{"id":35,"date":"2011-05-04T15:11:30","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T19:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bread_on_the_trail\/?p=35"},"modified":"2011-05-04T15:11:30","modified_gmt":"2011-05-04T19:11:30","slug":"saint-leo-the-great-pope-christ-lives-in-his-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bread_on_the_trail\/2011\/05\/saint-leo-the-great-pope-christ-lives-in-his-church.html","title":{"rendered":"Saint Leo the Great, Pope: Christ lives in his Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Saint Leo the Great, Pope: Christ lives in his Church<\/p>\n

My dear brethren, there is no doubt that the Son of God took our human nature into so close a union with himself that one and the same Christ is present, not only in the firstborn of all creation, but in all his saints as well.<\/p>\n

The head cannot be separated from the members, nor the members from the head.<\/p>\n

Not in this life, it is true, but only in eternity will God be all in all, yet even now he dwells, whole and undivided, in his temple the Church. Such was his promise to us when he said: See, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.
\n\u00a0
\nAnd so all that the Son of God did and taught for the world\u2019s reconciliation is not for us simply a matter of past history. Here and now we experience his power at work among us.<\/p>\n

Born of a virgin mother by the action of the Holy Spirit, Christ keeps his Church spotless and makes her fruitful by the inspiration of the same Spirit.<\/p>\n

In baptismal regeneration she brings forth children for God beyond all numbering. These are the sons of whom it is written: They are born not of blood, nor of the desire of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
\n\u00a0
\nIn Christ Abraham\u2019s posterity is blessed, because in him the whole world receives the adoption of sons, and in him the patriarch becomes the father of all nations through the birth, not from human stock but by faith, of the descendants that were promised to him.<\/p>\n

From every nation on earth, without exception, Christ forms a single flock of those he has sanctified, daily fulfilling the promise he once made: I have other sheep, not of this fold, whom it is also ordained that I shall lead; and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. \"\"<\/a>
\n\u00a0
\nAlthough it was primarily to Peter that he said: Feed my sheep, yet the one Lord guides all the pastors in the discharge of their office and leads to rich and fertile pastures all those who come to the rock.<\/p>\n

There is no counting the sheep who are nourished with his abundant love, and who are prepared to lay down their lives for the sake of the good shepherd who died for them.
\n\u00a0
\nBut it is not only the martyrs who share in his passion by their glorious courage; the same is true, by faith, of all who are reborn through baptism. That is why we are to celebrate the Lord\u2019s paschal sacrifice with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.<\/p>\n

The leaven of our former malice is thrown out, and a new creature is filled and inebriated with the Lord himself. For the effect of our sharing in the body and blood of Christ is to change us into what we receive.<\/p>\n

As we have died with him, and have been buried and raised to life with him, so we bear him within us, both in body and in spirit, in everything we do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saint Leo the Great, Pope: Christ lives in his Church My dear brethren, there is no doubt that the Son of God took our human nature into so close a union with himself that one and the same Christ is present, not only in the firstborn of all creation, but in all his saints as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,26,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-early-fathers","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nSaint Leo the Great, Pope: Christ lives in his Church - Bread on the Trail<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bread_on_the_trail\/2011\/05\/saint-leo-the-great-pope-christ-lives-in-his-church.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Saint Leo the Great, Pope: Christ lives in his Church - 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He is a widely recognized voice in the Catholic and broader Christian community. He is a member of the Clergy of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia. In his fifteenth year of service as an ordained Catholic Deacon, he is currently assigned to St Stephen Martyr Parish in Chesapeake, Virginia. He is also authorized to serve the Liturgy of the Greek Byzantine Melkite Catholic Church. Deacon Fournier and his wife Laurine have been married for 34 years and have five grown children and six grandchildren. Deacon Fournier holds his Bachelors degree in theology and philosophy from the Franciscan University of Steubenville (BA), his Masters Degree in Marriage and Family Theology from the John Paul II Institute of the Lateran University (MTS), his Juris Doctor Law Degree Law (JD) from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and is a PhD candidate in Moral Theology at the Catholic University of America where he is currently writing his Doctoral Dissertation. Deacon Fournier also holds two honorary Doctorates, a Doctor of Laws (L.L.D. 1994,Honoris Causa) from St. Thomas University - Given for pro-life legal contributions, and a Doctor of Divinity Degree (D.D. 2005, Honoris Causa ) from the National Clergy Council and the Methodist Episcopal Church for his contributions to authentic ecumenical efforts toward Christian unity. Attorney Fournier is a constitutional lawyer who appeared as co-counsel in cases before the United States Supreme Court on Pro-Life, Religious Freedom and Pro-family issues. He served as the first Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice for seven years. He then served as a public policy activist for the causes of life, marriage and family issues for a number of years. He has extensive experience in nonprofit and for profit leadership. He has taught at the College level and served in Academic administration. He was a Dean of Students and the Dean of Evangelization at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio. Deacon Fournier is, above all, a communicator. His faith informs his passion to share the fullness of life which he has found in the heart of the Catholic Church. He has written eight books on matters of faith, family and the Christian life and is widely published in the broader Christian community on matters of life, faith, family, and cultural and social issues. He hosted two daily national radio programs, Purpose for Living, and Millennial Moment. He hosted several television series on Christian family and contemporary faith issues on EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network). He is actively involved in preaching and teaching in the Catholic Church and the broader Christian community. In addition to serving as the Editor in Chief of Catholic Online, Deacon Fournier is the John Paul II Fellow and special counsel for the National Pro-Life Center in Washington, D.C. and is the president of Third Millennium, LLC, a communications and consulting company. He views his role on Beliefnet as an opportunity to share his Catholic Christian faith in what he calls a new areopagus. The areopagus is referred to in the 17th Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the Christian New Testament. Also called Mars Hill it was there where the Apostle Paul shared the Christian faith with the early Greeks in their temple.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bread_on_the_trail\/author\/deaconfournier"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bread_on_the_trail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bread_on_the_trail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bread_on_the_trail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bread_on_the_trail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bread_on_the_trail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bread_on_the_trail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bread_on_the_trail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bread_on_the_trail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bread_on_the_trail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bread_on_the_trail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}