Augustine, Sermones 296-301 (Classis III, de Sanctis)

Accordingly, you say that the death of the body belongs to nature; I say that it belongs to sin. And you ask me: If it belongs to sin, why have Enoch and Elijah not died? And I answer: Rather, if it belongs to nature, why have Enoch and Elijah not died? Enoch and Elijah live; they were translated, and wherever they are, they live. And if a certain conjecture of faith drawn from the Scripture of God is not mistaken, they are going to die. For the Apocalypse mentions two wonderful prophets, and says that these same are going to die, and to rise again in the sight of men, and to ascend to the Lord (Rev. 11:3–12): and these are understood to be Enoch and Elijah themselves, although their names are not mentioned there. And if perhaps you, who hold these views, have not accepted this Scripture; or if you accept it, you despise it and say, They are not expressly named: let them live, as you suppose, never to die. Say to me further: If death belongs to sin, why have they not died? I reply to you: If death belongs to nature, why have they not died? I say that, so that they may live, guilt has been brought to an end: you say, if you can, that nature has been brought to an end.

12. He bids them beware of the Pelagians, who are growing more numerous. We have said one thing arising from another, and as occasion offered: but it is something that nonetheless bears in this way on the firmness of our faith, against certain disputers who are wickedly growing more numerous. But let them not overcome our patience: nor yet let them overturn our faith. Let us be cautious and circumspect against novelties of disputation, human ones certainly, not divine. We are celebrating today the solemnity of the Apostles; let us hear the Apostle warning us: Avoid profane novelties of words; for they advance much towards impiety (1 Tim. 6:20, and 2 Tim. 2:16). But we wish you to be wise indeed in what is good, but untouched by what is evil (Rom. 16:19). Adam has died, but that serpent has not yet died. He whispers, and does not cease to hiss in. The ultimate punishment is reserved for him: but he seeks companions in his damnation. Let us hear the friend of the bridegroom, jealous for the bridegroom, not for himself: For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God; I have fitted you to present a chaste virgin to one husband, to Christ. And I fear, he says, lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning, so your minds too should be corrupted from the chastity which is in Christ (2 Cor. 11:2–3). We have all heard the apostolic words; let us all observe them, let us all beware of the poisons of the serpent. For we cannot say, We have not heard, we do not know, when just now we sang, Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world (Ps. 18:5). Words running to the ends of the earth have come to us: we have received them, we have written them down, we have appointed readers. The reader is not silent, the disputer is in labour: why does the plotter not cease?

Sermon 300. On the solemnity of the Maccabean martyrs.

Chapter I. — 1. Some Christians existed before Christ. This day solemn for us

the glory of the Maccabees has made: whose wonderful sufferings, when they were read, we have not only heard, but also seen and beheld. These things were done long ago, before the incarnation, before the passion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. They arose in that first people, in which the Prophets arose, who foretold these present things. And let no one think that, before there was a Christian people, there was no people belonging to God. Indeed rather, if I may so speak, according to how the truth stands and not the custom of names, that people too was at that time Christian. For it was not after His passion that Christ began to have a people: but His people was the one begotten of Abraham, to whom the Lord Himself, bearing witness, says, Abraham longed to see My day; and he saw it, and rejoiced (John 8:56). Therefore from Abraham was born that people which served in Egypt, and which, freed from the house of bondage by a mighty hand through Moses the servant of God, led through the Red Sea as the waves went down, trained in the desert, made subject to the law, is established in a kingdom. Whence, as I said, the Prophets arose, from there these martyrs flourished. Christ indeed had not yet died: but Christ, Who was to die, made them martyrs.

Chapter II. — 2. The Maccabean martyrs were Christians, not in name, but in reality. This, then, must first of all be commended to your charity, lest, while you admire those martyrs, you think that they were not Christians. They were Christians: but by their deeds they anticipated the name of Christians, which was spread abroad afterwards. But evidently, as though there were no confession of Christ for them, they were not compelled by an impious king and persecutor to deny Christ, as the later martyrs were compelled to do, so that they did not do it; [yet] they attained a like glory. For the later persecutors of the Christian people compelled those whom they persecuted to deny the name of Christ: these, standing most steadfastly in the name of Christ, suffered such things as we have heard, when they were read, that those others endured. To these more recent martyrs, then, with whose thousands the earth has been dyed purple, it was commanded and said by the persecutors, Deny Christ. Not doing this, they suffered such things as these others too endured. But to those it was said, Deny the law of Moses. They did not do it: they suffered for the law of Moses. These for the name of Christ, those for the law of Moses.

Chapter III. — 3. The passion of the Maccabees is rightly celebrated in the Church. The mystery of Christ veiled in the Old Testament. The key of the Old Testament, the cross. Some Jew comes forward and says to us: How do you count these men of ours as your martyrs? With what impudence do you celebrate their memory? Read their confessions: see whether they confessed Christ. To whom we reply: Truly, since you are one of those who did not believe in Christ, and, broken off from the olive, the wild olive taking their place, have remained outside, withered (Rom. 11:17); what will you say, being one of the faithless? They did not openly confess Christ, because the mystery of Christ was still veiled. For the Old Testament is the veiling of the New Testament, and the New Testament is the unveiling of the Old Testament. See therefore concerning the unbelieving Jews,

your fathers, but in evil your brothers, see what the apostle Paul says about such people. "Until now, as long as Moses is read, a veil is laid over their hearts. But that same veil remains in the reading of the Old Testament, which is not unveiled, because in Christ it is done away. When you pass over," he says, "to Christ, the veil will be taken away" (2 Cor. 3:14 etc.). "The veil," he says, "remains in the reading of the Old Testament, which is not unveiled, because in Christ it is done away": not the reading of the Old Testament, but the veil which is laid there. The reading of the Old Testament, in short, is not done away, but is fulfilled by Him Who said, "I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfil it" (Matt. 5:17). The veil, then, is done away, so that what was obscure may be understood. This was certainly shut, because the key of the cross had not yet come to it.

Chapter IV. — 4. By the Passion of Christ the prophecies were fulfilled and all things were revealed in the mystery of the cross. Look, then, at the Lord's Passion; set Him before your eyes hanging on the wood, and lying down like a lion when He willed, and dying, so as to slay death, not by necessity but by power. Attend to this very thing: see how on the cross He said, "I thirst." And when the Jews, not knowing what was being done through them, what was being fulfilled by the hands of those who did not know, bound a sponge with vinegar to a reed and gave it to Him to drink, He, having drunk the vinegar, answered, "It is finished." "And bowing His head He gave up the spirit" (John 19:28–30). Who departs in such a way as He died? With what truth, with what power, as He Who had said, "I have power to lay down My life, and power to take it up again. No one takes it from Me; but I lay it down of Myself, and I take it up again" (John 10:17–18). He acknowledges the kingship of the Living One who has worthily pondered the power of the Dying One. Now He had said this through the prophet to the Jews themselves: "I have slept" (Ps. 3:6). As though He were saying: Why do you boast of My death? Why, as though you had conquered Me, do you glory in vain? "I have slept." I have slept because I willed it, not because you raged. I have fulfilled what I willed: you have remained in your crime. Having therefore received the vinegar and drunk it, He said, "It is finished." What is finished? What was written of Me. What was written of Him? "They gave gall for My food, and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink" (Ps. 68:22). Looking round, then, at all the things that had been done in His Passion — already they had wagged their heads before the cross, already they had given gall, already they had numbered the bones of Him hanging and stretched out, already the garments had been divided, already they had cast lots over the seamless tunic — having looked round and, as it were, reckoned up all the things which the Prophets had foretold about His Passion, there remained something or other that was lacking: "And in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink." So that this small thing which had remained might be added, He said, "I thirst." Having received what was lacking, He answered, "It is finished." When this was said, "bowing His head He gave up the spirit." Then the foundations of the earth were shaken, then, the rocks being split, the secret places of the underworld lay open, then the tombs gave back the dead; and, to say that for the sake of which we have said all this, because now was the time that in the mystery of the cross all the things that were veiled in the Old Testament should be unveiled, the veil of the temple was torn.

Chapter V. — 5. The other martyrs confessed Christ revealed in the Gospel, the Maccabees [confessed Him] veiled in the Law. So from that time Christ began, after the resurrection, to be preached most openly. The prophetic things that had been foretold began to be most manifestly fulfilled in Him; the martyrs began most steadfastly to confess Him. The martyrs confessed openly the very One Whom the Maccabees then confessed in hidden fashion: these died for Christ revealed in the Gospel; those died for the name of Christ veiled in the law. Christ has both, Christ helped both as they fought, Christ crowned both. Christ has both in His service, like some most mighty man advancing with a train of attendants, some going before, others following. Look rather, then, at Him Himself, presiding in the chariot of the flesh: both those who go before serve Him, and those who follow are devoted to Him. For that you may know, and know plainly, that those who died for the law of Moses died for Christ, hear Christ Himself, O Jew, hear; and let your heart at last be opened, let the veil be taken from your eyes. If you believed Moses, you would believe Me also. Hear this, accept this, if you can. If the veil has been taken away by me, see. If you believed Moses, He says, you would believe Me also: for he wrote of Me (John 5:46). If Moses wrote of Christ, then he who truly died for the law of Moses laid down his life for Christ. Of Me, He says, he wrote. He Whom the tongues of those confessing served, He it is Whom the pen of those writing true things served. How will you be able to understand the pen of Moses, you who bound vinegar on a reed? Would that you might at some time drink His wine, to Whom you still, by blaspheming, offer vinegar to drink.

Chapter VI. — 6. A feast rightly instituted for the Maccabees. A basilica erected in their memory at Antioch. Let mothers learn to love their sons from the mother of the Maccabees. The Maccabees, then, are martyrs of Christ. Therefore not unfittingly, nor inappropriately, indeed most fittingly, their day and their feast are celebrated rather by Christians. What such thing have the Jews known how to celebrate? A basilica of the holy Maccabees is reported to be in Antioch: that is, in the very city which is called by the name of the king who persecuted them. For they endured Antiochus, the impious persecuting king, and the memory of their martyrdom is celebrated in Antioch; so that there may sound together both the name of the persecutor and the memory of the One Who crowned them. This basilica is held by Christians, was built by Christians. It is we, then, who have their memory to be celebrated, we who hold it: among us thousands of holy martyrs throughout the world have imitated their sufferings. Let no one, then, hesitate, my brothers, to imitate the Maccabees; lest when he imitates the Maccabees, he should think that he is not imitating Christians. Let the desire for imitation altogether burn in our hearts. Let men learn to die for the truth. Let women learn, from so great a patience of that mother, from her ineffable virtue; she who knew how to keep her sons. She knew how to have those whom she was not afraid to lose. They suffered each in himself by feeling, she by seeing in all of them. Made the mother of seven Martyrs, seven times a martyr: not separated from her sons in watching, and added to her sons in dying. She saw