Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
The Exegete 195 in a certain place: "Just as a body is one and has many members, and still all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ" (1 Cor 12:12). He does not say: "So also Christ and His Body," but "one body, many members, so also Christ." All, therefore, is Christ; and because the whole Christ is one, for that reason, the Head from heaven spoke: "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" (Acts 9:4)
Hold onto this. I recommend it be fixed indelibly in your memory as sons and daughters, erudite in ecclesiastical matters and the Catholic faith. That way, you will recognize that Christ, Head and Body, is one and the same Christ, Word of God, only-begotten, equal to the Father. And from this you will see with how much grace you stretch out to God such that He Himself wants to be one with you, He who is one with the Father. How one with the Father? "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30). How one with us? "Scripture does not say, 'To his descendants,' as though indicating many, but as to one only, 'To your seed,' who is Christ" (Gal 3:16). . . . This is a great mystery: "The two will be in one flesh" (Gn 2:24). The Apostle says: "This is a great mystery; I am speaking of Christ and the Church" (Eph 5:32). Christ and Church—two in one flesh. Take account of the distance between the two's majesty. Two, clearly. Not that we are the Word, not that we were God in the beginning, not that through us all things were made. But when it comes to flesh, there's Christ, both Him and us. So don't be amazed by this in the Psalms. He says many things in the person of the Head; many others in the person of His members; and this all as being just one person, and so He speaks as one. Don't be surprised that there are two in one voice if there are two in one flesh.72
The Stairway in the Heart
Psalms 119–133 (in the Septuagint numbering) are known as the "Psalms of Ascent"— or as Augustine's Old Latin Bible entitled them, the "Songs of Steps." Originally Jewish pilgrims used to sing these songs as they traveled up the steep road to Jerusalem on pilgrimage to the Temple. Augustine devoted his sermons on these Psalms to encouraging hearers to embark on an interior pilgrimage to the City of God. He argued that God had placed a ladder within the human heart, giving us the aptitude and wherewithal to make such an ascent. In the following passage, Augustine plays on the Head/Body theme in the inverse of what we saw above. He stressed above how the union of Head and Body made it possible for Christ still to suffer in the suffering members of His Church. Here he stresses the inverse: how Christ's joys become the Church's joys such that we experience foretastes
72. En. Ps. 142.3 (CCL 40:2061–62); my trans.