The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
208 Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life well: "Because there are many of us, we praise him all together, and because we are one, we praise him as one. The many are the same as the one, because he in whom we are one is himself always one, undivided."55 The importance of unity in the Christian life continuously shapes Augustine's thought: prayer and praise are never isolated moments but originate from Christ's humble identification with his faithful as well as from the shared commonality of the ecclesial devotion of those faithful. Like charity, prayer can never be divided amongst individual worshippers but is assured a co-inherence by the concord between Christ and Christians.
This stress on Christian unity is also used by Augustine to highlight the organic unity of Christ's church. The totus Christus should elevate a Christian's understanding of friend and family. How this becomes obvious is found in an epistle to assuage the guilt of Laetus, who had intended to become a monk but who left the cloister to attend to his recently widowed mother. Augustine wrote to show him how Christian joy can come only when we learn to renounce everything that is temporal. This includes even family. After reading the missive Laetus sent back to his former brother monks, Augustine was moved to exhort him by reminding him that such pain over familial ties can actually become the first step in following Christ wholeheartedly, only through that pain finally understanding Christ's perplexing words to hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters, and even his own soul (Luke 14:26). Knowing that this is a seemingly severe command, the good Bishop used his theology of identity to provide Laetus with the framework in which he could begin to make sense of his duties both to God and to his family.
What right does Augustine have to busy himself in the delicate affairs of a family whom he has never met? He takes it
55. en. Ps. 147.7; Boulding, Expositions (III/20), 449.