December 29, 2004
Surprise from Mrs H and Fr Pat
My journey to Orthodoxy has been brought to illumination thanks to three main influences: Fr Alexander Schmemann of blessed memory, Joy of All Who Sorrow Orthodox Church (especially Fr Stevan Bauman, Fr Dcn Michael Walker, Mother Macaria, and Mother Katherine), and Fr Patrick Henry Reardon. In fact, I met Fr Pat because he was speaking at the bookstore run by Joy of All Who Sorrow.
So it was with great thoughtfulness that for Christmas, Mrs H arranged to get me an autographed copy of Fr Pat’s latest book, Christ in His Saints. She bought it and then sent it to Chicago (where he is pastor of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church as well as a senior editor of Touchstone Magazine) to have it signed and sent back. At the same time she surreptitiously pulled Fr Pat’s first book, Christ in the Psalms, off of our bookshelf and put it in the international post as well.
If Christ in the Psalms is accessible to Christian readers across the spectrum of Evangelical, Roman, or Orthodox, Christ in His Saints is even more so. It is the sort of book that once you even begin to read it, you will put it at the top of your list to give to friends (friends who are worth $17.95, of course). Its 14 large chapters are divided into a total of 137 vignettes, each about a character (or occasionally a group of characters) from the Bible.
Fr Pat’s scholarship is, as expected, outstanding. He is a former professor of Old Testament at an Episcopal seminary because they found his orthodoxy and Orthodoxy entire incompatible with those things with which Episcopalians find themselves compatible these days. He is the principal translator of Exodus and the Psalms for the eventually-to-be-released completed Orthodox Study Bible. Yet with his many years of pastoral ministry, he knows how to reach his audience so they can understand him.