Jesus the Ratcatcher
Augustine was probably unfamiliar with the fishing metaphor that the (mostly) Greek Fathers were using, but he came up with a similar image on his own. If the Devil is a rat, then the Son of God is the ultimate Ratcatcher – as well as the Bait. Commenting on John 5, 5-14 (the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes), Augustine strays onto the topic of our atonement:
The Redeemer came, and the deceiver was conquered. And what did our Redeemer do to our captor? In payment for us He set up His Cross as a mousetrap; there, He placed His own blood as if it were bait. [The Devil] could indeed shed that blood, but he was not worthy of drinking it. And because He shed the blood of One who was not his debtor, he was ordered to release his debtors; he shed the blood of the Innocent One and was ordered to depart from the guilty.
Jesus the Supreme Hunter
St. Augustine’s imagination was not limited to small prey. In one of his Easter sermons, he compares the risen Lord to a lion-hunter. The Devil, a “roaring lion who goeth about seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5, 8), is a ferocious killer of men’s souls, but in this sermon, Augustine likens Death to a lion who slays everyone born in sinful flesh. Jesus Christ was not born in sinful flesh but “in the likeness of sinful flesh” – that is, He was born a true man, but without original sin and without the subsequent penalty of death. Nevertheless, Christ voluntarily took death upon Himself through His crucifixion to save us from death. In being slain by death, He slew death itself, freeing us from the powers of death. He is thus not only the Bait for the ultimate man-killer but the Ultimate Killer of the ultimate man-killer. He is the Summus Venator or Supreme Hunter:
He died, but He killed death; He put an end in Himself to what we had been fearing; He took it upon Himself and He killed it; as the Supreme Hunter He captured the lion and He slew it.
If Augustine is right, then the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, whom we picture in garments as white as snow as when He was transfigured (see Mark 9, 2), gives a much improved new meaning to the phrase “Great White Hunter.”
