Attila and His Conquerors: A Story of the Days of St. Patrick and St. Leo the Great

by Elizabeth Rundle Charles

“Before the true Light the gloom of the old night has given way. The Christian people are invited to the riches of Paradise; and to all the regenerate has been laid open a path of return to the lost Fatherland, if only no one causes that way to be closed against himself, which could be opened to the faith of the robber.”

Ethne’s thoughts went back to Dewi the pirate.

So the forty days of the fast and the week of the Passion passed on, and the lives of Christians were gathered into the life and death of Christ; until at the close the grave voice of Leo, as a faithful leader of souls, led the people from the contemplation of the Sufferer into the fellowship of His sufferings.

“If it was a grievous offence to neglect the Paschal Festival, it is more dangerous to take our place in Church assemblies whilst we are not gathered into the fellowship of our Lord’s Passion. For who does really honour Christ as having suffered, died, and been raised again, save he who also suffers, dies, and rises again with Christ? These events are carried on in the children of the Church. The warfare is perpetual, the enemy malignant and strong as ever. Here then, at the Cross, let the Christian station himself, where Christ lifted him up with Himself; and to that point let him direct all his life, where he knows human nature was saved. For the Passion of our Lord is prolonged even to the end of the world; and as in His saints He is honoured and loved, and as in the poor He is fed and clothed, so in all who suffer for righteousness’ sake He suffers too. Unless, indeed, we are to think that since faith has been multiplied all over the world, all the persecutions and all the conflicts which raged against the blessed martyrs have come to an end; as though the necessity of taking up the Cross had been incumbent only on them. But very different is the experience of pious men who are serving God, and very different the witness of the Apostle. ‘All who resolve to live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.’ By which sentence he is proved to be sadly lukewarm and indolent who is attacked by no persecution. For none but those who love the world can be at peace with it; and there is ‘no fellowship at any time between iniquity and righteousness,’ no concord between falsehood and truth, no agreement of darkness with light. It is safer for man to have earned the devil’s enmity than his friendship; therefore the wise souls who have learned to fear and love our Lord do not stoop either to dread their foes or to do them homage. For they prefer God’s will, ever, to themselves, and love themselves all the better, inasmuch as for the love of God they love themselves not.

“For in those who, after the Apostle’s example, chastise the body and bring it into servitude, the same enemies are being despised by the same courage, and even now the world is being overcome by Christ.”

At length the light of Easter Day broke in on Christian Rome, the first Easter Ethne had ever spent in a city, had ever spent in Christendom. The joy of the festival swept her away in its great tide, the bells pealing from every basilica, the stately Ambrosian hymns filling the churches, the streets, and the homes with their grave and exulting music. The morning broke with the “Aurora lucis rutilat,” and the “Hic est dies verus Dei.” The voices of priests and people, in what was then the vulgar tongue of all, rose high in the “Ad cœnam Agni Providi.”

“The Supper of the Lamb to share,

We come in raiment white and fair.”

And still through all, penetrating and rising above all the tides of sound, sounded the deep voice of Leo. Through the Passion-tide he had been preaching to them the duty of the taking up the Cross of Christ, that their actual life might enshrine within it the Paschal solemnity. “If then, dearly beloved,” he said, “we believe in our hearts what we profess, we also have been raised the third day, for ‘ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.’ Let the people of God acknowledge themselves to be a new creation in Christ Jesus, and, with souls on the watch, understand Him by Whom they have been apprehended, and Whom they may apprehend.

“Let not the things that have been made new return to the old state which abideth not; and let not him who put his hand to the plough give up his work, but fix his attention on what he is sowing, not looking back to what he has left.”