Monday, November 10th, 2008
Daily Archive
Theology on Tap – November 17
Posted by Fr. Aquinas on 10 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: Parish News
Join young adults for a series of lectures at Metro 53 Bar and Restaurant, 307 East 53rd Street, between 2nd and 1st Avenues. The event is from 7pm-8:30pm. The final lecture of the Fall 2008 season is on November 17, 2008 by Angelo Mater, editor of Godpsy.com. His topic this night will be “Faith at the Edge: Living the Catholic life in a secular city” For more details, visit www.totnyc.org.
Pope Saint Leo the Great (+461)
Posted by Fr. Aquinas on 10 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: Liturgical Feasts
Day after day Peter proclaims to the whole Church:
You are Christ, the Son of the living God.
During his 21-year reign on the Throne of St. Peter, Leo triumphed over numerous theological, ecclesiastical, and political crises. He was the first of the popes to receive the title magnus—“the great.”
In the political sphere, Leo, together with officials of the Western Empire, had to struggle against the increasingly disastrous effects of the barbarian invasions. In one instance, as pastor of the Universal Church, Leo traveled to the northern Italian battlefields of Attila the Hun, where he successfully convinced the invader to leave Italy and spare the city of Rome. The event is depicted above. Later, Leo again had to use his diplomatic skill, a seemingly native talent for this aristocrat, against the Vandals. They sacked Rome in 455, but Leo convinced them to cease their plundering and leave.
In the theological realm, Leo is remembered most for his famous “Tome,” a letter he wrote against the heresy of Eutyches, a monk who taught erroneously that after the incarnation there existed in Christ only one nature, the divine nature. Eutyches held in fact that Christ was born from two natures, from the divine and human natures, but he also argued in effect that after the incarnation the human was consumed by and confused within the divine, such that only the divine nature remained distinct in Christ. The politics surrounding the condemnation of the monophysite (“one nature”) heresy were incredibly complicated, but Leo’s letter emerged at the Council of Chalcedon (451) as the agreed orthodox articulation of the Catholic faith. Below are two passages from the tome that encapsulate the Leonine teaching.