Recognize the dignity of your nature

On Friday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time our Church invites us to first read and reflect on a passage from the letter of the apostle Paul to the Galatians (5:1-25) entitled "The freedom of those who live by faith". 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 expounding Catholic doctrine with clarity and conciseness, particularly 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.  The Galatians to whom the letter is addressed were Paul's converts, most likely among the descendants of Celts who had invaded western and central Asia Minor in the third century B.C. and had settled in the territory around Ancyra (modern Ankara, Turkey). Paul had passed through this area on his second missionary journey and again on his third. It is less likely that the recipients of this letter were Paul's churches in the southern regions of Pisidia, Lycaonia, and Pamphylia where he had preached earlier in the Hellenized cities of Perge, Iconium, Pisidian Antioch, Lystra, and Derbe; this area was part of the Roman province of Galatia, and some scholars think that South Galatia was the destination of this letter. St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians teaches that justification comes through faith in Jesus Christ, not through works of the Mosaic Law, and that to return to the Law as a means of salvation is to fall back into spiritual slavery. Paul insists that the Gospel he preached is of divine origin and defends the freedom of Gentile believers against those who required circumcision and legal observance. He presents Christ's death and resurrection as the decisive act that frees humanity from sin, the Law's curse, and the powers of the flesh. True Christian freedom, Paul explains, is not license but life in the Spirit, where believers are transformed inwardly and enabled to fulfill the Law through love, producing the fruits of the Spirit as the visible sign of life in Christ.