I recently saw Mike Aquilina (happy birthday!) comment on Facebook that he was just returning from speaking at a conference on the Early Church Fathers. I had no idea that such things existed! How did I not know?!
Anyway, it turns out that there’s an annual Patristics seminar in October at St. Lambert’s Catholic Church near Chicago, Illinois:
Although I’ve missed the seminar for this year, fortunately the parish’s website has the audio from the talks, as well as from their 2013 seminar with Dr. John Bergsma:
A friend recently expressed interest in getting to know the Early Church Fathers so I said that I would put together a brief (hah!) list of resources.
I was first introduced to the Early Church Fathers by Marcellino D’Ambrosio while I was on a retreat in England. He regaled us with some of the many colourful stories from the Early Church, such as the election of St. Ambrose to Bishop of Milan. Since St. Ambrose will be my roommate’s Patron Saint when he’s received into the Church next year I’ll make sure I write about that sometime soon…
Audio Resources
This initial introduction to the Fathers by Dr. D’Ambrosio was later supplemented by the excellent lecture series given by Dr. Lawrence Feingold to the Association of Hebrew Catholics. Dr. Feingold takes the listener through a tour of the Early Church, focussing upon the issues in that Church, such the call to martyrdom, as the relationship between faith and reason, and the Arian heresy.
If you would like to get a deeper grounding in Christian history (which is, itself, the story of the Fathers), I highly recommend the extensive series of lectures by Fr. Michael Witt. If you get through the Early Church period, don’t worry! You don’t have to stop there since he also covers Church history up until the present day… 🙂
So those are a number of audio resources, but what about books?
Websites
There are several websites which provide a handy concordance for the Fathers, such as ChurchFathers.org.
Books
Mike Aquilina has written a number of very accessible books on the subject and I would particularly recommend his book The Fathers of the Church as it gives a good, brief survey of the Patristic period. If you’re interested in the worship of the Early Church he also has a very readable book entitled The Mass of the Early Christians.
I know a lot of people were first introduced to Patristics through The Four Witnesses by Rod Bennett, which focusses just four Fathers: Clement, Ignatius, Justin and Irenaeus. Likewise, if you would like to focusses more in depth on specific Fathers, Dr. Howell has a great couple of books which focus on Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp.
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A new excellent reference book came out recently from Jimmy Akin entitled The Fathers Know Best. It is a book which arranges the writings of the Church Fathers by topic. For example, have you ever wanted to know what the Fathers thought about contraception? Well, with Jimmy’s book you can just flip to that topic and read, in chronological order, extracts from the Fathers on that subject.
Ad Fontes!
Finally, I would invite anyone wishing to get to know the Fathers better to actually get down and read the works themselves. I have several works available on this website in my Patristics section, together with MP3 recordings of the text. If you want to see what the Fathers thought about the Gospel readings at Mass each week, I’d suggest consulting the Catena Aurea. For further reading, I would recommend the Ancient Christian Writers series. The translation is excellent and there are a good number of explanatory endnotes.
So there you go! Hopefully that wasn’t too overwhelming! Pick which way works best for you and get stuck in! Get to know your Christian family 🙂
I’ve read most of Mike’s books – he really is the go-to guy for getting into Patristics. In his new book he “gathers the wisest, most practical teachings and exhortations from the Fathers of the Church, and presents them in a format perfect for daily meditation and inspiration”.
“Learn to humbly accept correction from St Clement of Rome. Let Tertullian teach you how to clear your mind before prayer. Read St Gregory the Great and deepen your love of the Eucharist. Do you suffer from pain or illness? St John Chrysostom’s counsels will refresh you. Do you have trouble curbing your appetite for food and other fleshly things? St John Cassian will teach you the true way to moderation and self-control”
This is one of my biggest reasons for loving the Fathers – they have so much practical wisdom to share with us in our day-to-day lives. Needless to say once I’ve finished this blog entry I’m going to Amazon to order a copy 🙂
