This is but an elemental truth of Christian faith, though it is the highest joy of the Christian heart. It was in an instruction to catechumens that S. Augustine said, “Would you understand the Body of Christ? Hear the Apostle saying to the faithful, ‘But you are the Body and the members of Christ.’ If, then, you are Christ’s Body and His members, it is your own mystery which is placed on the Lord’s table; it is your own mystery which you receive. It is to what you are that you reply amen, and by replying subscribe. For you are told, ‘the Body of Christ,’ and you reply, amen. Be a member of the Body of Christ, and let your amen be true. Why, then, in bread? Let us bring here nothing of our own, but listen to the Apostle himself again and again, for in speaking of that sacrament he says, ‘We that are many are one bread, one body.’ Understand and rejoice. Here is unity, verity, piety, charity. One bread. Who is that one bread? We being many are one bread. Remember that the bread is not made of one, but of many grains. When you were exorcised, it was as if you were ground; when baptised, as if you were kneaded together with water; when you received the fire of the Holy Ghost, it was your baking. Be what you see, and receive what you are. This the Apostle said of the bread. Of the chalice what we should understand is clear enough even unsaid. For as to make the visible species of bread many grains are kneaded with water into one, as if that were taking place which Holy Scripture records of the faithful, ‘they had one mind and one heart in God,’ so also in the case of the wine. Many grapes hang on the bunch, but their juice is poured together into one. So too Christ the Lord signified us; willed us to belong to Himself; consecrated on His own table the mystery of our peace and unity. He who receives the mystery of unity and holds not the bond of peace receives not a mystery for himself, but a witness against himself.”(82) Thus the coherence of the natural and mystical Body of Christ was at once exhibited and effected in the great central act of Christian worship, and the whole fruit of the Incarnation was seen springing from the Person of Christ, and bestowed on men as His members in the unity of one Body. Thus were they taken out of the isolation, distraction, and enmity—that state of mutual strife and disorder which heathendom expresses—and made into the one divine commonwealth; and thus the Body of Christ grows to its full stature and perfect form through all the ages of Christendom.