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Sacramentum Unitatis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Extract

You who are reborn into a new life and so are called babes; you most of all who in this way see what these things mean for you, listen. Listen too, you the faithful, who are used to seeing: it is good to commemorate lest oblivion obliterate. What you see on theLord’s table, as far as the appearance of the things themselves is concerned, you are used to seeing on your own tables: it isthe same sight but not the same virtue. And you too are the very same men that you were: for you have not produced new looks for us. And yet you are new: you are old in bodily appearance but new in the grace of holiness, as this thing, too, is new. It is still, indeed, the bread and wine which you now see: the holy power has come and the bread will be the Body of Christ and the wine will be theBlood of Christ. The name of Christ does this, the grace of Christ does this, that it may seem that same thing that it seemed and yet may not have the same efficacy that it had. For before, if it were eaten, the stomach was filled up, now when it is eaten the mind is built up. Now just as we spoke to you on Saturday when you were baptised, or rather before you were baptised, about the sacrament of the font in which you were to be plunged and told you, which I believe you will not have forgotten, that this was, or rather is, the power of baptism.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1945 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

(1) Always singular in St. Augustine.