From the Pastor’s Desk:

If you have not caught on by now, I will tell you plainly, I am a history person.  I continue to study history, watch the history channels and travel to historical places.  The human race never seems to learn from the past, but continually repeats the same mistakes over and over again.  Jesus came into human history at a time when much of the civilized world was ruled by the Roman Empire.  Roman rule was maintained through brutal force, economic exploitation and society was secured by police and military forces.

The pilgrimage, in the Footsteps of St. Paul which I hosted at the end of May was truly a walk through history. The history of the early Christian period following the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus. You cannot study the church without studying history. St. Paul used the Roman highway system to walk across Greece from Jerusalem.  The cities he preached in beginning with Philippi where St. Paul proclaimed his first sermon in Europe and baptized Lydia the first European convert.  It was in Thessaloniki where Paul wrote two of the epistles to the Thessalonians.

We visited the ruins of Delphi which was considered the center of the ancient world with all of its temples to different gods and goddesses.  It was in Athens where western civilization as we know it today was born.  Great thinkers listened to Paul’s preaching and arguments proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus and politely walked away.  In Corinth where I celebrated Mass on a granite block with the ruins of the ancient city all around, Paul lived for two years beginning the church which would cause him many sleepless nights.

In ancient Ephesus the ruins are specular as the pictures are in the history books.  There Paul preached in the largest theatre in antiquity holding 24,000 people.  On the island of Patmos we visited the Grotto of the Apocalypse where it is believed John wrote the last book of the Bible.

Wherever Paul went he used the Roman or Greek cultures and structures to proclaim the risen Christ.  Paul would be followed by the Apostolic Fathers, early Christian writers of the late 1st and 2nd centuries.  They represented the generation that had personal contact with the Twelve Apostles and St. Paul.  Their writings are the principal source for information about Christianity during the two or three generation following the Apostles.  They are an important part of the tradition of the Church.