matches are, that's where the races are run, that's where the prizefighting takes
170 SAINT AUGUSTINE - SERMONS pressed by damaging and damnable usury, and by paying back what he had not grabbed,20 he mercifully delivered us from an everlasting debt. We had pleaded guilty, were awaiting punishment; he, without becoming our companion in guilt, but becoming our companion in punishment, decided to waive simultaneously both our guilt and our punishment.
He it is, you see, who will rescue from usury and iniquity the souls of those who believe and say, each from the heart, I believe / will see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living (Ps 27:13). This land we have to long for, with a kind of heavenly and living heart, not a dead and earthbound one. It is the land, you see, about which someone on fire with love of it eagerly sings in another psalm, My hope are you, my share in the land of the living (Ps 142:5). It is the land to which those are reaching out who put to a lively death their members on earth; not the members or limbs which constitute the body we have in this world; but those members which miserably weaken the manliness of the soul. That chosen vessel,21 the apostle Paul, clearly designates a whole list of them, when he says, Put to death your members which are on earth: fornication, unclean¬ ness, passion, evil lust, and avarice, which is the service of idols (Col 3:5). There you have what you should put to death in this land of the dying, since you long to live in that land of the living.
So then, may you be turned into members of Christ in such a way that you don't take them and make them members of a harlot.22 What viler harlot, after all, could there be, what more dishonorable whore than the first one on his list, fornication, and the last one, avarice? This he very truthfully called the service of idols; because it is not only in philandering with the body but also in pandering to the soul that you should recognize the harlot and avoid her, in case you incur that destruction threatened by the chaste bridegroom and just judge, to whom the psalmist says, You have destroyed everyone who goes fornicating away from you. How much more justly, how much more profitably will each and every one of you cry out to him in purity of heart, For me to adhere to God is good (Ps 73:17-28)? This adhesion is produced by the kind of love, about which it is likewise said, Let love be without pretense, hating what is evil, adhering to what is good (Rom 12:9).
Empty out all the poisons from your hearts by calling on the name of the Savior
6. There you are, that's where your stadium is, that's where the wrestling matches are, that's where the races are run, that's where the prizefighting takes place. If you want to throw that foulest of wrestlers with the brawny arms of faith, then lay low all that is evil, embrace all that is good. If you want so to run that you may obtain the prize, flee from everything iniquitous, go after every¬ thing that is just. If you want so to box that you don't beat the air, but hit the enemy squarely on the jaw, chastise your body and reduce it to slavery, so that abstaining from all things (l Cor 9:24-27) and competing according to the rules (2 Tm 2:5), you may triumph and share in the heavenly prize and the unfading crown (1 Cor 9:25).