The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
224 Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life age is being renewed."96 Although baptism initiates a new and graced participation in God, it must be nurtured and renewed daily. For this, Augustine offers us the daily regimen of prayer, of charity, and of the Eucharistic sacrifice.
In this way the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist are linked because they are both sacraments of unity: unity between both God and humanity as well as between all human persons. Augustine uses the tripartite baptismal rite of exorcism, water, and chrism to illustrate the Eucharistic people Christ yearns to form. Reminiscent of Didache §9 where the unity of the bread and the unity of the Christian people is highlighted, Augustine encourages us to "remember that bread is not made from one grain, but from many. When you were being exorcized, it's as though you were being ground. When you were baptized it's as though you were mixed into dough. When you received the fire of the Holy Spirit, it's as though you were baked. Be what you can see, and receive what you are."97 Let us now turn to the church's celebration of this sacred bread, the body of the Lord, and Augustine's notion of how union with God is realized through the proper reception of the Eucharist.
The imagery Augustine uses to describe the union between the Eucharistic Lord and the sacrament's recipient proves to be much more explicit than the communion achieved in baptism. Augustine's insistence to eat and drink Christ abounds, yet almost always coupled with a pastoral admonition to be sure not simply to eat and drink Christ but thereafter to live his life in the Spirit. In a relatively late homily (417), for example, we hear him instruct those present to: "Eat life, drink life; you will have life and the life is complete and entire. However, this will be the case, that is to say, the body and blood of Christ will be life for anyone, if what is taken visibly in the sacrament is spiritu-
96. Trin. 14.14.23; Hill, Trinity, 389. 97. s. 272; Hill, Sermons (III/7), 301.