St. Augustine commentary on the Passion of Christ

The Passion of the Whole Body of Christ

From the commentary on the Psalms 

by Saint Augustine, bishop

Lord, I have cried to you, hear me. This is a prayer we can all say.  This is not my prayer, but that of the whole Christ.  Rather, it is said in the name of His Body.

Christ's Agony in the Garden

When Christ was on earth He prayed in His human nature, and prayed to the Father in the name of His Body, and when He prayed drops of blood flowed from His whole body.  So it is written in the Gospel: Jesus prayed with earnest prayer, and sweated blood.  What is this blood streaming from His whole body but the martyrdom of the whole Church?

Lord, I have cried to you, hear me; listen to the sound of my prayer, when I call upon you.

Did you imagine that crying was over when you said: I have cried to you? You have cried out, but do not as yet feel free from care.  

If anguish is at an end, crying is at an end; 

but if the Church, the Body of Christ, 

must suffer anguish until the end of time, 

it must not say only: 

I have cried to you, hear me; 

it must also say: 

Listen to the sound of my prayer, when I call upon You.

Prayer rises to heaven as incense

Let my prayer rise 

like incense in your sight; 

let the raising of my hands 

be an evening sacrifice.

This is generally understood of Christ, the head, as every Christian acknowledges.  When day was fading into evening, the Lord laid down His life on the cross, to take it up again; He did not lose His life against His Will.  

Here, too, we are symbolized.  What part of Him hung on the cross if not the part He had received from us?  

How could God the Father ever cast off and abandon His only Son, Who is indeed one God with Him?  

Yet Christ, nailing our weakness to the cross (where, as the Apostle says: Our old nature was nailed to the cross with Him), cried out with the very voice of our humanity: humanity: My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?

The evening sacrifice is then the passion of the Lord, the cross of the Lord, the oblation of the victim that brings salvation, the holocaust acceptable to God.  In His resurrection He made this evening sacrifice a morning sacrifice.  

Prayer offered 

in holiness 

from a 

faithful heart 

rises 

like incense 

from a holy altar.  

Nothing is more fragrant 

than the fragrance of the Lord.  

May all who believe share in this fragrance.

Therefore, our old nature, in the words of the Apostle, was nailed to the cross with Him, in order, as he says, to destroy our sinful body, so that we may be slaves to sin no longer.

Taken from the Liturgy of the Hours Tuesday, 2nd Week of Lent

 

St. Augustine,  354 –  430 AD