Essential Sermons

The Works of St. Augustine, A Translation for the 21st Century initiated by the late Fr. John Rotelle, OSA has made available to the English-speaking world an unprecedented number of Augustine’s works formerly available only in Latin. There has been an explosion in Augustinian scholarship throughout the last five decades. Until recently, the secondary literature tended to focus on Augustine’s major treatises: the Confessions, The Trinity, Teaching Christianity, and the City of God, the works commonly available in modern language translation. Now a plethora of lesser known works including his sermons and letters has provided new insight into this complex and talented theologian. The eleven volumes of Augustine’s popular sermons (Sermones ad populum) including the recently discovered Dolbeau sermons expertly translated by Fr. Edmund Hill (1910-1997) in clear, contemporary English showcase Augustine the brilliant speaker and engaging preacher of the Word and have proven an indispensable resource for contemporary scholarship. Peter Brown and other leading Augustine scholars have turned to the sermons as an indispensable source to nuance and reappraise their earlier positions. Hill’s translation and extensive notes have received many accolades by scholars but professors have clamored for a one volume anthology in paperback form that would be affordable to students and that could be used as required texts in teaching undergraduates, graduate students and seminarians. Fr. Doyle has undertaken that task and has carefully chosen an anthology that is representative of the bishop’s finest preaching on a wide range of subjects including God, Christ, sin, grace, conversion, martyrdom, sacraments, marriage, wealth, poverty, Christmas, Easter and living the Christian life. Students and preachers alike will discover Augustine’s masterful interpretation of the Word of God and creative skills in engaging the people of God by using the finest rhetorical skills available to his time based on the principles taught by Cicero. To engage Christians the preacher must first capture their attention (delectare) in order to teach (docere) fundamental saving truths to persuade (flectere) them to live a life of discipleship and put into practice such high ideals. Essential Sermons will include mostly whole sermons with a brief introduction but in some cases powerful excerpts from lengthy homilies that would have been impossible to incorporate in a one volume work. Fr. Doyle has written