Christ's true flesh. As then we must with the whole heart obey the Divine commands and sound doctrine, so we must use all foresight in abstaining from wicked imaginations. For the mind then only keeps holy and spiritual fast when it rejects the food of error and the poison of falsehood, which our crafty and wily foe plies us with more treacherously now, when by the very return of the venerable Festival, the whole church generally is admonished to understand the mysteries of its salvation. 

To be confessor to Christ is to believe in the Creed. If we believe what we say on Sunday, we are confessing our faith and if we live according to those beliefs, we are orthodox.

For he is the true confessor and worshipper of Christ's resurrection, who is not confused about His passion, nor deceived about His bodily nativity. For some are so ashamed of the Gospel of the Cross of Christ, as to impudently nullify the punishment which He underwent for the world's redemption, and have denied the very nature of true flesh in the Lord, not understanding how the impassible and unchangeable Deity of God's Word could have so far condescended for man's salvation, as by His power not to lose His own properties, and in His mercy to take on Him ours. And so in Christ, there is a twofold form but one person, and the Son of God, who is at the same time Son of Man, is one Lord, accepting the condition of a slave by the design of loving-kindness, not by the law of necessity, because by His power He became humble, by His power passible, by His power mortal; that for the destruction of the tyranny of sin and death, the weak nature in Him might be capable of punishment, and the strong nature not lose anything of its glory.

Being holy means clinging to Christ, His Person, His Church.

Confusion cannot be in the mind, nor sin in the heart of the one who wants to be like Christ is all things.

To be continued...