Vigils Reading – St Leo the Great

A reading from

ST LEO THE GREAT

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Although the Lord Jesus Christ is one and there is really one and the same

person in Him, composed of true divinity and true humanity, the exaltation with

which God exalted Him (as the Teacher of the Gentiles says) and gave to Him a

name superior to every other name – this exaltation, as we know, took place in

that same nature which needed enrichment by the increase of so great a

glorification. Indeed, in His nature as God the Son was equal to the Father; and

there was no distinction of essence between the Father and the Only-begotten,

no difference in majesty; and through the mystery of the Incarnation the Word

did not lose anything which the Father might restore to Him as a gift.

But the servile form through which the non-sentient God fulfilled the

mystery of great and fatherly concern, is human lowliness, which was carried up

to the glory of divine power. The divinity and humanity were bound together in

so great a unity from the very time of conception by the Virgin that divine acts

were not done without the man and human acts were not done without God.

For that reason, just as the lord of Majesty is said to have been crucified, so He

who from all eternity is equal to the Father is said to have been exalted. For,

since the unity of person remains inseparable, He is one and the same – wholly

the Son of Man because of the flesh, and wholly the Son of God because of the

divinity He has in common with the Father. Hence, whatever Christ received in

time He received in his humanity, on which are bestowed the things it did not

have.

As regards the power of the Godhead, all that the Father has belongs also to the Son

without distinction. According to His divine nature, as the Father has life in himself, even

so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself. But in His servile state, His soul is

sad even unto death. As the Apostle teaches, he is at once both poor and rich: rich

because, as the Evangelist says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with

God: and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made

through him, and without him was made nothing. But he was poor because on our

account the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.