I've had one mantra since discovering the Early Church Fathers: Read them and ask yourself if your own faith tradition matches that of the early Church. If it doesn't, why not? That has been my challenge to any group I've spoken to for the past ten years.
Mike Aquilina wrote a book a while back called "The Mass of the Early Christians" that really rocked my world when I read it years ago. I was blown away by how similar the Mass was two thousand years ago to the way we experience it every Sunday. It made me realize how connected modern Catholics are to our brothers and sisters of ancient times. It also proved to me that just as Sacred Scripture has been preserved by the Holy Spirit since the beginning, so has Sacred Tradition been guarded and guided by the very same Holy Spirit.
Now in "Roots of the Faith" he goes over the early Mass in the first chapter and then expands our visit to the early church through the perspectives of other Catholic distinctives such as Confession, the Communion of Saints, Purgatory, the Clergy, the Papacy and then into those real tough areas like the Church's view of sex, marriage celibacy and abortion. He "goes back in time" and shows up how the fathers viewed those issues and how the Church's teaching developed into the timeless truths that Catholics hold dear and the world loves to mock and criticize.
One chapter that really wore out my highlighter was the chapter on celibacy. I recently celebrated my fifth anniversary of consecrated life and the chapter on celibacy really described both the sweetness of living the heavenly life in this present world, and the difficulty of living a life so contrary to the world's perspective.
The last chapter being about the beauty of living as modern Catholic is such a safely guarded Tradition reflects my own feelings every Sunday morning as I watch the Priest and Deacon process in and realize that this has been happening like this since St. Peter walked the earth. How firm a foundation we have as Catholics!
1 comments:
Made my day!
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