"Infants"; you above all that are seeing this only now,2 listen to what it all means,
SERMON 229A
PREACHED ON HOLY EASTER SUNDAY
Date: 410-412'
What you receive is what you are; what you see on the altar is the sacrament of unity
1. You that have been bom again to new life, which is why you are called "Infants"; you above all that are seeing this only now,2 listen to what it all means, as I had promised you. Listen also, you the faithful, who are used to seeing it; it's good to be reminded, or forgetfulness may creep up on you. What you can see on the Lord's.table, as far as the appearance of the things goes, you are also used to seeing on your own tables; they have the same aspect, but not the same value. I mean, you yourselves are the same people as you used to be; you haven't brought us along new faces, after all. And yet you're new; the same old people in bodily appearance, completely new ones by the grace of holiness—just as this too is new.3
It's still, indeed, as you can see, bread and wine; come the consecration,4 and that bread will be the body of Christ, and that wine will be the blood of Christ. This is brought about by the name of Christ, brought about by the grace of Christ, that it should continue to look exactly like what it used to look like, and yet should not have the same value as it used to. You see, if it was eaten before, it would fill the belly; but now when it's eaten it nourishes the spirit. Now when you were baptized, or rather just before you were baptized, I spoke to you on Saturday about the sacrament of the font in which you were to be plunged; and I told you, what I don't think you have forgotten, that baptism had, or has, the same value as being buried with Christ, as the apostle says: For we have been buried with Christ through baptism into death, so that just as he has risen from the dead, so we too may walk in newness of life (Rom 6:4). Well, in the same way I must now put to you and impress upon you what it is that you have received or are going to receive, and this not from my own ideas, or my own presumption, or any human arguments, but again on the authority of the apostle.
Here you are then; listen very briefly to the apostle, or rather to Christ speaking through the apostle, to what he says about the sacrament of the Lord's table: One loaf, one body, is what we, being many, are (1 Cor 10:17). There you