The birthday of the Lord is the birthday of peace!

Treasures of Our Faith with Deacon Richard Vehige

Today, December 31, as our Church celebrates the Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas, we are invited to first read and reflect on a passage from the beginning of the letter of the apostle Paul to the Colossians (2: 4-15) entitled “Our faith in Christ”. Our treasure, which follows, is from a sermon by Saint Leo the Great, pope.

Saint Leo became pope in the year 440. Saint Leo was a Roman aristocrat, and was the first pope to have been called “the Great”. Saint Leo is known as one of the best administrative popes of the ancient Church .His work branched into many areas of the church, indicative of his notion of the pope’s total responsibility for the flock of Christ. In the 96 sermons which have come down to us, we find Leo stressing the virtues of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer, and also expounding Catholic doctrine with clarity and conciseness, in particular, the dogma of the Incarnation. Leo is perhaps best known for having met Attila the Hun in 452 and having persuaded him to turn back from his invasion of Italy.

Saint Paul’s letter is addressed to a congregation at Colossae in the Lycus Valley in Asia Minor, east of Ephesus. At the time of writing, Paul had not visited there, the letter says. The community had apparently been established by Epaphras of Colossae. Problems, however, had arisen, brought on by teachers who emphasized Christ’s relation to the universe (cosmos). Their teachings stressed angels; “principalities and powers”, which were connected with astral powers and cultic practices and rules about food and drink and ascetical disciplines. These teachings, Paul insists, detract from the person and work of Christ for salvation as set forth magnificently in a hymnic passage and reiterated throughout the letter. Such teachings are but “shadows”; Christ is “reality”.