5. See Eph 2:14.
108 SAINT A UGUSTINE - SERMONS looking for those who set free. That's why, you see, during these days you restrain your desires for lawful things; it's in order not to commit unlawful things. If you refrain from your marriage rights during these days, then surely you shouldn't drown yourself in wine or adultery on any day.
In this way, in humility and charity, by fasting and giving, by restraining ourselves and pardoning, by paying out good deeds and not paying back bad ones, by turning away from evil and doing good, our prayer seeks peace and obtains it.4 Prayer, you see, flies beautifully when it's supported on wings of such virtues; and is in this way more readily wafted through to heaven, where Christ our peace has preceded us.5
NOTES
1.1 would date this sermon to the same period as Sermon 205. Perhaps, since there is no reference to religious, it was preached in some village of the Hippo diocese where there was no such commu¬ nity.
2. The Maurist editors consider that something must have dropped out of the Latin text, just about where I have put the exclamation mark. But that is not, in my opinion, a necessary inference. The half sentence makes his point very effectively.
3. See Mt 18:23-35; 5:25=26. 4. See Ps 34:14. 5. See Eph 2:14.