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A Pentecost Sermon of St Augustine on the Unity of the Church
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
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The coming of the Holy Spirit makes this day a solemn feast for us; it is fifty days since our Lord's Resurrection, seven weeks of seven days. But seven sevens are only forty-nine, the extra one is added to draw our attention to unity.
What was the coming of the Holy Spirit, and what did it accomplish? How did he show us his presence, and how did he prove it; By everyone speaking the languages of all nations. A hundred and twenty men were there in the same place—the Holy number of the twelve apostles multiplied by ten. Did then those on whom the Spirit came each speak a single language, so that some spoke one and some another, and thus between them the languages of all the nations were spoken? Not so; but each and every man spoke the language of each nation.
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- Copyright © 1958 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Eph.iv, 4.
2 St Augustine treats this theme more fully in Tractatus in Joannem XXVI, no. 13 and XXVII, no. 6.
3 Cf. Gen. i, 20-24.
4 Luke 24, 38-39.
5 Ibid., 44.
6 Ibid., 46.
7 Ibid., 47. In Sermon CXVI, no. 6, St Augustine, beginning from this text, contrasts the Apostles’ Knowedge with ours. ‘They saw the Head, they believed what he told them about the Body… . We see what they did not see: the Church spread among all peoples. But we do not see what they saw: Christ in the flesh… . The Whole Christ has been revealed to them and to us, but seen by neither; they saw the Head and believed in the Body, we see the Body and believe in the Head.’
8 I Cor. xi, 18; i, 11-13.
9 Cf. Matt, xxiv, 3.
10 Acts i, 6-8.
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