order to be unleavened loaves of sincerity and truth (1 Cor 5:8); or if you keep
SERMON 228B 263 the bread or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But people should examine themselves, and in this way eat of the bread and drink of the cup; for those who eat and drink unworthily are eating and drinking judgment upon themselves (1 Cor 11:27-29).
You receive worthily, if you keep the leaven of charity
5. You receive worthily, however, if you avoid the yeast of bad doctrine, in order to be unleavened loaves of sincerity and truth (1 Cor 5:8); or if you keep hold of that yeast of charity, which the woman hid in three measures of flour until the whole of it was leavened.13 This woman, you see, is the Wisdom of God, who came through the virgin in mortal flesh, and who, having repaired the wide world after the flood through the three sons of Noah, disseminated her gospel throughout it, as in three measures until the whole should be leavened. This "whole" is what is called holon in Greek where, if you keep the bond of peace,14 you will be "in accord with the whole," which in Greek is catholon, from which the Church is called "Catholic."
NOTES
1. In note 14 below I suggest that we have a possible indication for a date before 411. Some scholars question the sermon's authenticity. There is nothing obviously un-Augustinian about the content; if the preacher was someone else, then he was clearly a devoted disciple. There is, perhaps, a certain lack of that spontaneity, that sparkle and occasional flash of brilliance which one has come to associate with Augustine; but not even he could be at the very top of his form all the time. I think it must be regarded as genuine until the contrary is much more convincingly proved.
2. See Jn 3:5.
3. See Gal 4:19. 4. He actually says "your infancies," infantiam vestram, as a kind of title. In this case I cannot think of a suitable English equivalent.
5. This passage does rather suggest that the newly baptized "infants" already knew a considerable amount about the eucharist, and that the so-called "discipline of the secret" was scarcely more than a pious fiction.
6. See Gn 14:18-21. 7. See Phil 2:12-13. 8. So far he is talking indistinguishably about the sacrifice of the cross and the eucharistic sacrifice—which is as it should be.
9. He usually says, when discussing the reception of the eucharist, that it differs from ordinary food in that it doesn't turn into those who eat it, but on the contrary, they become what they eat. But here, by "this" he evidently means only what nowadays would be called the eucharistic elements, or the species or appearances of bread and wine. As for turning into the body of Christ when you live good lives, in the context of talking about the eucharist I think he means that living good lives is a condition of receiving the sacrament fruitfully; or as he would put it, of really receiving the body of Christ in order to turn into the body of Christ.
10. In all likelihood this, from the words 'While he was keeping passover," was the formula of