The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
226 Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life
The Son's descent into infirm humanity is necessary in the Augustinian framework because it is only here that God is able to assume that which affects us the most. In Christ God's ability to die becomes the unique cure to restore humanity's godliness. By taking on humanity, he is able to take on our fallen passions; by freely taking on a vulnerability which is not his by nature, the now-enfleshed Son summons us to share his own divinity. And this is why he became in his passion the slayer of passions, and dying he was hung on the tree in order to put death to death. He made a food for us, which we were to take, and be cured. Where does this food come from? Having died, he rose again. And whom does it nourish? Those who have imitated the Lord's humility. You won't even imitate the humility; how much more will you fail to imitate the divinity!101
The Eucharist renders Christ's sacrificial presence available throughout history and thereby offers all the occasion to receive the divinely humble flesh. At times Augustine is very explicit in stating that this is why God became human, so we humans could consume God at the altar: "God became man so that man might become God. The Lord of angels became man today so that man could eat the bread of angels."102 The eternal life which is the Son's by nature becomes ours through humble reception of the Eucharist. Imitating the Son's humility is hence presented as a propaedeutic to participating in his divinity.
Scholars and churchmen have admittedly detected two Eucharistic tendencies evident in the thought of Augustine, containing both a figurative (implying a separation between the visible elements of bread and wine and the invisible mysteries they represent) as well as a realistic strand (wherein the visible elements are transformed into the divine presence).
101. s. 341A; Hill, Sermons (III/10), 30–31. 102. s. 13 de Tempore; PL 39.1097–98; cf. s. 126.6, s. 130.2, s. 225.3.