mutt in command-line mode

["Roy S. Rapoport" <mutt-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I keep weekly archives of all my incoming mail.
Occasionally I have need to find mail from a given user.

Today, the process is:
A) for file in `grep $username *.archive | sed 's/:.*//' | sort -u`; do 
        cat $file >>! /tmp/someFile
   done
  
B) Invoke mutt on /tmp/someFile and do 'l ~f $username'

If I could manipulate mutt from the command-line, I could do some sort of
for file in `grep $username *.archive | sed 's/:.*//' | sort -u`; do 
        mutt 'T ~f $username' ';s /tmp/JusMessagesFromUsername' $file
done

But reading the manual did not expose such a capability.

Any suggestions?

-roy