Leo the Great — Commentary on Scripture

2 Thessalonians 3:2

For the crafty Tempter, the Devil, delights greatly in wounding the hearts of men as when he can poison their unwary minds with errors that are opposed to Gospel Truth, we must strive by the mighty teaching of the Holy Spirit to prevent Christian knowledge from being perverted by the Devil’s falsehoods.

2 Timothy 2:4

He who is enrolled in God’s army must not be bound to others, lest any obligatory ties call him away from the Lord’s camp, where his name is inscribed.

LETTERS 4

2 Timothy 2:12

In him therefore is our hope of eternal life, and in him also is the pattern of our patience. “If we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him,” since, as the apostle says, “those who claim that they remain in Christ ought themselves to walk just as Christ walked.” Otherwise we are appearing under the likeness of a false profession if we do not follow the commands of him in whose name we glory. And these would indeed not be burdensome to us and would free us from all dangers, if we would only love what he commands us to love.

SERMONS 90.2

2 Timothy 2:17

To deceive the first human beings, the devil claimed the serpent as his tool. So to seduce the hearts of orthodox, he armed the tongues of these with the poison of his falsehood. With pastoral care, however, we oppose these snares, dearly beloved, to the extent that the Lord helps us. To prevent any of the holy flock from perishing, we advise you with fatherly admonitions to turn away from “wicked lips and treacherous tongue,” from which the prophet asks that his soul “be kept free,” since “their talk crawls like a crab,” as the blessed apostle said. They creep in low to the ground, take hold softly, squeeze gently and kill undetected.

SERMONS 16.3

2 Timothy 3:12

I am amazed that your charity is so overcome with tribulation from scandals, no matter from what occasion they arise, that you say you desire to be freed from the labors of your bishopric and prefer to live in silence and leisure rather than continue handling those problems which were entrusted to you. But, as the Lord said, “Blessed is he that perseveres to the end.” From what will this blessed perseverance come if not from the virtue of patience? For, according to the teaching of the apostle, “All who want to live piously in Christ will suffer persecution.” Persecution is to be reckoned not only as that which is done against Christian piety by the sword or fire or by any torments whatever, for the ravages of persecution are also inflicted by differences of character, the perversity of the disobedient and the barbs of slanderous tongues.

LETTERS 167.1

Acts 2:1

To the Hebrew people, now freed from Egypt, the law was given on Mount Sinai fifty days after the immolation of the paschal lamb. Similarly, after the passion of Christ in which the true Lamb of God was killed, just fifty days after his resurrection, the Holy Spirit fell upon the apostles and the whole group of believers. Thus the earnest Christian may easily perceive that the beginnings of the Old Covenant were at the service of the beginnings of the gospel and that the same Spirit who instituted the first established the Second Covenant.

SERMON 75

Acts 2:4

O how swift is the speech of wisdom! Where God is the teacher, how quickly is that learned which is being taught! No interpretation is used in order to understand, no practice is needed in order to use it. No time is needed to study, but, with the “Spirit” of truth “blowing wherever he pleases,” the particular voices of each distinct people become familiar in the mouth of the church.From this day the trumpet of the gospel teaching resounds. From this day showers of graces and streams of benedictions water all the desert and every wasteland, to “renew the face of the earth,” “God’s Spirit hovered over the water.” To take away the old darkness, beams of new light flash out, when by the splendor of those glowing tongues, the Word of the Lord becomes “clear” and “speech takes fire.” Both the force of giving light and the power of burning were present for this reason, to create knowledge and to destroy sin.

SERMON 75.2

Acts 3:6

What more sublime than this humility? what richer than this poverty?

Acts 3:7

The one whom he encouraged by word he strengthed by his right hand, because the discourse of a teacher is less efficacious in the hearts of his hearers if it is not also recommended by the example of his own action.

Acts 3:14

And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas to them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.

Acts 3:23

Peter teaches briefly but clearly by the testimony of the prophets and the law that the Lord is to be listened to by the nations, and that he will surely condemn the unbelieving, but he will grant an eternal blessing to the faithful.

Acts 3:24

Although the patriarchs and saints of earlier times prophesied many things about Christ by their words and deeds, who wrote properly speaking the time of the prophets had its beginning from Samuel, under whom the period of the kings began in Israel, and i lasted up to the deliverance from the Babylonian captivity.

Acts 4:28

Did then the wickedness of Christ's persecutors spring from God's plan, and was that unsurpassable crime prefaced and set in motion by the hand of God? Clearly we must not think this of the highest Justice: that which was fore-known in respect of the Jews' malice is far different, indeed quite contrary to what was ordained in respect of Christ's Passion. Their desire to slay Him did not proceed from the same source as His to die: nor were their atrocious crime and the Redeemer's endurance the offspring of One Spirit. The Lord did not incite but permit those madmen's naughty hands: nor in His foreknowledge of what must be accomplished did He compel its accomplishment, even though it was in order to its accomplishment that He had taken flesh.

Sermon LXVII. (on the Passion, XVI.: Delivered on the Sunday.)

Acts 4:32

Of this high-souled humility the Apostles first, after the Lord, have given us example, who, leaving all that they had without difference at the voice of the heavenly Master, were turned by a ready change from the catching of fish to be fishers of men, and made many like themselves through the imitation of their faith, when with those first-begotten sons of the Church, "the heart of all was one, and the spirit one, of those that believed": for they, putting away the whole of their things and possessions, enriched themselves with eternal goods, through the most devoted poverty, and in accordance with the Apostles' preaching rejoiced to have nothing of the world and possess all things with Christ.

Sermon XCV. A Homily on the Beatitudes, St. Matt. V. 1-9.

Colossians 1:13

“Snatched from the powers of darkness” at such a great “price,” and by so great a “mystery,” and loosed from the chains of the ancient captivity, make sure, dearly beloved, that the devil does not destroy the integrity of your souls with any stratagem. Whatever is forced on you contrary to the Christian faith, whatever is presented to you contrary to the commandments of God, it comes from the deceptions of the one who tries with many wiles to divert you from eternal life, and, by seizing certain occasions of human weakness, leads careless and negligent souls again into his snares of death. Let all those reborn through water and the Holy Spirit consider the one whom they have renounced. -.

Colossians 1:15

Let those then “who were born not from blood, nor from the will of the flesh, but from God” offer concord to God as peaceloving children. Let all the adopted members join together into that “firstborn” of new “creation” who came “not to do his own will, but that of the one who sent him.” .

Colossians 2:9

Embracing then, dearly beloved, the sole pledge of the Christian hope, let us not be torn from our faithful bonding to the body of Christ, in whom, as the apostle says, “dwells the fullness of divinity in bodily manner, and you have been filled out in him.” Since the substance of God is incorporeal, how does it dwell in bodily manner in Christ unless the flesh of our race has been made the flesh of the divinity? We filled out in that God in whom we have been crucified, in whom we have been buried, in whom we have been even raised up.

Colossians 2:15

As renowned victor over the devil and most powerful conqueror of hostile spirits, in an admirable spectacle, he carried the trophy of his “victory.” On the shoulders of his unconquered endurance, he bore the sign of salvation to be worshiped in every kingdom. Even then he encouraged all his imitators by the sight of his labor, saying, “Any who do not take up their cross and follow me do not deserve me.”

Ephesians 4:8-9

Furthermore in the matter which you placed last in your confidential letter, I am surprised that any intelligent Christian should be in difficulty as to whether when Christ descended to the realms below, his flesh rested in the tomb: for as it truly died and was buried, so it was truly raised the third day.

Letter 15, Section 18

Exodus 29:14

Indeed consequently, “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed,” as the apostle says. Offering himself to the Father as a new and real sacrifice of reconciliation, he was crucified—not in the temple whose due worship is now completed, nor within the enclosure of the city which was to be destroyed because of its crime, but “outside and beyond the camp.” That way, as the mystery of the ancient sacrifices was ceasing, a new victim would be put on a new altar, and the cross of Christ would be the altar not of the temple but of the world.

SERMON 59.5