Lenten Weekday

From a homily by 3
ST AUGUSTINE
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The Lord marked out for us the fullness of love we ought to have for each other when he told us: There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Taking into account his previous words, namely: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you, the conclusion we must draw is the same as that of the evangelist John who recorded these statements. In his first letter John tells us that we ought to lay down our lives for our brethren in the same way as Christ laid down his life for us, loving one another after the example of Christ who loved us and made the supreme sacrifice for us.

Surely this is what we read in the Proverbs of Solomon: When you sit down to eat at the table of a ruler, consider carefully what is set before you, then stretch out your hand and take your portion knowing that you in your turn will have to provide the same kind of meal. What is this ruler’s table, if not the altar at which we receive the body and blood of him who laid down his life for us?

And what does it mean to sit at this table, if not to approach it with humility? What does it mean to stretch out your hand and take your portion knowing that you will have to provide the same kind of meal yourself, if not what I have already told you, namely that just as Christ laid down his life for us so we too ought to lay down our lives for our brethren? This is what the apostle Peter said: Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we might follow in his footsteps.

This is what it means to provide the same kind of meal, and what their burning love enabled the blessed martyrs to do. If we are to give true meaning to our celebration of their memorials, approaching the Lord’s table at the very feast at which they were fed, we must, like them, provide the same kind of meal. At this table we do not commemorate the martyrs in the same way as we commemorate others who now rest in peace, so as to include them in our prayers, but rather in order that they should pray for us and help us to follow in their footsteps. They practiced that perfect love which Christ said could not be surpassed, offering their brethren the same kind of meal as they themselves had received from the table of the Lord.

This must not be understood as implying that we can be the Lord’s equals by bearing witness to him to the extent of shedding our blood. Christ had the power to lay down his life and to take it up again; but we cannot choose how long we shall live, and death comes to us even against our will. Finally, even if martyrs die for their brethren, none of them by shedding his blood brings forgiveness for the sins of his brothers, as Christ brought forgiveness to us. In this he gave us not so much an example to imitate as a reason for rejoicing. Insofar, then, as they shed their blood for their brethren, the martyrs provided the same kind of meal as they themselves had received from the table of the Lord. Let us therefore love one another as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.

3
St Augustine, In John. 84.1-2 (CCL 36:536-538); Word in Season II, 1st ed.