The angels, our fellow citizens

Wednesday at Matins:

From the Commentary on Psalm 125 by St Augustine, Bishop & Doctor

The Jerusalem above is eternal; the one upon earth is but its prefiguration.  Therefore the earthly Jerusalem fell, while the heavenly one remains.  The one lasted during the time when the Messiah was being foretold; the other endures for the eternity of our restoration.  During this life we are wandering exiles from the Jerusalem above; we long to return to it and have much toil and sorrow until we are back there once more.  But the angels, our fellow citizens, did not abandon us in our exile; on the contrary, they announced the coming to us of the King in person.  And he did come to us, but was met with contempt among us.  He was despised by us, and later he was despised with us.  And he taught us to bear contempt because he had borne it, to endure because he had endured, to suffer because he had suffered.  Moreover he promised that we should rise from the dead because he rose from the dead, showing in himself what we were to hope for.

If then our fathers, the prophets of old, longed for that heavenly city even before our Lord Jesus Christ came in the flesh, before he died, rose again, and ascended into heaven, how much more should we not long for that city to which he has gone before us and which in fact he never left?  When our Lord came to us he did not leave the angels.  He both remained with them and came to us: he remained with them in majesty; he came to us in his human body.  But as for us, where were we then?  If we call him our Redeemer, we must have been captives.  Where were we held captive so that he had to come and ransom us?  Where were we held?  Among the barbarians perhaps?  The devil and his angels are worse than barbarians.  It was they who held mankind captive; it was from them he ransomed us, not with gold or silver but with his own Blood.

We were captives because we had been sold into sin.  Who sold us then?  We sold ourselves by consenting to our seducer.  We had the power to sell ourselves but not to redeem ourselves.  We sold ourselves by consenting to sin; we were redeemed by the faith that justifies.  For innocent Blood was shed to redeem us.  Whenever the seducer shed blood by persecuting the just, what kind of blood was poured out?  The blood of the righteous, certainly; the blood of the prophets, of our fathers, of the upright and of martyrs, but these all came from a race tainted by sin.  Once only did he shed the Blood of one who was born just and needed no justification; once that Blood had been shed the seducer lost his claim upon all his captives.  Those for whom innocent Blood had been poured out are redeemed, and released from captivity they sing the psalm: “When the Lord delivered Sion from bondage, we were like those who are consoled.”