Lend a hand of forgiveness, won't you?

Indeed, I wondered about that confusing last paragraph that Macey mentioned in her post. St. Augustine was really good about anticipating and addressing the questions of his audience otherwise (like Joseph talked about in his post), but this last part seems to be less than clear. Surely he wasn't trying to obscure things, right? That was exactly what he argued against doing in De Doctrina Christiana. Perhaps this is just one of those moments where it is the "difficulty and subtilty of the matter [he is] trying to explain" that makes this confusing for me, and not his expression.

Since others have obviously gone into more depth about that stuff, though, I wanted to note the kairos of St. Augustine's sermon. As the title says, it is "for Lent." I admit, I'm not an expert on Lent--especially not the differences between the Lent of our day and the Lent of St. Augustine's--so I had to look up some stuff about it. As far as I can tell, however, this sermon would have been significantly more powerful because of the circumstances of this holy time. Here the congregation was, remembering the Savior's life, how Judas betrayed Him, and how He suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross...and then, after everything, how He asked the Father to forgive His persecutors. St. Augustine really capitalizes on their situation. "Remember how Christ forgave?" he seems to be saying. "That is how you should forgive." (The picture in Thomas's post depicts this rather strikingly.)

In doing this, St. Augustine really shows that he applied a mix of rhetorical and spiritual preparation. By taking notice of the kairos and alluding to the similarity/difference topic of invention (forgiving like the Savior forgives), he was clearly using his rhetorical knowledge. By concentrating on the good word of God, though, he plainly shows his spiritual preparation (the most important of the two, he tells us in De Doctrina Christiana).