Augustine: The Cross of Mortification

In a sermon on the beginning of Lent, Augustine says,

"It goes very well with our devotion, after all, that as we are very soon going to celebrate the passion of the crucified Lord, we should also make a cross for ourselves out of the curbing of the pleasures of the flesh, as the apostle says: But those who are Jesus Christ's have crucified their flesh with its passions and lusts (Galatians 5:24)." (p.103)

and,

"So it is that both Moses and Elijah and the Lord himself all fasted for forty days, to suggest to us that we are being worked upon in Moses and in Elijah and in Christ himself, that is in the law and the prophets and in the gospel itself, to ensure that we aren't conformed to this world and don't cling to it, but that instead we crucify the old self, behaving not in gluttony and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness; but let us put on the Lord Jesus, and take no care for the flesh in its lusts (Romans 13:13-14). Live here like that always, Christian; if you don't want your footsteps to sink in the earthly quagmire, don't come down from this cross.

But now, if that is what has to be done throughout the whole of this life, how much more during these days of Lent, in which this life is not only being spent, but in addition is also being mystically signified?" (p.104)

From Sermon 205 On the Beginning of Lent
The Works of Saint Augustine
A Translation for the 21st Century
Sermons
III/6
(184-229Z)
on the Liturgical Seasons
translation and notes by Edmund Hill, O.P.
editor John E. Rotelle, O.S.A.
New City Press: New Rochelle, New York
1993

Let's Translate Augustine

Confessions 1.1.1

Great are you, Lord, and to be praised highly. Great is your power, and of your wisdom there is no measure. And man wants to praise you, being some part of your creation - even man who carries around his mortality, who carries around the evidence of his sin and the evidence that you resist the proud; and nevertheless man wants to praise you, as he is a part of your creation. You arouse him that he should delight to praise you, since you have made us towards you and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you. Grant to me, Lord, to know and understand whether it comes first to call on you or to praise you, and whether knowing you comes before calling on you. But who calls upon you who does not know you? For the ignorant can invoke something for another. Or rather are you called upon so that you may be known? But how will they call upon him, in whom they have not believed? Or how will they believe without someone preaching? And they will praise the Lord who are seeking him: for those searching will find him and they who find will praise him. Let me seek you, Lord, calling on you and let me call on you believing in you: for you have been declared to us. My faith calls upon you, Lord - the faith which you gave to me, which you breathed into me through the humanity of your son, through the service of your preacher.

Translated from this J.J. O'Donnell text.