Sermon 375B
Sermon 375/B
SERMON OF AURELIUS AUGUSTINE ON THE FIRST DAY OF HOLY EASTER
It happens to everyone to die, only to martyrs for Christ.
We have heard the Gospel: the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ was read. Christ is risen, therefore Christ died. The resurrection is a witness to death, but the death of Christ is the destruction of fear. Let us not be afraid to die, Christ died for us; let us die with the hope of eternal life, Christ is risen so that we may rise. In His death and resurrection, we have an ordained work, a promised reward: the ordained work is His passion, the promised reward is His resurrection. This work the martyrs have fulfilled: let us fulfill it with piety, if we cannot through passion. For it does not happen that everyone suffers for Christ and dies for Christ; yet, everyone dies. Happy are those for whom it happened to do what must be done for Christ: for death was necessary, but it was not necessary to die for Christ. Death will come to all, but death for Christ does not come to all. Those who happen to die for Christ have, in a way, returned what was dispensed to them. The Lord had dispensed to them that He should die for them; they returned it by dying for Him. But how could the wretched poor return anything, if the blessed Lord had not given it? Therefore, what Christ dispensed to the martyrs, He gave them so that they could return it to Him. For the voice of the martyrs is: "If the Lord had not been in us, perhaps they would have swallowed us alive." The persecutors, they say, perhaps would have swallowed us alive. What does it mean, "alive"? Knowing that we would do evil if we denied Christ, even so we would do such a great evil consciously, that is, knowingly; and thus they would have swallowed us alive, not dead. What does it mean, "alive"? Consciously, not unknowingly. And by what virtue did they not do what they were compelled to do by the persecutors? Let them be asked, let them say. Behold, they respond: "If the Lord had not been in us." Therefore, He gave what was to be returned to Him. Thanks be to Him: He is rich, and, as it is written about Him, He became poor to make us rich; enriched by His poverty, healed by His wounds, exalted by His humility, vivified by His death.
The Jews boast without reason as if they have overcome Christ.
What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits toward me? the martyr was saying. Hear what follows. He considered, and asked what he should render to the Lord: and what does he say? I will take the cup of salvation. This I will render to the Lord: the cup of salvation, the cup of martyrdom, the cup of passion, the cup of Christ. This is, the cup of salvation, because our salvation is Christ. Therefore I will take, he says, His cup, and render it to Him. Of this cup He also said to the Father before His passion: Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. He came to suffer, He came to die; He had power over death. Or, if I lie, hear Himself: I have power, He says, to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself, and I take it again. Have you heard the power? No one takes it. In vain do the Jews boast: they have sin from it, not power. Christ died because He willed; He says in a psalm: I slept and took rest. They cried: Crucify, crucify: they held, hanged. So let them live, because they were able to do something. I slept. And what next? And took rest. Truly, the sleep was for three days. What then afterwards? And rose again, for the Lord sustained me. According to the form of a servant, He speaks, the Lord sustained me: as also in another place: Shall he who sleeps not also rise again? The Jews boast, as if they have conquered me. Shall he who sleeps not also rise again? They hanged, intending to kill: but I slept, because when I chose I laid down my soul, and when I chose I rose again.
On the humanity of Christ.
Therefore, it is the cup that he wanted to pass from him, which he came to drink. What is it then, Lord, that you said: Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me? You said to the disciples, about to suffer and die: My soul is sorrowful unto death. I seek therefore in these words those words of yours: I have power to lay down my soul, and I have power to take it again. Whence do I hear: My soul is sorrowful unto death? No one takes it from me: why are you sorrowful? You have the power to lay down your soul: why do you say: Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me? He answers to the one questioning and says to you: Man, in my flesh I have taken you up: therefore, if I have taken you up in my flesh, have I not taken you up in my voice? When I say: I have power to lay down my soul, and I have power to take it again, I speak as the Creator; when I say: My soul is sorrowful unto death, I speak as one created. Rejoice in me in yourself, recognize yourself in me. When I say: I have power to lay down my soul, I am your help; when I say: My soul is sorrowful unto death, I am your mirror.
Christ the Word.
Have you not read that he died? Do we deny it? If we deny his death, we also deny his resurrection. He died from where he deemed it worthy to be man: from there he resurrected, from where he deemed it worthy to be man; because we too are humans and we are to die, and we are to rise again. Did the Word die in him? Could what was the Word in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, suffer anything? What could such a Word suffer? And yet it was necessary that the Word should die for us: and it could not die, and yet it had to die. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Where is the blood? Where is the death? Is there death in the Word? Is there blood in the Word? If there is neither death nor blood in the Word, where is our price? Isn't our price his blood? From where then would he give this price if he remained only the Word unless the Word took on flesh? The flesh however living from the human soul: that since the Word could not be killed, only the flesh which lived from its own soul could be killed. For neither could the soul be killed: a soul which, cleaving to divinity, was one spirit, especially as the Lord himself assumed it, not it believing in him, as it is written about us: He who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit. For we, when we were unbelievers, were unworthy and alien to God; but by believing, we cleaved to God. That soul, however, was created worthy of cleaving to God, assuming the unity of the divine person newly and in a rudimentary form. By this unity and singularity of the two unequal spirits, the flesh died, which lived in a new way and new kind of manner from this unity of the two spirits, having a twin and admirable life, was left behind for a very short time. For God is spirit, and the human spirit, his image, are immortal.
Christ received death from us, we received life from Him.
Thus, therefore, our Lord God, our savior, speaks to us in a certain way, saying: O humans, I made man upright, and he made himself perverse. You departed from me, in yourselves you perished: but I sought what was lost. You departed from me, he says, you lost life: And life was the light of men. Behold what you left, when in Adam all perished. Life was the light of men. What life? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. There was life: you lay in your death. The Word, whence I might die, I did not have: man, whence you might live, you did not have. Because the Lord Christ kindly condescends, I have taken up his words: if he himself mine, how much more I his! In a certain way our Lord Christ, speaking in silence through these things themselves, says: Whence I might die, I did not have: man, whence you might live, you did not have. I took from you whence I might die for you: take from me whence you might live with me. Let us celebrate the exchange: I give to you, give to me. I receive from you death: receive from me life. Awake: see what I give, what I receive. Exalted in heaven, I received from you humility on earth: your Lord, I received from you the form of a servant: your health, I received from you wounds: your life, I received from you death. The Word, I became flesh, so that I could die. I did not have flesh with the Father: I took from your mass, whence I might distribute to you - the Virgin Mary was from our mass; there Christ took flesh from us, that is, from the human race - I took from you flesh, whence I might die for you: take from me the life-giving spirit, whence you might live with me. Finally, I died from what is yours: live from what is mine.
The Creed of Hippo.
Therefore, brothers, when you hear: Born of the Spirit from the Virgin Mary, suffered, was beaten, received blows; when you hear: Christ has suffered these things, do not think that the Word, in its nature and substance in the beginning with God, could have suffered in such a way. But can we say that the Word of God, the only-begotten God, did not suffer for us? He suffered, but according to His soul and passible flesh. For He took the form of a servant, so that He might suffer as a man. For He had both a soul and flesh, because He came to liberate the whole man, not by losing His life, but by giving life. However, let us give a comparison, so that you may more easily perceive what we say; for example, when the martyr Stephen and Phocas or any other suffered, were killed, and buried, their flesh alone was killed and buried, but their souls could neither be killed nor buried, and yet we most correctly say: Stephen, Phocas, or any other died for the name of Christ. Thus, when the only-begotten God was suffered, killed, and buried, His flesh alone was killed and buried; however, His soul, and much more, His divinity, could not be killed: and hence securely we say, that the only Son of God, namely, the only-begotten God, died and was buried for us. Therefore truly, not falsely, Christ the Lord Himself, who is the truth without falsehood, said: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. And the Apostle similarly says of God the Father: He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. But if you want to know what Christ is, do not look at the flesh alone, which lay in the tomb; do not look at the soul alone, of which He said: My soul is sorrowful, even unto death; do not look at the Word alone, because the Word was God; but understand that Christ entirely is the Word, and soul, and flesh.
The error of the Apollinarists and Arians concerning the soul of Christ.
Do not take anything away from the soul of Christ. For the Apollinarian heretics said that He did not have a mind, that is, the soul did not have intelligence, but the Word was for it in place of mind and intelligence. This Apollinaris said. But the Arians say: He did not have any kind of soul. Therefore, you must faithfully hold that absolutely the whole Christ is Word and soul and flesh. And when you hear: My soul is sorrowful, understand the human soul, not animal: for the soul without intellect is the soul of a beast, not a human soul. If He did not come to liberate the mind, He did not have a mind. Therefore, one Christ, the Word and soul and flesh. What is man? Soul and flesh. What is Christ? Word and man, and therefore Word and soul and flesh, one Christ. When you strike a man with fists, what of him do you strike? The soul, or the flesh? You admit that it is the flesh. And yet the soul cries out: Why do you strike me? Why do you beat me? If you were to say to the soul: Who touched you? I strike the flesh, not you; do not those who hear you saying these things mock, and judge you senseless or insane? Thus, those who scourged the flesh of the Word of God, or struck with slaps, cannot say: We scourged, or struck with slaps, the flesh, not the Word or the soul of Christ; for they scourged or struck with slaps the whole Christ, that is, the Word and the soul and the flesh: for they did not scourge or strike with slaps His dead body. And although they could not kill His soul or His very divinity, which is true life, on the cross, they delighted in killing the whole Christ in their hearts and in their evil intent. For whoever persecutes someone to kill him, wishes to extinguish him entirely, just as the whole light of a lamp is extinguished when it is shattered on the ground, so that it no longer shines at all, when any evildoer sees that it obstructs him. This cannot happen to a man in any way, that he should be entirely extinguished, who certainly has one mortal substance and another immortal: for nothing in him is mortal except the flesh. However, Christ, the only-begotten of God, could be even less entirely extinguished, although Jews thought they were extinguishing Him, who in His three substances, that is, one eternal and divine, and in two temporal, that is, human, had only one mortal, that is, His flesh; but He undoubtedly had His soul and especially His divinity immortal. And therefore, by His death of short duration, He alone could redeem us from our eternal death, who was not only flesh and human soul, but God and soul and flesh, the one only-begotten of God. For He who descended to the lower parts of the earth, He is also who ascended above all the heavens: which man alone could not do.
Life triumphs over death.
Therefore, let us rejoice and be glad, dearest brothers, because he redeemed us by his death, who even defeated the enemies when he was killed. For being slain, he slew death, and forever freed us from its hand, and rising on high, he led captivity captive, and after sending the Holy Spirit to mankind, he gave his gifts: who even while lying in the tomb could introduce the believing thief into paradise.