This is the kind of review an author dreams of. It’s by Kim, a 27-year-old geologist/anthropologist, no doubt wise beyond her years, and it’s on her very cool blog Transitus Tiber. She’s reviewing Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols.

Allow me to give a backstory to this review: I received this book by Mike Aquilina in the mail on Saturday. I started reading it at 9pm, and by 11am Mass today, I had finished it. And that includes time to sleep, eat, bathe, and so on.

I really had a hard time putting this book down. I’ve never read anything by Mr. Aquilina before, but I was surprisingly captivated by the book. Not surprisingly, it’s all about Christian symbols (the fish, the cross, the dolphin, etc) and how they came to be used in Christianity, and where there roots are, such as pagan and Jewish traditions. I learned an awful lot on the symbols I’m used to seeing, and I saw Mass in a different light because of it. Monsignor has a chi ro on the back of his vestments. There’s a chi ro with a crown flanked by two olive branches in the nave of our Church. I knew that the chi ro is for Our Lord of course, but they knowing the history really helped me see things differently. Interestingly enough, our Church has a TON of little Crosses that I never really opened my eyes to see.

The chapters range from short to medium in length, and I think Mr. Aquilina and the illustrator, Lea Marie Ravotti did enough justice to the symbols without overkill or Deep Overwhelming Theology. Each chapter discusses a symbol – the common ones like the cross, the fish to the more uncommon ones, like the peacock, the dolphin, the ankh. I was reading bits and pieces to Greg in the form of trivia and it’s really astonishing how little we both knew about the symbols around us.

If I had the money, I would buy multiple copies of this book and give it out to everyone I knew. It’s broad enough without being watered down, it is narrow enough without missing the point or giving Boring Details That Are Irrelevant. It would be perfect in an “Introduction to Christianity” type college course, or even a nice “welcome to the Church!” gift to converts and reverts. I highly recommend this book.

Carrie at Quite the Normal Life has posted a nice review of my book Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols.

This Rock magazine, published by Catholic Answers, has posted full text of my article The Christian Code: Ancient Christian Symbols Speak to the Here and Now.

My parish church arose during the Catholic building boom of the early 20th century: a Gothic monument in concrete block, stone, and stained glass. These materials were then in abundant supply, as were immigrant laborers, many of them Catholic, many of them willing to volunteer a daily shift after they had worked their night shift in the steel mills.

Literacy was still a luxury, so there are few texts on the walls or windows of old St. Agatha’s. Faithful to the traditions of the Church and their craft, Christian artisans relied on the power of symbols to teach and confirm the faith. And so these simple and mysterious images crowd the windows: a fish, a lamb, a lamp, a dove, a crown, a sword, a burst of flames, a ship, a vine, a hand, a loaf of bread. The designers and builders—and, of course, the pastors—lavished attention on these small details. Why? Because they knew that a single small symbolic image could evoke a warehouse full of meaning; a single symbol could trigger the accumulated devotion of many generations.

CNS’s Cindy Wooden filed a cute story on Fabrizio Bisconti’s new Vatican appointment:

Indiana Jones and the Christian catacombs? Not quite

By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Sometimes a job is just a job, even when from the outside it looks like it involves the stuff of an Indiana Jones movie.

Fabrizio Bisconti is the newly named archaeological superintendent of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, which oversees the upkeep and preservation of 140 Christian catacombs from the third and fourth centuries scattered all over Italy.

Most of the time, he said, the job is just work and study.

Staff members can spend a full month with surgical tools and cotton balls cleaning a third-century sarcophagus, but then there are those stunning, shocking, awe-inspiring moments of discovery.

Mid-June brought one of those “wow” moments when restorers cleaning a ceiling in the Catacombs of St. Thecla found what turned out to be the oldest known image of the apostle Paul. The fresco was hidden under a limestone crust.

Bisconti said treasure hunting and exploring were not his passions as a youth; he was into literature. But as a university literature student, he took an archaeology course “and fell in love.”

“Certainly, there is great emotion when you find something new, but for us archaeology is our job, the subject of our studies,” he said.

Bisconti said most of what he and his fellow archaeologists do all day involves very slow, painstaking precision care of the oldest intact Christian monuments and artwork.

Very little remains of any Christian church built before the fifth century, but the 140 catacombs in Italy offer clear evidence of how early Christians worshipped, how they lived and, especially, what they hoped and believed about death.

Because the catacombs are underground and were filled in with dirt in the fifth century — when people began burying their dead in cemeteries within the city walls — the catacombs remained remarkably intact, Bisconti said.

Deciding which catacombs to excavate and whether or not to open them to the public is a process that takes years and tries to balance the values of preservation, scholarship, education and Christian devotion, he said.

“Opening a catacomb means allowing its degradation,” he said.

As soon as the dirt in a catacomb is removed, the frescoes and inscriptions start fading and decaying. Human visitors, who sweat and breathe, add moisture to the air, which speeds up the growth of mold and the flaking of any painted surface, he said.

The catacombs are technically the property of the Italian government, which under the terms of the 1929 Lateran Pacts with the Vatican, entrusted their care and oversight to the Vatican.

Most of the 140 Christian catacombs in Italy are in Rome, and only five of those are open to the public: the catacombs of St. Sebastian, St. Callixtus, Priscilla, St. Agnes and Domitilla.

“There are many, many other catacombs,” he said.

For Bisconti, the most interesting of the closed catacombs is one on Via Latina in Rome. “It was discovered in 1955 and we have found more than 100 frescoes of scenes of the Old and New Testaments, but also of pagan myths,” he said.

The most popular Old Testament stories are Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, Jonah in the belly of the whale, the story from the Book of Daniel about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace — “all of these gave support and comfort to Christians because they are examples of salvation,” Bisconti said.

Most of the catacombs were built around the tomb of a martyr because other Christians wanted to be buried near a hero of the faith. Even after the catacombs were no longer used for burial and were filled in, paths leading pilgrims to the martyr’s tomb were left open for several hundred years.

Most of the catacombs demonstrate the early Christian preoccupation with the equality of all believers, he said. The bodies were sealed into niches carved out of the earth, usually with very simple inscriptions.

Slowly, however, decorations were added and wealthier Christians were buried in sarcophagi or thick marble caskets.

Bisconti said his office is two or three years away from allowing the public to visit the Catacombs of Pretestato, located near the Catacombs of Domitilla. Never before opened to the public, the Pretestato burial grounds are the site of more than 1,000 sarcophagi, many still intact.

“It was very snobbish, very chic” to be buried there, Bisconti said.

The superintendent added that, whether dealing with a sarcophagus or with a simple niche in a catacomb, if a sealed tomb is found, Vatican workers leave it closed out of respect for the deceased.

Bisconti said it is true that the art and symbols found in the catacombs repeat the same things, “but that is because it was catechetical art. They were advertisements to convince people to convert. They were a way to repeat a message and demonstrate the conviction that it was true.”

I love Bisconti’s The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions. I have reviewed it in several places, most notably here.

“Benedict XVI has created and filled the post of archeological superintendent of the catacombs, in a move that will bring the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology to function more like other Vatican dicasteries.”

Um, I think that’s good news! I’m reminded of Pope John XXIII’s response to the journalist who asked how many people work in the Vatican: “About half.”

Still, Zenit’s report promises that “great discoveries” are waiting in the catacombs. That’s exciting.

This part is certainly good news: “Fabrizio Bisconti, the outgoing secretary of the archeology commission, has been named the archeological superintendent of the catacombs, a post that did not previously exist.” Bisconti is the author of the mind-blowing book The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions, which I reviewed here.

Karen in Mommyland has posted a kind review of my book Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols. In the comments field, I took exception to one of her points, but a minor one. You should visit her site. The children in Mommyland are apparently very lovely.