Right! So we must take “your” interpretation of St. Augustine over those of other eminent theologians including Protestants who converted to Catholicism. As I have said before, these discussions all begin and end with Petrine authority.
It’s not for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to offer their own sophomoric internet drive-by musings. Just as the early Church fathers assembled the books they believed is the Word of God - we call the Bible, this authority did not suddenly evaporate.
Catholics have ONE Credo and then there is everything else under the sun for non-Catholics to choose from that ranges from the David Koreshs’ and Jim Jones’ to the vapid “preachings” of Billy Grahams and Joel Osteens.
And since we’ve been on this rodeo before may be in your comprehensive reading of Augustine you just may have missed this: No intention to cal your bluff.
“Christ was carried in his own hands when, referring to his own body, he said, ‘This is my body’ [Matt. 26:26]. For he carried that body in his hands” (Explanations of the Psalms 33:1:10 [A.D. 405]).
“I promised you [new Christians], who have now been baptized, a sermon in which I would explain the sacrament of the Lord’s Table. . . . That bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ” (Sermons 227 [A.D. 411]).
“What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction” (ibid., 272).
Rodeo no more!
It's not an interpretation. Augustine interpreted the text and directly cites the verse "this is the work of God, that you believe on whom He sent", and applies this to the fulfillment of eating the body of Christ "without teeth and stomach." This is not ambiguous. It may simply seem that way to you, because you have a blind faith that a Church Father can't contradict what Rome teaches. You are so certain of this faith that you don't even understand what it is you are quoting or what you are trying to prove with them.
Your faith in men is horribly misplaced.