… is announced today. I just got word that Amazon is now taking pre-orders for the Catholic Bible Dictionary, edited by Scott Hahn. It was my privilege to contribute a little bit to this volume. It weighs in at 992 pages, very patristic in its approach, all for a low, low price. It’s not out till Spring, but you can reserve your copy today.

“I must boast … Though if I wish to boast, I shall not be a fool, for I shall be speaking the truth” (2 Cor 12:1, 6).

I love working with the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. If you don’t know our work, I’ll sum it up: we promote biblical literacy for the laity and biblical fluency for clergy and teachers. We sponsor conferences throughout the year. We publish a monthly guide to the lectionary readings (with homily helps). We do weekly radio spots, in English and Spanish, with cool people like Archbishop Jose Gomez and our own president Scott Hahn. We publish occasional monographs and sponsor research.

We also publish an academic journal, titled Letter and Spirit, which makes the best of current scholarly research available to a wider audience. Our authors have included Cardinals Avery Dulles and Christoph Schonborn and many renowned theologians and exegetes — Robert Louis Wilken, Romanus Cessario, O.P., Sofia Cavalletti, James Swetnam, S.J., John Cavadini, Gary Anderson, and many other luminaries.

Our most recent issue has just appeared, and it’s dazzling (if I do say so myself). Here’s a partial table of contents. (I’ll hot-link the authors’ names to their patristic works that readers of this blog should know.):

ARTICLES
Towards a Theology of the Tabernacle and its Furniture — Gary A. Anderson

Jesus, the New Temple, and the New Priesthood–Brant Pitre

The Rejected Stone and the Living Stones: Psalm 118:22–23 and New Testament Christology and Ecclesiology–Michael Giesler

Temple, Sign, and Sacrament: Towards a New Perspective on the Gospel of John–Scott W. Hahn

Temple, Holiness, and the Liturgy of Life in Corinthians–Raymond Corriveau, C.Ss.R.

The Indwelling of Divine Love: The Revelation of God’s Abiding Presence in the Human Heart–Thomas Dubay, S. M.

NOTES
Living Stones in the House of God: The Temple and the Renewal of Church Architecture–Denis R. McNamara

“The Mystery of His Will”: Contemplating the Divine Plan in Ephesians–William A. Bales

“You Are Gods, Sons of the Most High”: Deification and Divine Filiation in St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Early Fathers–Daniel A. Keating

Scripture, Doctrine, and Proclamation: The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Renewal of Homiletics–John C. Cavadini

TRADITION & TRADITIONS

The Sign of the Temple: A Meditation–Jean Cardinal Daniélou

Church, Kingdom, and the Eschatological Temple–Yves M.-J. Cardinal Congar

And there’s more. My hat’s off to my esteemed colleagues, David Scott and Scott Hahn, for editing this stunning volume.

If I boast, it’s because I’m allowed to keep such company!

Folks who attend our conference in Pittsburgh next week will get a free copy of Letter and Spirit, Vol. 4: Temple and Contemplation: God’s Presence in the Cosmos, Church, and Human Heart.

The Knights of Columbus have published a new little book by Yours Truly. It’s called “The Early Church,” and it’s a series of small chapters on its stated subject, with small profiles of a few Church Fathers. It’s about 10,000 words — more than a booklet, but less than a book. It’s made for the rack in the back of the vestibule, but it’s too much to read while standing there. You can order multiple copies or even read most of “The Early Church” online as a PDF.

Thanks to blogger Paul A. Zalonski, who commissioned me for the project back when he was working for the Knights.

The month of the Rosary just came to a close, and I find myself up late, remembering that I’ve wanted to post links to some very good things.

Maureen, our faithful guide to things Celtic and patristic, provided excerpts of Pope Benedict’s recent words on the Rosary.

Meanwhile, in the world of paper and ink, a lovely new book appeared by my friend Gary Jansen: The Rosary: A Journey to the Beloved. It’s deeply scriptural, and beautifully visual, with classic art for every mystery. It is an excellent introduction to the devotion — clear and simple. The Rosary’s sustained me, in one way or another, since I was in utero. Yet Gary’s book gave me new perspectives… Still, I’ve never seen a better introduction for people coming in cold — even people who know little or nothing about Christianity. The book’s a marvel of grace, highly recommended.

The Rosary’s a medieval flower, but it has patristic roots. The Egyptian Desert Fathers (fourth century) counted prayers on strings of beads or knotted ropes. Palladius mentions that Abba Paul was in the habit of saying three hundred prayers a day, and he counted them out with three hundred pebbles. The monks of the desert still retain the custom of praying all 150 psalms every day. Devout souls who couldn’t read would sometimes use beads to count out recitations of the Lord’s Prayer, and later the Hail Mary. You can see how this developed into fifteen “decades” focused on the mysteries of Jesus’ life.

Pope Benedict, back when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, often spoke about the Rosary in ways that remind me of my mom. Read God and the World: A Conversation With Peter Seewald. It’s all good, but the chapter on the “Mother of God” is life-changing.

My sainted wife keeps the budget in our house, and so she dictates the limits of my book-buying. One of this blog’s regular visitors, who shall remain nameless, lives in similar circumstances. And he reports that the lovely book Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art is now out in paperback with (as he put it) a “wife-friendly price.” I thought you all would want to know.

I discussed the hardcover here.

It would make a great Christmas present for the art lover or patristics nerd in your life.

My latest book, Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols, is reviewed in this week’s Pittsburgh Catholic by no less a critic than David Mills. As if that’s not cool enough … he actually liked it.

In Signs and Mysteries, Mike Aquilina explains 25 symbols we’ve inherited from our fathers in the early Church, which meant everything — even life and death — to the people who painted them on the walls of their churches, inscribed them on tombs, even scratched them on the walls of public buildings and underground tombs. The symbols they put on lamps and rings and bottles and jugs reminded them of a counter-cultural, life-changing — at times life-endangering — commitment…

The early Christians took their symbols from the Old Testament (like the lamb and the plow), the New Testament (the fish, the anchor, and of course the Cross), or both (the good shepherd, the banquet, and the vine), and even from the pagan culture around them (the ankh, the orant, and the philosopher). They even made up their own (the dolphin, the peacock, and the lighthouse). In every case, they drew wider and deeper meaning from the symbol…

For us modern Christians, these symbols offer “an urgent message . . . from a distant family member.” It’s as if our brothers and sisters, knowing that most of us suffer from spiritual attention deficit disorder, had plastered our homes and churches, and nature itself, with post-it notes reminding us of what Jesus has done and is doing for us. Unfortunately, few of us know enough to read the notes. Signs and Mysteries is an excellent aid in learning to read their messages.

He points out that there’s an interview with the illustrator of Signs and Mysteries, Lea Marie Ravotti, posted here.

Phil kindly reviewed my new book, Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols.

Kevin at Biblicalia has posted an excellent review of Father Michael Giesler’s novel Grain of Wheat. Here are snippets:

The book is the third in a trilogy following the lives of several Christians in the mid to late second century city of Rome, from the end of Hadrian’s reign into that of Antoninus Pius…

The story itself is gripping. There is the accurate depiction of a palpable anxiety among the Christians, whose religion was illegal, and who were required to meet in private homes, which could potentially result in exposure by a jealous friend, or embittered slave or family member … The incidental details in the book show the author is very familiar with the period, and has done his research well. The setting is sufficiently authentic and yet without annoying extraneous detail that the picture given of Rome is lively and believable. This is a very enjoyable book. I hope the series will continue.

I think perhaps one of the best things I can say about this book is that I couldn’t put it down. It was a pleasant and a quick read (one late night). I would estimate its reading level to be young adult, so it should be fitting for any teenaged reader and upward.

It’s best to start with the first two books of the trilogy, Junia and Marcus. My review of those books is here.

In RBL: a review of Other Early Christian Gospels: A Critical Edition of the Surviving Greek Manuscripts.

Also in RBL: a review of Identity and Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean: Jews, Christians and Others.

Great news: Father Michael Giesler’s Grain of Wheat — the third novel in his trilogy on Christian Rome in the second century — is finally available. I read it in draft and loved it, as I loved the first two installments, Junia and Marcus. (I talked about those books here.) Here’s the publisher’s summary:

Set in the second century, Grain of Wheat takes you into the heroic lives of the early Christians. Along the way, it shows the beauty and dignity of the Christian family, with the power of the vocation to celibacy — a charism lived not only by priests and bishops, but by many of the lay faithful. These brave men and women, both single and married, followed Christ and spread his Kingdom while remaining in society. Through their courageous faith an entire culture was transformed, one person at a time, one family at a time.

Here’s my jacket blurb:

I loved Grain of Wheat, and so did my teenaged daughter. It’s a highly imaginative, yet historically faithful entry into the lives of the early Christians. To read these pages is to live for a few hours in the world of Saint Justin Martyr — to live with an unforgettable Roman family and their fascinating friends and adversaries.

Now my other teenage daughter has taken up the trilogy. In fact, she’s two-thirds of the way through, and just beginning Grain of Wheat. She’s passed the addiction on to her friends — and their mom!

At the Disputations blog, John da Fiesole (aka Tom Kreitzberg) has posted a kind review of my book Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols.

Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols … is a wonderful collection of illustrated essays on twenty-five Christian symbols used — in churches, on sarcophagi, as decoration, as graffiti — in the first few centuries of the Church…

We’re all familiar with some of the symbols he describes — the cross, certainly, and the fish, and I’d guess we’ve all seen the Chi-Rho or labarum even if we don’t know what’s up with it — but I suspect few of us see them in quite the way our ancestors did.

A book about symbols relies heavily on the illustrations, and Lea Marie Ravotti does a marvelous job. Nearly every page has a drawing of an ancient fresco, statue, coin, carving, or mosaic; the styles are as varied as the sources. From the wall scratchings of a pilgrim to the sculpting of an artistic genius, they make plain the rich symbolic heritage Christians may, and ought to, claim in our own age of imagery.

Here’s yet another review of my book Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols.