This ineffable restoration of our salvation, dearly beloved, leaves no place for pride or idleness. We both have nothing beyond what we have received and are continuously warned against holding on to the gifts of God's grace without using them. With all justice, then, the one who goes ahead of us with help also insists upon his conditions, and the one who leads us to glory urges us graciously to obedience. As a result, the Lord rightly became the Way for us, since we cannot come to Christ except through Christ.Whoever walks his path of patience and humility comes to Christ through Christ. On this journey, the heat of labor is clearly not wanting, nor the gloom of sorrow, nor the tempest of fear. On it are the treachery of wicked people, persecutions by the godless, threats from those in power, and insults from the proud. Yet the Lord of Hosts and King of Glory endured all things in the form of our weakness and in the likeness of sinful flesh, so that, among the dangers of this life, we should not so much wish to flee by running away as to overcome by enduring.
Hence it is that our Head, the Lord Jesus Christ, transforming all the members of his body into himself, cried out amid the punishment of the cross (assuming the persona of those redeemed), saying what on one occasion he had uttered in the psalm: "My God, my God, look at me. Why have you abandoned me?" This expression, dearly beloved, represents a teaching, not a complaint. Since in Christ there is but one Person for God and man, he cannot be abandoned by someone from whom he cannot be separated. He asks on our behalf... The Redeemer's power would have brought nothing to humanity if our weakness had obtained what it sought.
Saint Leo the Great
-Saint Leo the Great (461) reigned as pope from 440 to 461. He is a Doctor of the Church.
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