stand. Can you imagine Augustine, of all people, ever saying such a thing? This naturally upsets
314 SAINT A UGUSTINE - SERMONS on earth. Touch me at a higher level, believe in me at a higher level, believe in the only-begotten Son equal to the Father. You see, when you have realized that I am equal to him, that is when, for you, I have ascended to the Father.
Now to touch with the heart means to believe; because that other woman, who touched the hem of his garment, touched with the heart, because she believed. Well anyway, he felt her touching him, and he didn't feel the crowd jostling him. Someone touched me, said the Lord: touched me, believed in me.
And his disciples, not understanding what touched me really meant, said, The crowd is jostling you, and you say, Who touched me? (Lk 8:45-46). "Don't I know what I mean, when I say Who touched me? The crowd is jostling, faith is touching."
So may Christ ascend for us, and may we touch him, which we will do if we believe in him, that he is the Son of God, eternal, co-etemal, not from the time he was bom of the virgin, but eternal. Us too, after all, he is going to make eternal, not that we always have been, but that we always shall be. He, though, is co-etemal, equal to the Father, without time, before all times, all times being made through him; before the day,1 2 * 4 5 day from day, having established the day. Believe like that, and you have touched. Touch like that, in order to cling to him. Cling like that, so as never to be separated, but to continue with him in the greatness of his divine being, who died for us in the weakness of his human being.
NOTES
1. Reading Viderunt absentem de sepulcro instead of... ablatum de sepulcro. He goes on to say that they believed he had been ablatum, taken away, something they inferred from his simply not being there. So I infer that the first ablatum is just a scribal error for absentem—or possibly for absens, if Augustine was thinking of it, the body, neuter, and not of him, masculine, being the object of the sentence.
2. See Gen 3:1-6.
3.1 propose a slightly different, and I like to think'a rather more nuanced, interpretation of my Father and your Father that Christ is speaking here as man, just as he is in the next phrase; but he is speaking precisely as the Christ, the Messiah, the son of David, who while very definitely a human being, is also Son of God in a special way that distinguishes him from all other Israelites, members of God s people, who are also sons (and daughters) of God. In a word, I suggest that here Christ is calling God his Father from his messianic (and thus human) sonship, not his divine sonship, in line with Pss 2:7, 89:26-27, which derive from the master messianic text, 2 Sam 7:8-16, especially verse
14. See my translation of Augustine's The Trinity, Introduction, section 39.
4. The Latin text rather absurdly punctuates with a full stop here: "Far be it from us to under¬ stand. Can you imagine Augustine, of all people, ever saying such a thing? This naturally upsets the Italian translator, who surmises that a "not" has fallen out. But in fact the next sentence shows the kind of understanding he wishes us to avoid, one that would land us in the mistake of the disciples in the Lucan passage, the mistake of the Manichees pilloried in Sermon 229J, 1. If any word has fallen out, I suggest it is sic: Absit a nobis, ut sic intelligamus, which is what I have in fact translated to make his meaning absolutely clear. But he need not actually have spoken it; his phrasing could have indicated he was pointing to the next sentence.
5. See Ps 110:3.