I am very interested in Augustines understanding of episcopal and presbyteral ministry and of the biblical images he prefers when he speaks about it. Thus, for example, rather than seeing the bishop or presbyter as himself a bridegroom, or as acting "in the person of Christ the Bridegroom," he speaks of the Baptist, of St. Paul, and, at least by implication, of himself as "the friend of the bridegroom" (Jn 3:29). On another tack, he reveals something of what he considers his role as a preacher in two places where he recalls the scene in which friends of a paralytic remove the roof of the house in which Jesus is and let him down in front of him. It also gives Augustine an opportunity to speak of two kinds of paralysis. Here are the two texts:

"What was weak," he says, "you did not strengthen" (Ez 34:4). He says this to bad shepherds , to false shepherds, to shepherds who seek their own things, and not the things of Jesus Christ, comfortably enjoying the milk and the wool, but not caring at all about the sheep, not assisting the ill.There is a difference between being weak and being ill. ... A weak person has to fear that some test will break him, but a sick person is already ill with some desire, and by that desire he is kept from entering on to Gods path, from taking on Christs yoke. Look at the people who wish to live well, have decided to live well, but are less able to suffer ills than they are to do the good. But it is part of Christian strength not only to do what is good but also to tolerate bad things. Those who seem to be enthusiastic about good things, then, but do not wish or are not able to bear threatening passions, are weak people. But people who by some desire become lovers of the world and are drawn away from good works are laid low by sickness, and because of it, its as if they lacked all their strength and cannot do any good. In his soul that is what that paralytic was like, the one whom his friends could not carry to the Lord, and so they opened the roof and let down that paralytic soul, his limbs all slack, incapable of any good work, weighed down by his sins, and ill with his desires sickness. If, then, all his limbs are slack, and there is an inner paralysis, so that you may reach the doctor (for perhaps the doctor is hidden, but is inside, that is, that true understanding is hidden in the Scriptures), then open the roof by explaining what is hidden, and let the paralytic down. (Augustine, Sermon 46. 6.13; PL 38, 277-78)

Commenting on the Psalm-verse, "I have been young and now am old, and I have not seen a just man forsaken nor his seed seeking bread" (Ps 36:25), St. Augustine expected that some would deny, from personal experience or even from biblical examples, that such is the case: just people have been forsaken and their children have had to beg for bread. At which point Augustine returns to the image of the preachers role:

When a person is thinking in this way, all his limbs are slack and unable to do what is good. Can we lift him up like a paralytic and open the roof of this Scriptural text and lower him before the Lord? You see that the text is obscure, and if its obscure, it has a roof over it. I see someone who is a paralytic in mind, and I see this roof, and under this roof I know that Christ is hidden. As much as I can I will do what was praised in those who opened the roof and lowered the paralytic before Christ so that he could say to him: "Be of good heart, son; your sins are forgiven you" (Mt 9:2). In this way he healed the inner man from his paralysis, forgiving his sins and strengthening his faith. But there were people there who did not have eyes to see that the mans inner paralysis had already been healed, and they thought that the physician who had healed him was blaspheming. "Who is this," they say, "who forgives sins? He is blaspheming. Who except God can forgive sins?" And because he was God, he heard what they were thinking. They were thinking something true about God, but they could not see God present. That is why that physician did something for the paralyticss body too, so that he could also heal the inner paralysis of those who were saying such things. He did something they could see and gave them something they could believe. Well then, if you are so weak and ill that when you see examples of people suffering, you wish to stop doing the good, you are suffering from an inner paralysis. Let us try, if we can, to remove the roof and lower you before the Lord. (Augustine, Enar. in Ps 36/3, 3; PL 36, 385)