Lent with the Early Church Fathers Day 26

Day 26

Lent with the Early Church Fathers

A daily post from Tom Bandy 

Based on A Year with the Church Fathers (Ed. Mike Aquilina, St. Benedict Press, 2010) 

Remember that everyone is your neighbor 

St. Leo the Great 

This godly love cannot be perfect unless we love our neighbor as well. And in the name “neighbor” we must include not only those who are connected with us by friendship or neighborhood, but absolutely all humanity. 

We have a common nature with all humans, whether they are enemies or allies, slaves or free. For the one maker made us; the one Creator breathed life into us. We all enjoy the same sky and air, the same days and nights. And though some are good and others bad, some righteous and others unrighteous, yet God is generous to all and kind to all. 

But the broad extent of Christian grace has given us even more reasons for loving our neighbor. Reaching throughout the world, it looks down on no one, and teaches that no one is to be neglected. 

Quite rightly Christ teaches us to love our enemies, and to pray to him for our persecutors. Every day he grafts shoots of the wild olive from all the nations into the holy branches of his own olive, and makes people reconciled instead of enemies, adopted children instead of strangers, just instead of ungodly, so that “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”. 

TGB: St. Leo lived in the waning years of the western Roman empire when immigration from many nations (violent and peaceful) threatened the livelihoods of all. He even faced down Attila the Hun and persuaded him to turn back! Yet his broad vision of reconciliation dominated his message to the church … a voice for love and acceptance.