Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
who knows how to love himself is commanded to love his neighbor as himself, is he not, as a result, commanded to persuade others, as far as he can, to love God? This, then, is the worship of God. This is true religion and the right kind of piety. This is the service that is due only to God. It follows, therefore, that if any immortal power, however highly endowed with virtue, loves us as itself, it must wish us to be subject, for our own happiness, to the One in submission to whom it finds its happiness. If, then, this spirit does not worship God, it is unhappy because deprived of God, and if it worships God, it itself cannot wish to be worshiped instead of God.47 . . .
(5) Of course, no one is foolish enough to think that God has any need of the things that are offered in sacrifice. . . . It is true that, in former times, our fathers offered up animals as victims. Today, however, we Christians read about such sacrifices but do not imitate them, and we understand them simply as symbols of the efforts we make to cling to God and to assist our neighbor to the same end. A sacrifice, therefore, is a visible sacrament (that is, sacred sign) of an invisible sacrifice. That is why the penitent in the Psalms— perhaps David means himself—who asks God to have mercy on his sins exclaims: "For if you had desired sacrifice, I would certainly have given it: with burnt offerings you find no delight. A sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit; a contrite and humbled heart, O God, you will not despise" (Ps 50:18–19).
Notice how the Prophet, in saying that God does not want sacrifice, shows that God does want it. What he means is that God does not desire the sacrifice of a slaughtered animal but rather the sacrifice of a contrite heart. Thus the Prophet says that what God does not want is a symbol of what He does want. What the Prophet means is that such things do not please God in the way that foolish people imagine, namely, to satisfy His pleasure. Of course, unless God had wanted sacrifices which seemed to minister to His pleasure, but which really symbolized the sacrifices that are truly pleasing to Him, such as a contrite heart humbled by the sorrow of repentance, then, indeed, in the Old Law, He would not have commanded such things to be offered to Him. . . . We read in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "And do not forget kindness and charity, for by such sacrifices is God pleased" (Heb 13:16). That is why the words, "For I desired mercy and not sacrifice" (Hos 6:6), must be understood to mean that one sacrifice is to be preferred to another, since what is commonly called a sacrifice is merely a symbol of the true sacrifice. For mercy is the true sacrifice. Hence the words just quoted: "By such sacrifices is God pleased" (Heb 13:16). All the divine precepts, therefore, which re-
47. Augustine here contrasts the angels, who, while "immortal powers," wish humans to worship God alone, and the demons, who, while also "immortal powers," wish humans to worship them rather than God.
On the City of God 343 fer, under different forms, to sacrifices in the service either of the tabernacle or of the temple, are to be understood, in the light of symbolism, to refer to the love of God and neighbor. For "on these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets" (Mt 22:40).
(6) There is, then, a true sacrifice in every work which unites us in a sacred communion with God, that is, in every work that is aimed at that final Good in which alone we can be truly blessed. That is why even mercy shown to others is not a sacrifice unless it is done for God. A sacrifice, even though we offer it, is something divine—which is what the ancient Latins meant by the word sacrificium, "a making holy." For this reason, a person consecrated to God and vowed to God is himself a sacrifice, inasmuch as he dies to the world that he may live for God. For this is a part of that mercy which each one has on himself, according to the text: "Have pity on your own soul, pleasing God" (Eccli 30:24).
Our body, too, is a sacrifice when, for God's sake, we chastise it by temperance as we should, that is, when we do not yield our members as "weapons of wickedness for sin" (Rom 6:13) but as instruments of righteousness for God. The Apostle exhorts us to this when he says: "I exhort you, therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God to present your bodies as a sacrifice, living, holy, pleasing to God—your spiritual service" (Rom 12:1). If, then, the body, which is less than the soul and which the soul uses as a servant or a tool, is a sacrifice when it is used well and rightly for the service of God, how much more so is the soul when it offers itself to God so that, aflame in the fire of divine Love, and with the dross of worldly desire melted away, it is remolded into the unchangeable form of God and becomes beautiful in His sight by reason of the bounty of beauty which He has bestowed upon it. This is what the Apostle implies in the next verse: "And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed in the newness of your mind that you may discern what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God" (Rom 12:2).
Since, therefore, true sacrifices are works of mercy done to ourselves or our neighbor and directed to God, and since works of mercy are performed that we may be freed from misery and, thereby, be happy, and since happiness is only to be found in that Good of which it is said: "But it is good for me to adhere to my God" (Ps 72:28), it follows that the whole of that redeemed city, that is, the gathering or society of saints, is offered as a universal sacrifice to God through the High Priest who, taking the "form of a servant" (Phil 2:7), offered Himself in His passion for us that we might be the body of so glorious a Head. For it was this form of a servant He offered; it was in this form that He was the victim since it is in the form of a servant that He is the Mediator; in it He is the Priest, in it He is the Sacrifice.