This article continues the discussion of dating Augustine’s sermons, using Augustine’s Christmas sermons (184–196 and 369–370) as the basis. It also includes an excursus, summarizing the status of present discussions and identifying the value and goal of this effort from a methodological perspective.

This article provides an overview of Augustine’s Christmas sermons. Christmas is more important for Augustine than his words to Januarius might suggest (Letter 55, 2). In fact, the parallels between his preaching at Christmas and at Easter are striking in this regard. The catechesis in the Christmas sermons is based on the Nicean creed (or that of Constantinopole) rather than on the Lenten and Easter baptismal creeds. Together, the feasts of Christmas and Easter celebrate—both theologically and liturgically—the one mystery of salvation.

Augustine of Hippo understands the lay faithful in virtue of their regal-sacerdotal anointing at Baptism to exercise, always in unison with the ordained ministry, an indispensable twofold role in the sinner’s reconciliation. In Peter, not only the clergy but indeed all the saintly members of the community receive the spiritual commission to bind and loose. According to their particular vocation, the lay faithful bind the sinner through fraternal correction and loose him through their intercessory prayer. As members of the Totus Christus, they participate in Christ’s unique remissive mediation. A mixed society where saints live among sinners provides the necessary context for this ecclesial reconciliation.

On June 24th, 407, Augustine was in Carthage and was asked by his friend Aurelius to preach that day, the feast of the birth of John the Baptist. Drawing on the Gospel reading, he contrasted John as “Voice” with Christ as “Word” and meditated at length on the nature of speech, preaching, and conversion (Sermo 293A =Dolbeau 3). I draw on the sermons discovered by François Dolbeau to explore what they say about Augustine’s catechumenate and about him as a teacher of catechumens. This supplements my book, Augustine and the Catechumenate, published before the Dolbeau sermons became fully available.