it to the Father. We say the Lord's prayer in the Son and with the Son, addressing it to our common
230 SAINT A UGUSTINE - SERMONS that the lion seeking whom he may devour should be overcome by the lion seeking to set free.
Why we should keep vigil and pray
3. So let us watch and pray, lest we should enter into temptation. Let us keep watch for him, seeing that he slept of his own accord for us. He went to sleep, you see, and slumbered; and he arose, because the Lord upheld him,1 2 3 to whom he had said, And rouse me, and I will repay them (Ps 41:10). To his enemies raging against him, and jeering at him as he was dying, he had said in prophecy, Shall not the one who sleeps make sure he rises again? (Ps 41:8). So while he went to sleep, he also awoke, and he has consecrated this vigil of ours to his awakening. So let us keep awake and pray, lest we should enter into temptation, since he too kept awake, and became like a sparrow by itself on a roo/(Ps 102:7); that means he rose again, and flew up on high, and intercedes for us, the only Son, in heaven.
Let us give our prayers into the hands of this great intercessor. With the Father he grants what he has requested from the Father, because he is both mediator and creator; mediator to ask, creator to bestow; mediator as made in the world, creator as the one through whom the world was made. So with feelings of the utmost fidelity and confidence let us keep vigil in his honor in all sobriety of mind; and let us dispatch to him the prayer he taught us,4 so that we may have the strength, with his help, to do what he commanded; may we take, as his gift, what he promised we would receive.5
NOTES
1. The date is proposed by Kunzelmann and Fischer; it is as likely as any. For a suggestion about what point in the whole vigil the sermon was preached at, prompted by the closing sentence, see note 5 below.
2. See Mk 14:38.
3. See Ps 3:6.
4. The Lord s prayer. We "dispatch" it to him (allegemus), so that he, the mediator, may present it to the Father. We say the Lord's prayer in the Son and with the Son, addressing it to our common Father.
5. A distinct reference, surely, to communion. So perhaps the sermon was delivered at the end of the great eucharistic prayer, just before the recitation of the Lord's prayer, as a kind of invitation to communion. But through any such allusion to the receiving of the sacrament, he would also be pointing to receiving the reward of eternal life, the reward for keeping the Lord's commandments to love one another as he has loved us, in this life.