Spiritual Quote of the Day (Pope St. Leo the Great, on the Son of God in ‘The Form of a Servant’)

“He took the form of a servant without stain of sin. He enhanced our humanity but did not thereby diminish his divinity. The emptying by which the invisible one made himself visible, and by which the Lord and Creator of all things willed to be one with mortal men, was a bending down in pity, not a failure of power. Accordingly, he who in the form of God was the maker of man, was himself made man in the form of a slave. Thus the Son of God enters into the depths of this world, coming down from his heavenly throne, yet not leaving his Father's glory, begotten into a new order by a new birth.”— Pope St. Leo the Great (ca. 391-461), Letters (Leo the Great), Letter 28 (“The Tome”), 3

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Pope St. Leo the Great, on the Paramount Importance of Mercy to the Poor)

“Although a man be full of faith, and chaste, and sober, and adorned with other still greater decorations, yet if he is not merciful, he cannot deserve mercy: for the Lord says, blessed are the merciful, for God shall have mercy upon them [Matthew 5:7]. And when the Son of Man comes in His Majesty and is seated on His glorious throne, and all nations being gathered together, division is made between the good and the bad, for what shall they be praised who stand upon the fight except for works of benevolence and deeds of love which Jesus Christ shall reckon as done to Himself? For He who has made man's nature His own, has separated Himself in nothing from man's humility. And what objection shall be made to those on the left except for their neglect of love, their inhuman harshness, their refusal of mercy to the poor? As if those on the right had no other virtues those on the left no other faults. But at the great and final day of judgment large-hearted liberality and ungodly meanness will be counted of such importance as to outweigh all other virtues and all other shortcomings, so that for the one men shall gain entrance into the Kingdom, for the other they shall be sent into eternal fire.”— Pope St. Leo the Great (c.400-461), “Sermon 10,” translated by Charles Lett Feltoe from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 12, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace

Quote of the Day (Pope St. Leo the Great, on Believers and the ‘Victory of the Cross’)

“No one, however weak, is denied a share in the victory of the Cross, nor is anyone beyond the help of the prayer of Christ.” —Pope St. Leo the Great (c.400-461): Sermon 66, 3-4

Quote of the Day (Pope St. Leo the Great, on the Eucharist)

“We are to celebrate the Lord's paschal sacrifice with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 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. As we have died with him, and had been buried and raised to life with him, so we bear him within us, both in body and in spirit in everything we do.” —From a sermon by Pope St. Leo the Great (c. 400-461), Sermo 12 de Passione, 3, 6-7: PL 54, 355-357