rather than on Easter day.
SERMON 229D 279 to remind us more vividly of them, to stir us up to greater fervor, to renew our faith more joyfully, since in the course of the annual round of the seasons, it somehow or other sets the memory of what happened before our very eyes. Keep the passing feast in this way, and think about the coming kingdom that will abide for ever.
After all, if we find these passing days, in which we recall Christ's passion and resurrection with special devotion and solemnity, so exhilarating, how blessed and blissful will that eternal day make us, when we shall actually see him, and stay with him, the one we now rejoice in merely by desiring and hoping for him! What exultant joy God will give to his Church, from which as it is bom again through Christ he has after a fashion removed the foreskin of its fleshly nature, that is, the reproach of its natural birth!1 * 3 That's why it says, And you, while you were dead in transgressions and the foreskin of your flesh, he made alive in him, forgiving us all our debts (Col 2:13). For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor 15:22). Thus it is that what was covered up in the shadow of circumcision is made plain in Christ's baptism; and this nevertheless pertains to the same circumcision not made with hands (Col 2:11), when the cover of fleshly ignorance is removed. When you pass over to Christ, he says, the veil is taken away (2 Cor 3:16).4
NOTES
1. There is a strong party among the scholars in favor of placing this sermon during the vigil rather than on Easter day.
2 See 2 Cor 6:14. 3. See Jos 5:2-9, where the nation is circumcised after its entry into Canaan, "to remove from them the reproach of Egypt." Here, by the opprobrium nativitatis, Augustine is evidently referring first and foremost to original sin.
4. Whether this excessively ingenious weaving together of texts about circumcision and veils helps us to appreciate the newness of life in Christ at Easter, and whets our appetite for the bliss of the eternal day, readers must decide for themselves. I don't think I can honestly say that it has removed the cover of my fleshly ignorance. It was all, very possibly, prompted by the reading of the passage from Joshua 5 during the vigil. So this may be a point in favor of the sermon's having been preached at the vigil.