Commemorated on February
20th
Icon used with permission of
comeandseeicons.com, and written by hand of Nick Papas
Born in Ravenna, Italy, which to this day bears the traces of
Byzantine glory in some of its architecture, St. Leo stemmed from nobility,
which he chose to set aside in order to serve Jesus Christ. Like the newsboy
who rises to become the editor, he rose from acolyte to bishop of Catania. He
chose to serve Christ who embraced him for all his charmed life on earth and
beyond. From youth he had evinced that spark of the divine rarely endowed on
man but when he had reached the post of bishop his proximity to God was beyond
question, needing not even a halo to convince the most skeptical and cynical who
could not fail to see the divine aura about this man or feel a divine presence
wherever he chanced to be.
That the power of the Lord was with him followed his missionary
efforts in Sicily where pagan holdouts, including a great number of Hellenes
continued to plague Christianity even in the eighth century. It was Leo's
tremendous success in converting pagans into devout Christians that placed him a
cut above and earned him a renown as a man of God to be reckoned with by any who
dared assail the faith in Jesus Christ. On one occasion he was challenged to
demonstrate the power of his Lord, whereupon he went to one of the remaining
Hellenic pagan temples and after praying briefly the temple was not only reduced
to rubble but out of its remains there sprouted the Cross of Jesus Christ.
Another time, St. Leo was challenged by a man named Heliodoris
who had made a pact with Satan in order to gain power over his fellow man. An
apostate who had denied Christ, Heliodoris challenged Leo to a show of strength
between them to be held in public. At first inclined to scoff at this
ridiculous proposition, Leo prayed for guidance and to be worthy of this
challenge and affront to God.
Leo agreed to the test which was to walk through a roaring fire
in an open furnace built especially for the occasion. A huge crowd gathered,
including the emperor who was most anxious along with other Christians, to
witness the power of the Lord and to pray for the man chosen to display this
power. When all was in readiness and after some fanfare, Leo took Heliodoris
and led him into the fire, emerging from the flames alone and unscathed. All
that remained of Heliodoris could have been put in a small urn. The point had
been clearly made. God has power over the devil.
When Leo eventually returned to Catania after serving as
religious advisor to Emperor Constantine VI in Constantinople, his first act was
to erect a chapel using resources provided by the emperor. The chapel was
dedicated to Saint Lucia, a martyred saint of Sicily. This church still stands
today in Catania. The remainder of Leo's life was anticlimactic, choosing to
roam about the island as the spirit moved him and winning even more converts.
He finally passed away in 875 and was buried beneath the Church of St. Lucia,
which is a shrine of Christianity to this day.
Source: Orthodox Saints, Spiritual Profiles for Modern
Man January 1 to March 31, by George Poulos.
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