boA of which, strangely enough, had to do with star-gazing, observing the sidera; considerans,
44 SAINT A UGUSTINE - SERMONS to have both. She alone was able to have both, because she gave birth to the Almighty, through whom she was able to have both.
It was right, you see, that only the unique Son of God should become a son of man in this unique fashion. It does not follow, however, that Christ is nothing for you, just because he is the offspring of one single virgin. You have not, indeed, been able to bear him as a son in the flesh, but you have found him as a husband in your hearts; and such a husband that your fidelity can cling to him as redeemer, while your virginity need not fear him as ravisher. After all, he did not deprive his mother of her virginity even by his bodily birth; much more then does he preserve it in you by his spiritual embrace.
Nor should you count yourselves barren because you remain virgins; since this very integrity of the flesh, chosen for love, contributes to the fruitfulness of the mind. Do what the apostle says: since you are not thinking of the affairs of the world, how to please husbands, think of the affairs of God, how to please him in all things,1 2 3 4 * 6 so that instead of wombs fruitful with offspring, you may have minds fruitful with all the virtues.
Finally, I wish to address everybody. I have something to say to all of you. It is the whole chaste virgin which the apostle betrothed to Christ that I am summoning and appealing to by these words. What you marvel at in the flesh of Mary, perform in the depths of your souls. When you believe in the heart unto justice, you conceive Christ; and when with the lips you confess unto salvation,7 you give birth to Christ. In this way let your minds be exuberantly fruitful, and perseveringly virginal.
NOTES
1. This time I would differ from our two authorities, Kunzelmann and Fischer, by putting the sermon probably ten to fifteen years earlier, about 395. And the reason is the same; the self-conscious elaborateness of the style.
In the last two sections Augustine has a special word for the consecrated virgins, the nuns as we would call them now. He could have done this, of course, at any time during his thirty years of ministry, and in any Church where he preached. But I think he is much more likely to have spoken like this in his own Church of Hippo Regius than anywhere else. And if the date I suggest is correct then he was almost certainly preaching there and not in another church, because most bishops at that time did not approve of mere priests preaching. His own bishop, Valerius, was a singular exception.
2. Here are some of the texts alluded to in this elaborate chain of paradoxes: Ps 147:4Jn 6:35Lk 4:2; Ps 36:9; Jn 7:38; Jn 19:28; Jn 8:12; Mk 4:38; Jn 14:6,4:6; Jn 14:6; Mk 14:57; 2 Tm 4:1; Mt 27:26; 1 Cor 1:30; Mk 14:64; Nm 13:23; Mk 15:17; 1 Cor 3:11; Jn 14:6. 3. See Ps 19:5.
4. He makes a contrast, impossible to reproduce in English, between considerans and desiderans, boA of which, strangely enough, had to do with star-gazing, observing the sidera; considerans, putting them together, noting their relative positions; desiderans, missing a particular star one par¬ ticularly wanted to see.