It was a day like today.
Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483. Thespian Richard Burton was born on this date in 1925. Death came for Pope Leo the Great on this date in 461 AD.
On this day in 1917, 41 women were arrested outside the White House in Washington DC. Coming from fifteen different states, these suffragettes demanded the vote for women throughout the United States. Among them were a seventy-year-old woman and the wife of a former U.S. Representative from California. Even while they demonstrated peaceably, doing nothing more than picket the Executive Mansion with placards and posters demanding the right to vote, they were slammed with sentences ranging from sixty days to six months.
Pope St. Leo the Great is commemorated on this day. Consecrated pontiff in 440 AD, he was a strenuous opponent of the Pelagian, Manichean, Priscillian and Nestorian heresies. In 451 AD, he called the General Council of Chalcedon at which his letter clarifying the doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ was considered as well as the vindication of Flavian, the deposed Patriarch of Constantinople who had also defended the theology of the dual nature of Christ. In those dark days, Rome and the West were threatened by the invasion of the Huns. Leo met Atilla and his Huns on an island in a river at Peschiera as Rome lay defenseless before the Asian onslaught. In a mysterious meeting alone with the chieftain, Leo apparently persuaded the Hun to retreat rather than advance on the Eternal City in what has come to be considered a miracle. At a time of great civil and religious disorder, Leo stood as strong centralizing authority. He is now considered a Doctor of the Church.
Words of Wisdom
Ever the keen observer of modernity, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s gaze also assessed the media. He recounted, “Not long ago one of the nationally known picture magazines had a photograph of a man prostrate on subway stairs. For thirty minutes many people passed him by without ever a helping hand. The editorial comment was about the coldness of the modern man in the face of distress. What was forgotten was that the photographer of the picture magazine did nothing for thirty minutes for the afflicted individual except to snap pictures and make his own living.” From On Being Human.
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