Remember your Dignity
“Christian, remember your dignity” is probably one of the most famous quotes of Pope St. Leo the Great, our patron saint. It belongs to a Christmas sermon (n. 21) and it mentioned in the context of the incarnation and birth of Jesus Christ through which Christ has united humanity with divinity, restoring our lost dignity; therefore, Christians must live in a way worthy of this new, divine life. Here are his words: “Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.” As we just celebrated his feast day this past November 10th, it is good to reflect on the two topics that were so dear to Leo’s teachings and ministry: who is Jesus Christ and who is the human being.
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Mt 16:13) Jesus asked in the Gospel we read at the Mass for St. Leo’s feast. And that is the main mission every Pope, successor of Peter, has received from the Lord: to confess “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (v. 16). Saint Leo I received it at a turbulent time for the Church: various doctrines exaggerated the purely divine or purely human aspect of Jesus Christ. Nestorianism claimed that in Jesus there were two separate persons: one divine (the Son of God) and one human (the man Jesus) merely united in an external way. Monophysitism: after the Incarnation, Christ had only one nature: a divine nature, because His humanity was supposedly absorbed or swallowed up by His divinity “like a drop of honey in the ocean.” Apollinarianism: Christ had a human body but not a human rational soul; the divine Logos took its place. Somehow those these errors are echoed in the minds and lives of many of our contemporaries. For many, Christ is just a human being from ancient times. For others, he is divine, someone you can pray to, someone you can turn to for protection and comfort, but that has very little influence in the current human affairs of my life. His humanity, the Incarnation, would be irrelevant.
Leo’s most famous contribution to this mystery is his “Tome to Flavian” (449), a letter (n. 28) to the Patriarch of Constantinople that explained the mystery of Christ’s two natures: “Without detriment therefore to the properties of either nature and substance which then came together in one person , majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality […] Thus in the whole and perfect nature of true man was true God born, complete in what was His own, complete in what was ours.” This teaching was so decisive that the Council of Chalcedon (451) used it to define the doctrine of the “hypostatic union” (union in the person): that Christ is one Person in two natures, divine and human, “without confusion, change, division, or separation.” The bishops at the Council, upon listening to St. Leo’s letter cried out: “Peter has spoken thus through Leo”.
And this brings us to our second question which gives this article its name: our dignity. As we mentioned above, through the incarnation of the Word of God, and through our baptism, we now share in the nature of God. Jesus Christ is not just true man, but ‘the true man’, what we are meant to be. This teaching was reproposed to us in our times by the Vatican II Council when it affirmed in its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the world Gaudium et Spes that: “by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.” Consequently, “only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.” (n. 22) This truth brought St. Leo to defend in numerous occasions the dignity of our lives, including our bodies, the goodness of marriage and procreation, the care for the needy. A teaching more than ever needed in our world in which the lives or dignity of the weak, the unborn, the elderly, the sick, the stranger, the immigrant… experience constant risks. And in a society in which our bodies have become objects of our personal preferences like, for example, in the gender ideologies.
The fact that our current Pope, Leo XIV, has chosen this name for his pontificate shows us that the work and teachings of our beloved patron saint are still relevant and more current than ever. I recommend that everyone learn about his life, read some of his homilies, pray to him, have his image in their homes, and pray for the current Holy Father.
Blessings,
Fr. Javier Nieva, DCJM
*****
Previous Letters:
November 9, 2025: St. Leo and the Cross of Christ
November 2, 2025; Dying in Christ
October 26, 2025: Forgive Us
October 19, 2025: Pray For Us
October 12, 2025: Pillar of Faith
October, 5, 2025: Compendium of the Gospel
September 28, 2025: Failed to Do
September 21, 2025: An Enemy Did This
September 14, 2025: In Hoc Signo
September 7, 2025: My Son Carlo
August 31, 2025: Humility?
August 24, 2025: How Difficult?
August 17, 2025: Politically Incorrect
August 10, 2025: Got Faith?
August 3, 2025: Greed
July 27, 2025: Ask and You Shall Receive
July 20, 2025: The Better Part
July 13, 2025: Who is the Samaritan
July 6, 2025: Joy and Spoons
June 29, 2025: In Fire
June 22, 2025: A Beating Heart in the Tabernacle
June 15, 2025: The Mirror
June 8, 2025: Filled With the Holy Spirit
June 1, 2025: He Loved Us
May 25, 2025: Servant of Your Faith and Joy
May 18, 2025: Leo
May 11, 2025: The Deposit of Faith
May 4, 2025: Costly Mercy
April 27, 2025: Who is Peter?
April 20, 2025: I Make All Things New – Arise!
April 13, 2025: I Make All Things New – To Do My Penance
April 6, 2025: I Make All Things New – I Declared My Sin to You
March 30, 2025: I Make All Things New – I Firmly Resolve
March 23 2025: I Make All Things New – I am Sorry for Offending You
March 16, 2025: I Make All Things New – Examining Your Conscience
March 9, 2025: I Make All Things New
March 2, 2025: Pruning
February 23, 2025: The Anointed of the Lord
February 16, 2025: Be My Valentine
February 9, 2025: Wash Away My Guilt II
February 2, 2025: Wash Away My Guilt I
January 26, 2025: Catholic Education
January 19, 2025: Shall Marry You
January 12, 2025: Called by Name
January 5, 2025: Pilgrims of Hope
December 29, 2024: Priests for the Family
December 22, 2024: Messengers of Joy
December 15, 2024: Blessed Are the Poor
December 8, 2024: Love, Hope and Joy
December 1, 2024: Hope Does Not Disappoint
November 24, 2024: Are You King?
November 17, 2024: Seven Words
November 10, 2024: Tu es Petrus
November 3, 2024: Pray For Those Authority
October 27, 2024: These Are the Feasts
October 20, 2024: Someone Else
October 13, 2024: Be Prudent
October 6, 2024: Project and Dreams II
September 29, 2024: Projects and Dreams I
September 22, 2024: Pastor
September 15, 2024: Take Up Your Cross
September 8, 2024: Guardians of Shared Memory
September 1, 2024: From Their Hearts
August 25, 2024: The Cost of Discipleship
August 18, 2024: For Real?
August 11, 2024: Too Long For You
August 4, 2024: A New Manna
July 28, 2024: Bread of Life
July 21, 2024: Shepherds After My Own Heart
July 14, 2024: Woe to Me…
July 7, 2024: Come and Rest (II)
June 30, 2024: Come and Rest (I)
June 23, 2024: Storms
June 16, 2024: I Will be a Father to You
June 9, 2024: Burning Furnace of Love
June 2, 2024: In the Midst of Him
May 26, 2024: Forever I Will Sing the Goodness of the Lord
May 19, 2024: Through the Holy Spirit
May 12, 2024: The Ark of the Covenant
May 5, 2024: Source and Summit
April 28, 2024: Rejoice Always
April 21, 2024: I Believe in the resurrection of the body Part II
April 14, 2024: I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body Part 1
April 7, 2024: Rich in Mercy
March 31, 2024: Sine Dominico Non Possumus About Sunday
February 11, 2024: I Was Ill and You Cared For Me
February 4, 2024: Why Evil?
January 28, 2024: Catholic Schools Week
January 21, 2024: Attachments
January 14, 2024: The LORD Shines
January 7, 2024: Epiphany 2024
December 31, 2023: A Family of Families
December 25, 2023: New Beginnings
December 17, 2023: Christmas
December 3, 2023: Watch
November 26, 2023: Be Healed
November 19, 2023: Sealed
November 12, 2023: Religious?
