again perhaps delivered while Augustine was still only a presbyter; but I would guess a year or two
SERMON 220 201
That's where the splendid and famous solemnity of this night fits in, when by keeping vigil it's as though we were re-enacting the Lord's resurrection by the residue of thought, while by thinking more literally and realistically we confess that it happened only once.1 2 3 4 So the proclamation of the historical truth has made us well instructed; far be it from us to drop the solemnity and thus become irreligious. This solemn celebration has made this night justly famous throughout the world; it displays the Christian peoples in all their serried ranks; it confounds the darkness of the Jews; it throws down the idols of the pagans.
NOTES
1. Like the last sermon, this looks like an introduction to the solemn vigil of Easter night; so again perhaps delivered while Augustine was still only a presbyter; but I would guess a year or two after Sermon 219.
2. See Heb 7:27; 9:12.
3. See Acts 3:14; 22:14. 4. The historical uniqueness of the Christ event is central to the Christian religion; if it is not in that sense a historical religion, it is nothing. So Augustine is instinctively guarding against Christian liturgical celebrations being thought of as pagan ones possibly were; that is, as being quite inde¬ pendent of history, and re-enacting some myth, like the death and resurrection of Adonis, or of Horus/Osiris, that "happens" every year.
And yet at the same time he is insisting on the essentially sacramental nature of Christian religion, which in its liturgy makes the once-and-for-all Christ event perennially present to the faithful, who are here and now in Christ.