Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
(1 Cor 10:17). Thus he explained the sacrament of the Lord's table: "We the many are one bread, one body."
So this bread serves as a reminder to you how much you should love unity. After all, was that bread made up of just one grain? Weren't there many grains of wheat? Before they all came together as bread, they were separate. They were joined together, after a certain amount of pounding, through water. For unless wheat is ground down and sprinkled with water, it can't come together to form what we call bread. In the same way, you too were ground down, so to speak, by the humiliation of fasting and the sacrament of exorcism.60 Then came baptism, and you were, so to speak, moistened with water so as to form bread. But without fire, it's not bread yet. So what symbolizes the fire? That's the chrism, the oil. That's the sacrament of the Holy Spirit, the fueler of the fire. Notice this when the Acts of the Apostles is read. (The reading of the book itself begins soon; today we start the book called "Acts of the Apostles.") Whoever wants to make progress has a way to do it. When you come together in church, put aside empty talk. Concentrate on the Scriptures. We are your books.61 So pay attention, and you'll see. The Holy Spirit will come on Pentecost. And this is how He will come: He will show Himself in tongues of fire. For He breathes charity into us. We are set on fire for God, and we spurn the world, and the straw in us is burned up, and our hearts are, so to speak, refined into gold. Therefore, the Holy Spirit draws near, the fire after the water, and you become bread, what is the Body of Christ.62 That's the way in which unity is symbolized.
You now grasp the sacraments in order. First, after the Prayer [of the Faithful], you are admonished to lift up your heart. This befits members of Christ. For if you have become members of Christ, where is your Head?63 A body's members have a head. If the Head had not gone on ahead, the members would not follow along. Where has our Head gone? What did you say when you handed back the Creed? "On the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven; He is seated at the right hand of the Father." Therefore, our Head is in heaven. That's why after the "Lift up your heart" is said, you
60. "Sacrament of exorcism": Augustine, one of the pioneers of Western sacramental theology, used the term "sacrament" much more broadly than is done today. Here and elsewhere, he uses it to mean any "sacred sign," and thus can apply it to ceremonies such as exorcisms, or, as he does later in this sermon, to particular moments within the broader Sunday liturgy. For helpful perspectives, see Emmanuel Cutrone, "Sacrament," AugEncy, 741–47.
61. "We are your books" (Codices vestri nos sumus): The phrase is deeply evocative, but also ambiguous. The "we" may refer either to the readers who read the Scriptures or to Augustine (or any other clergy) who interpret the Scriptures.
62. On this extended metaphor of "becoming bread" and its relation to baptismal training and rites, see Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate, 316–22.
63. "Members . . . Head": Augustine here is playing on the Pauline theme of the Church as Christ's Body and the risen Christ as the Head (Col 1:18; Eph 4:11–16). This is a major theme in his Expositions of the Psalms; see Chapter 5.