''realist" in stating the reality of Christ's presence in the sacrament—"this bread and wine becomes
SERMON 229 267 shouldn't have; if by any chance we have contracted any of that sort of thing from this world's temptations and the frailty of human life, it's all wiped clean by the Lord's prayer, where it says, Forgive us our debts (Mt 6:12), so that we may approach without any anxiety; otherwise we may eat and drink what we receive to our own condemnation.1 2 3 * * * * * * * * * 13
After that comes Peace be with you; a great sacrament, the kiss of peace. So kiss in such a way as really meaning that you love. Don't be Judas; Judas the traitor kissed Christ with his mouth, while setting a trap for him in his heart. But perhaps somebody has unfriendly feelings toward you, and you are unable to win him round, to show him he's wrong; you're obliged to tolerate him. Don't pay him back evil for evil in your heart. He hates; just you love, and you can kiss him without anxiety.
It's only a few things that you've heard, but they are important ones. Don't treat them as cheap because they are few, but as dear because they are weighty. Also it would be wrong to overload you, or you wouldn't remember what's been said.
NOTES
1. The Maurists only have this sermon as a short fragment, preserved by Bede and Florus; in fact as a chain of scattered fragments—every other sentence, as it were, from sections 1 and 2. The sermon's authenticity has been questioned; the only solid reason I can surmise for this from the sermon itself is the fact that in section 3 below the preacher refers to the celebrant of the eucharist (himself, presumably) as the sacerdos, the high priest: a usage I have never come across before in Augustine's writings. In a similar context in Sermon 227 he speaks of the episcopus vel presbyter qui offert, the priest or presbyter who offers. For less tangible reasons of style and tone, I am hesitantly inclined to share the doubts about the sermon being genuinely one of Augustine's. If it is not, though, then it is one of a very faithful disciple of the master, someone like Caesarius of Arles.
2. See Gn 1:26-27. 3. This text illustrates very well how Augustine in his eucharistic theology is unequivocally ''realist" in stating the reality of Christ's presence in the sacrament—"this bread and wine becomes the body and blood of the Lord"; and yet he never lingers, as later theology and devotion have done, on that real presence, but goes on immediately to reflect on what the real presence itself means or signifies: namely our unity with him, and in him with each other, in being ourselves the body of Christ. This is the ultimate grace of the eucharist, the ultimate thing signified; what scholastic theology calls the res tantum of the eucharist. The real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated species of bread and wine is what that same terminology calls the res et sacramentum: the reality signified by the sacramental sign of bread and wine, which is itself the sacrament, that is the sign, of the ultimate reality, the res tantum, namely our communion in the body of Christ, and thus the unity of the body of Christ, which is his Church. It is the fundamental, definitive concept of the sacraments being essentially signs, or if you prefer the word, symbols, rather than merely things, that has faded away almost to nothing in the Catholic consciousness, so strong, in a one-sided way, has been the stress on sacramental realism. And so we can get, in a Lesotho hymn in honor of the blessed sacrament, the following erroneous and deeply misguided statement: 'Truly 'tis a matter of reality,/ It is not a sign and memorial;/ No, it is he himself/ Who has come to me out of love" (Lifela tsa Bakriste, 32, verse 4). To which one can only say, "Accentuate the positive, but eliminate the negative, and your statement will be not only pious but correct."