One good Lawrence deserves another

Yesterday was the Feast of St. Lawrence, so to mark this occasion I thought I would give a quick “tip of the hat” to another Lawrence, Dr. Lawrence Feingold.

Now, I’ve never actually met Dr. Feingold, but I have heard many of his talks and they’ve all been, without exception, brilliant. He comes across as unassuming, yet he clearly knows his stuff and is genuinely excited by the material he’s presenting.

I can’t recall exactly how it came about, but towards the end of 2009 I followed a hyperlink that took me to the website belonging to The Association of Hebrew Catholics. On that website I found the first couple of lectures by Dr. Feingold in his series “Themes of the Early Church Fathers“. I liked his tone and style immediately. At that time I had just started to discover these early Christian writers and Dr. Feingold’s series was a superb catalyst in helping familiarize me with the Early Church.

After working my way through that collection of talks, I began going through his complete back catalog:

Themes of Salvation History
Themes of Faith
Themes of the Kingdom
Themes of St. Paul
Themes of the Early Church Fathers
Themes of the Incarnation
Mary, Daughter of Zion, Mother of God
Man: Made in God’s Image
Sacrament of Holy Orders and the Ministerial Priesthood

This was around the time I was living in London and waiting for a visa to return to the USA. Each day I made a trip to the gym and several times a week I would make the hour-long journey across the city for my ballroom classes. This gave me substantial periods of time in which to listen to all these talks on my iPod. Because of this intense regime of listening, I made rapid progress through his talks and I even started picking up some of his mannerisms, no? 😉

All of his talks are superb, but I am particularly fond of Themes of Salvation History since it helped to ground my understanding of the Messiah and the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. I also found his talks on Mary really helpful since I have often struggled somewhat with Marian theology.

So, there you go. He’s a superb speaker and teacher and he should be known more widely. Happy listening!