This second volume of Augustine’s In Ioannis Evangelium Tractatus CXXIV contains Tractates 11 to 27. All of these sermons were also delivered to his congregation at Hippo Regius¹ and show the same devoted pastoral care that Augustine directed to those people of God entrusted to him as their pastor.² Because of the theological profundity of John’s Gospel these sermons, too, reflect especially theological concerns, though spiritual and moral matters are not in any way disregarded. That fullness of scriptural exegesis which characterizes the tractate as a species of the sermon is found here.

The constant presence of Manichaeism³ in North...

Opportunely has the lord arranged for us on this day the sequence of this reading. For I trust that you, my beloved people, have noticed that we have undertaken to examine and discuss the gospel according to John in sequence. Opportunely, therefore, it has happened that you heard today from the gospel that “unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he will not see the kingdom of God.”¹ For it is the time for us to exhort you who are still catechumens, who believe in Christ in such a way that you still carry your...

We understand that it is because we excited your attention yesterday, my beloved people, that you have assembled more eagerly and in greater numbers.¹ But, if it pleases, let us, for the present settle our account with the sermon owed to the gospel reading next in order. Then, my beloved people, you will hear about the peace of the Church, either what we have done or what we hope will still be done.²

(2) Therefore, now concentrate the whole attention of your heart on the gospel, and let no one’s thoughts be elsewhere. For if he who gives his whole...

The order of the readings from the Gospel According to John, as you who show concern for your progress can recall,¹ so continues that this [passage] which has just been read is set before us for our discussion today. The discussions [of this gospel], which have been presented earlier, from its very beginning right up to today’s reading, have, you recall, already been rendered. And if perhaps you have forgotten many things from them, surely at least the fulfillment of our obligation remains in your memory.

(2) Those things which you heard from here about the baptism of John, even...

This reading from the holy gospel teaches us the preeminence of the divinity of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the humility of the man who deserved to be called the friend of the bridegroom, that we may distinguish what difference there is between the man who is man, and the man who is God. For the man who is God is our Lord, Jesus Christ, God before all ages and man in our age, God from the Father, man from the virgin, yet one and the same Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Son of God, God and man. But John,...

It is not strange to your ears, my beloved people, that the evangelist John soars to greater heights like an eagle, that he transcends the murky darkness of earth, and that he looks upon the light of truth with steadier gaze. For through our ministry, with God’s help, many things have already been discussed from his gospel; this reading which was proclaimed today follows next in order. The things which I am going to say, by the gift of the Lord, many of you are going to hear more for review than for learning.¹ Nevertheless your attention ought not to...

Today’s gospel reading, which is to be the subject of our sermon, continues yesterday’s reading. Indeed, the meanings in it are not difficult to investigate, but they are worthy of our preaching, worthy of our admiration and praise. Accordingly, let us recount this passage of the gospel with commendation, rather than examine it with rigor. For, after the two days which he had spent in Samaria, Jesus “went away into Galilee” where he had been raised. Moreover, the Evangelist continues and says, “For Jesus himself gave testimony that a prophet has no honor in his own country.” Therefore Jesus did...

The performance of an amazing deed¹ by God ought not to be a source of amazement; for it would be an amazing thing if a human being had performed it. We ought to rejoice more than be amazed that our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, became man than that God performed divine acts among men. For what he became for men is more valuable for our salvation than what he did among men; and that he healed the vices of souls is more valuable than that he healed the maladies of bodies which were going to die. But because the...

John the evangelist, among his colleagues and partners, the other evangelists, has received from the Lord (upon whose breast he reclined at the supper¹ that he might signify thereby that he drank the deeper secrets from depths of his heart) this special and particular gift, that he should say about the Son of God those things which can stir, perhaps, the attentive minds of the little ones, but cannot fill them, not yet able to understand. But to all minds somewhat more matured and attaining a certain age of inner manhood, he gives in his words something by which they...

In the previous sermon, as far as [the matter] excited our enthusiasm and impelled our poor: understanding, we spoke, taking occasion from the gospel’s words, where it was written, “The Son cannot do anything of himself, but only what he sees the Father doing.” And we said what the Son’s “seeing” is, that is, the Word’s “seeing,” because the Son is the Word. And [we also said], because all things were made through the Word, how it can be understood that the Son first sees the Father doing, and only then he himself does what he has seen done, although...

The words of our lord, Jesus Christ, especially those which John the Evangelist relates, are so special and of such deep meaning as to upset those misguided in their heart and to tax the upright of heart. Not without reason did [John] recline on the Lord’s bosom¹ except to absorb the secrets of more profound wisdom and, by propagating the gospel, to give utterance² to what he had imbibed by his love. Accordingly, my beloved people, give your attention to these few words which have been read.³ With the favor and aid of him who intended his words to be...

Yesterday,¹ as far as the Lord deigned to grant, we discussed with what ability we could, and we understood with what capacity we could, how the works of the Father and the Son are inseparable, and how the Father does not do some and the Son others, but the Father does all through the Son, as through his Word about whom it was written, “all things were made through him and without him was made nothing.”² Today let us look at the following words, and let us both pray for his mercy from the same Lord, and hope that first,...

Today’s gospel reading continues the discourses delivered to you on the day before yesterday and yesterday¹ and, keeping with the sequence, let us examine it, not as befits its importance, but in view of our strength because you too grasp, not in proportion to the abundance of the overflowing fountain, but to your limited capacity. And we direct our words to your ears, not so much as the fountain itself pours forth, but as much as we can take which we may transmit to your minds, with the fountain himself working more abundantly in your hearts than us upon your...

In a certain place in the gospel the Lord says that the wise hearer of his word ought to be like a man who, wishing to build, digs rather deeply until he comes to bedrock, and there without anxiety he establishes what he builds against the onrush of a flood, so that when it comes, rather it may be pushed back by the solidity of the building than that by its impact it causes the collapse of that house.¹ Let us consider the Scripture of God as being a field where we want to build something. Let us not be...

The miracles which our Lord, Jesus Christ, performed are indeed divine works; and from things that can be seen they prompt the human mind to an understanding of God. For because he is not such a substance as can be seen with the eyes, and [because] his miracles, by which he governs the whole world and administers all creation, have lost their impressiveness by constant repetition, so that almost no one deigns to notice the wondrous and stupendous works of God in any grain of seed, in accordance with his very own mercy he has reserved for himself certain works...

This is today’s [reading] which follows yesterday’s reading from the gospel [and] from which today’s homily is due. After that miracle was performed, where Jesus fed five thousand men from five loaves, when the crowd had been astonished and said that he was a great prophet who came into the world, this follows: “Jesus therefore, when he knew that they would come to take him by force and make him king, fled again into the mountain, himself alone.”

(2) Therefore, it is given to be understood that when the Lord was sitting on the mountain with his disciples and saw...

Then, as we heard in the gospel when it was read, our Lord, Jesus Christ, had said that he was the bread which came down from heaven, the Jews murmured and said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How then does he say, ‘I have come down from heaven?’” These men were far from the bread of heaven and they did not know how to hunger for it. They had weak jaws of the heart; they were deaf with open ears; they saw and stood blind. For indeed this bread searches out...

We have heard from the gospel the words of the Lord which follow his previous discourse. From these a discourse is owed to your ears and minds, and it is not unsuitable for today;¹ for it is about the body of Christ which he said that he was giving for eating because of life everlasting. Moreover, he explained the method of this bestowal and his gift, how he would give his flesh to eat, saying, “He who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, abides in me, and I in him.”² This is the sign that he has eaten and...