he was still going to rise again, but the memory of his resurrection is being
SERMON 223D 225
By celebrating this past event of Christ's resurrection, we anticipate the future even of our own
3. Although, then, at this vigil of ours the Lord is not being awaited as though he was still going to rise again, but the memory of his resurrection is being renewed in this annual solemnity, all the same by celebrating it we recall past events in such a way, that we symbolize in this same vigil what we are about in living by faith. During the whole of this time, you see, in which this age, representing night, is running its course, the Church is keeping vigil, the eyes of her faith fixed upon the holy scriptures as upon lamps lit at night, until the Lord comes. So you have what the apostle Peter says: We have the more certain prophetic word, to which you do well to pay attention, as to a lamp in a dark place, until the day dawns, and the morning star rises in your hearts (2 Pt 1:19).
That's why the Savior himself also enjoins upon us a spiritual vigil, when he is speaking of the suddenness of his coming: Watch, he says, because you do not know the day or the hour (Mt 25:13).1 2 3
So just as now, when I came to you in the name of the Lord,41 found you awake and watching in his name, so too the Lord himself, in whose honor this solemnity is being celebrated, will find his Church awake and watching with mind alight and alert, when he comes to rouse her even from her bodily sleep in the tombs.
NOTES
1. He was certainly a bishop when he preached this little sermon, as is clear, I think, from section 3; see note 4 below. The general tone also strikes me as being somehow more mature, more relaxed than in some of the other little sermons of the same sort which we have seen. So my inclination would be to date it quite a bit later; not earlier than 405.
From the same passage I infer he was visiting one of the other churches in Hippo Regius, either in the city or in the countryside round about, and not speaking in his cathedral basilica; see the same note 4 below.
2. His usual little piece of anti-Judaism. But this time it is balanced by what he goes on to say about the Magi, calling them too, like the Jews, "far distant night"; and is altogether less virulent than what we encountered in Sermon 223C.
3. No longer appealing to the Gethsemane "Watch and pray" as authority for the vigil, but to this rather more suitable text; another indication, as it seems to me, of a rather more mature judgment.
4. Here, surely, he is speaking as bishop. His "coming" to them suggests to me that he is speaking to a congregation which he is visiting; not, then, in the main basilica of Hippo Regius. But another explanation of his words, based on the evidence of Egeria 's Pilgrimage, a pious diary of pilgrimages to the Holy Land kept by a lady from the South of France in mid-fourth century, is that the bishop and clergy frequently came into the basilica at the Easter vigil some time after the laity had begun it, presumably by singing psalms and hymns.