Friday, May 4, 2012

A Voice from the Past - Leo the Great

For to thee who wast a castaway, banished from the realms of paradise, dying of thy weary exile, reduced to dust and ashes, without further hope of living, by the Incarnation of the Word was given the power to return from afar to thy Maker, to recognize thy parentage, to become free after slavery, to be promoted from being an outcast to sonship: so that, thou who wast born of corruptible flesh, mayest be reborn by the Spirit of God, and obtain though grace what thou hadst not by nature, and, if thou acknowledge thyself the son of God by the spirit of adoption, dare to call God Father.

Leo the Great, 400- 460 AD, The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great, Sermon XXII, On the Feast of the Nativity II, V (The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. XII, translated by Charles Lett Feltoe, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. T & T Clark and Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1997, p. 131)

How might we lose the wonder of what Christ has done for us? How could we regain it?

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