10 November 2018
Memorial of Saint Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church
One of the most insidious questions we can ask is “what does it matter?” It is good to keep things in perspective, but when we justify wrong actions, we have problems. We start dividing things into “what God cares about” and “what God doesn’t care about,” getting more and more annoyed with any suggestion that the second category might be, at the very least, smaller than we think. The reality is that God cares about everything. Every atom exists because God actively wills it. Jesus tells us that even the hairs on our head are numbered by the Father (cf. Lk. 12:7). There is nothing too small for God to care about.
Pope Leo the Great was a man who was “trustworthy in very small matters” and “also trustworthy in great ones” (Lk. 16:10). When Attila the Hun was about to enter Rome and sack the city, Leo went with a delegation to negotiate a peace. When questions of the relationship between Jesus’ divinity and humanity arose, Leo wrote a great work describing the origin and interaction of the natures. Political considerations were not beyond his concern (or God’s), nor were theological ones. And in both cases, it was Leo’s attention to details that allowed him to negotiate a peace and explore the Person of Jesus. He was attentive to God’s will in secular and sacred matters alike, in big things and small ones. There was no notion in his mind of “God’s business” and “not God’s business.” Everything was for God. This is the mind and the heart of a saint.