The Ancient Witnesses

Chapter 6: The Fullness of Time • 217

Word became flesh in the blessed virgin’s womb. Indeed, scarcely can we think of him as God apart from his humanity, nor his humanity apart from his divinity.” 103 “The two natures ,” Mentor reminded us, “are Christ’s divine and human natures, which, as the Bishop explains, became unified in our Redeemer when the Word was made flesh. Those who rightly understand the words of our Lord in the garden and at his betrayal and arrest will find it impossible to think about Jesus as human , without also thinking of him as God . “Each of Christ’s two natures,” added Leo, “kept its own characteristics: each nature expresses its own truth in its own distinct actions, but neither separates itself from its connection with the other. Neither nature lacks anything: his lowliness was apparent in his majesty, and his majesty in his lowliness. Unity brings no confusion, nor does the distinctiveness ruin the unity. One is subject to suffering, the other is unmoved.” 104 “Will this be on the test?” whispered Preacher. “We are nearing the end of what our brother Cyril calls the dispensation in the flesh ,” explained Leo. “So, when everything God allowed to be done in the limiting veil of flesh had been carried out, Jesus the Son of God was nailed to a cross which he himself had carried— along with two thieves, one on his right, the other on his left, crucified in the same way. 105

103 Same as previous note, vol.138a, 317.

104 Freeland and Conway, St. Leo the Great, Sermons , in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 93, 233.

105 Leo the Great, Sermon 55, Fathers of the Church vol.93, 237. Latin original in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina , vol. 138a, 310.