Father Z has been on an Augustinian tear. In fact, he’s managed to tear half the lines attributed to Augustine out of the quotation books (though not out of my memory, as I explain in his comments field). But today he invokes the great Father to explain the meaning of “the dew of the Holy Spirit” in the soon-to-be-revised second eucharistic prayer.

St. Cyril of Alexandria, call your office.

N.S. Gill at About.com makes the startling (but true?) claim that “Probably a good number of devout Western Christians are Nestorians” — that is, that they unreflectively subscribe to the ancient heresy condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431. Read it and let us know what you think.

Hat tip: Rogue Classicism.

This wee blog, “The Way of the Fathers,” has received some kind notice recently, from grownups we’ve long admired.

The Daily Eudemon himself, Eric Scheske, talked us up thus in early May: “I’m stunned at the amount of great script that Mike Aquilina is cranking out … every day … sex, religion, everything. Easy to read, edifying yet interesting.”

Happy Catholic made us unspeakably happy with this note:”Way of the Fathers has fast become a ‘must read’ blog for me … eye-opening and thought-provoking.”

More recently we hoid the woid from Theocoid: “Mike Aquilina has another great post … At this rate, I might simply need to build in a permanent RSS feed so his post titles will show up in my sidebar.”

My teenage son (and webmaster) — who has devoured all the Prove It books — was most impressed by this comment from their justly famous author, Amy Welborn: “Go read Mike Aquilina on the Church Fathers … His blog should be one of your daily stops.”

I was heartened most recently by a link from a Canadian teacher named Phil, who blogs at a place called Hyperekperisou. (It’s Greek, from the description of God’s power in Ephesians 3:20-21.) Phil had some kind things to say about “The Way of the Fathers” and its author, but best of all he really got what we’re trying to do here: “I stumbled on this blog I know not how, but I’m ecstatic that I did. The writer on the blog, Mike Aquilina, is a (published!) Roman Catholic writer on patristics from the US. What is great about him is that he writes with evident love of patristics and with a readable writing style which makes the Fathers accessible even to those who may not have specialized in them. He has a particular talent in making the Fathers relevant which is a challenge in this very history-mistrusting age.” That blew me away. He got it. He really got it!

And then there’s Rod Bennett, the author of one of my all-time favorite books on the Fathers: “Mike’s blog is … chronicling some of this great [patristic] re-awakening, and I for one am eating it up every morning.”

I hope you, too, are happy with the blog. At three months “live,” I’m still quite new to this world. If you have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know, in comments or by email.

And if you like this blog on the Fathers, you’ll love the books. They also come with good reviews, from people like Scott Hahn, Benedict Groeschel, John Michael Talbot, Johnnette Benkovic, and Archbishops Donald Wuerl and Charles Chaput. But I can’t quote any more praise today without blushing (and, in any event, my son has warehoused much of the praise right here). You’re the best judge, though. Buy the books and see for yourself!

The Fathers of the Church: An Introduction to the First Christian Teachers.

The Mass of the Early Christians.

Living the Mysteries: A Guide for Unfinished Christians (with Scott Hahn).

The Way of the Fathers: Praying With the Early Christians.

The Grail Code: Quest for the Real Presence (with Chris Bailey).

Benjamin Myers at Faith and Theology invites us to vote for our favorite patristic theologian:

Which patristic theologian do you prefer? Cast your vote in the new poll! … Personally, I still can’t decide who to vote for—how does one make a choice between such gigantic figures, such incomparable personalities, such profound creators of thought?

I’m sure you have no such scruples. Cast your ballot now at Ben’s place.

The dragons have arrived at GrailCode.com. Start at Chris’s blog, but follow the trail of fire all the way to our book, The Grail Code: Quest for the Real Presence.

True to his word, Kevin has moved on in his cycle of translations. From the Greek of St. Clement’s Epistle to the Corinthians he’s proceeded to the Hebrew of the biblical Prophet Malachi. In doing so, he tripped a wire in this office.

I’ve long been fascinated by the ways in which the early Fathers used the oracle of Malachi 1:11: “For from the rising of the sun and to its setting, great is My name among the nations, and in every place incense is brought for My name, … has said THE LORD of Hosts.” Catholics will recognize the line from the third eucharistic prayer, which was composed in the generation after the Second Vatican Council: “so that from east to west a perfect offering may be made to the glory of Your name.” But its liturgical pedigree goes back to the origins of Christianity. The oracle appears in the rites of the Didache (dating perhaps from 48 A.D.) and in several other early liturgies. The Fathers consistently apply the prophecy to the sacrifice of the Mass, which would already, in their day, be offered “from the rising of the sun to its setting” — a phrase that evokes both time and space, always and everywhere.

The eucharistic interpretation of Malachi 1:11 appears in the works of Justin, Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, Augustine, and John Chrysostom. If memory serves, Justin Martyr cites the passage three times in his Dialogue with Trypho (also translated on Biblicalia). Justin’s use leads me to believe that the eucharistic interpretation of Malachi’s oracle was very important to the earliest Christians — and hotly disputed by the early rabbis. I bring up these issues in my book The Mass of the Early Christians, which I hope you’ll buy and enjoy.

I must end this post by tipping my hat to Julie at Happy Catholic, who triggered these thoughts with her post on the new revisions of the Mass translations. Immediately after I read Julie’s post, Kevin wondered (in an email to me) what he might translate next for Biblicalia. Without hesitation, I suggested Malachi. Without hesitation, Kevin complied. Thank God for the blogosphere. From the rising of the sun to its setting, indeed!

St. John Chrysostom shows the insight of an economist on the interdependence of all people: producers, consumers, merchants, tradesmen, rich, and poor. This comes from his homilies on 1 Corinthians

In regard to wealth: If you enjoy it alone, you too have lost it. For you will not reap its reward. But if you possess it jointly with the rest, then will it be more your own, and then will you reap the benefit of it.

Don’t you see that the hands minister, and the mouth softens, and the stomach receives? Does the stomach say, “Since I have received I ought to keep it all?” Then don’t you, I pray, use this language in regard to riches. For it belongs to the receiver to give. Just as it is a vice in the stomach to retain the food and not to distribute it (for it is injurious to the whole body), so it is a vice in those that are rich to keep to themselves what they have. For this destroys both themselves and others. Again, the eye receives all the light, but it does not itself alone retain it, but enlightens the entire body. Again, the nostrils are sensible of perfume, but they do not keep it all to themselves, but transmit it to the brain and affect the stomach with a sweet savor, and by their means refresh the entire man. The feet alone walk, but they move not away themselves only, but transfer also the whole body. In like manner you should do, whatsoever you have been entrusted with, keep it not to yourself alone, since you are doing harm to the whole and to yourself more than all.

And not only in the case of the limbs may one see this occurring, for the smith also, if he chose to impart his craft to no one, ruins both himself and all other crafts. Likewise the cordwainer, the husbandman, the baker and everyone of those who pursue any necessary calling, if he chose not to train anyone in his art, will ruin not the others only but himself also with them.

And why do I say “the rich”? For the poor too, if they followed after the wickedness of you who are covetous and rich, would injure you very greatly and soon make you poor. Rather they would quite destroy you, were they, in your need, unwilling to give you of their own: the tiller of the ground, of the labor of his hands the sailor of the gain from his voyages, the soldier of his distinction won in the wars.

If nothing else, let this at least put you to shame that you may imitate their benevolence. Do you give none of your wealth to anyone? Then you should not receive anything from another, in which case the world will be turned upside down. For in everything to give and receive is the principle of numerous blessings — in seeds, in scholars, in arts. For if anyone wishes to keep his art to himself, he subverts both himself and the whole course of things. And the husbandman, if he bury and keep the seeds in his house, will bring about a grievous famine. So also the rich man, if he act thus in regard of his wealth, will destroy himself before the poor, heaping up the fire of hell more grievously upon his own head.

Father Z gives us an entertaining profile of one of my favorite fathers, St. Jerome. After reading Father Z, please proceed to Mark Shea’s archive to chuckle through Phyllis McGinley’s poetic tribute to “The Thunderer.” (For the latter, you have to scroll to the bottom of the page.)

Since I blog about the men the Church calls “Fathers,” I should, for the sake of full disclosure, tell you a thing or two about my own early experience of fatherhood.

I grew up the seventh child in a busy Catholic household. Our family was close. We had to be, since the nine of us lived in a tiny, two-bedroom apartment. And we were noisy. My parents never had a child they could call “the quiet one.” We had schoolyard nicknames like “motormouth.” In the middle of the mix was my oldest brother Charlie, who celebrated the mid-1960s by purchasing an electric guitar and a large amplifier.

One of the great mercies God showed my father was that Pop started to go deaf when he was very young. By the time I was born, he couldn’t hear much more than he needed to hear, in order to play Tonka Trucks with me on the floor. So he was able to smile through much of my childhood and adolescence.

People were always telling him: “You should get a hearing aid. You don’t know what you’re missing!” And my dad would just smile and thank them … and go back to reading his newspaper, or playing trucks with us on the floor. I suspect he knew what he was missing.

Pop was a man of great virtue and great love, but very few words; he was an almost silent man. When he spoke, you knew it meant something. But he almost never spoke about himself.

So we kids grew up loving him, respecting him, and even revering him. But we didn’t really know much about his history, his own childhood.

Then, one brilliant summer day, when I was almost thirty and Pop was almost eighty, I had a chance to spend a long day out on an errand with him. Amazingly, he was talkative that day, and, as he drove along, he told me many stories — about his childhood, about his father’s early death from tuberculosis, my Uncle Leo’s paternal care for the family after Grandfather died. These were stories I had never heard in our three decades of casual conversation at home.

I took in every word — and when we got back to the house, I wrote down all I could recall, as near to Pop’s own words as my memory would allow.

Years went by, and my father died. And suddenly all his children felt the loss, and the corresponding need to feel our roots. Within two weeks of my father’s death, my brothers and sisters, one by one, called to ask if I still had those notes about Pop’s childhood lying around, and could I pass a copy their way.

The words of our natural fathers are precious to us. Our fathers are key to a mystery we spend a lifetime trying to solve: ourselves. Their past is our own, given to us in so many silent ways as they guide our childhood steps. The paths we walk are paths to which they led us, or drove us. Their words and deeds are critical details in the story of our own lives.

And if all that is true of our natural fathers, how much more is it true of our fathers in Christian faith — the Fathers of the Church that gave us new life in baptism?

Why do I blog the Fathers, and why do you visit me here? Primarily because we are the Church and the Church Fathers are our true fathers in our everyday life of faith. We want to seize on those rare words of theirs that have been preserved for us. We want to learn from their sainted example. We want to count on their intercession for us in heaven. Visit them today, in their writings and in your prayer. They’re truly fatherly. They’ll listen to you. Where they are — where I trust my Pop is with them — no one needs a hearing aid.

Chris Bailey has, at long last, fully awoken the historical Merlin from his sleep. Chris covers the evidence in a fascinating post.