LayWitness, the magazine that used to run my regular column on the Fathers, recently published my memoir (of sorts) about my father and grandfather. (They also have my old patristic columns archived on their site.)

Rich and Noble:

Wisdom from a Sicilian-American Ghetto

Calogero Aquilina, my grandfather, arrived on America’s shores on April 24, 1909. He had made the long voyage by sea from Caltanisetta, Sicily, on the S.S. Finland.

He crossed the Atlantic in overcrowded steerage. And why? For the great privilege of working in the coal mines. Such jobs were plentiful. They were also dangerous and dirty — long hours for poverty wages. They were jobs that American citizens were not eager to fill. So Calogero landed at Ellis Island, like hundreds of thousands of others, and found immediate employment.

Those were the years before the unions made their impact. The air in the mines was damp, dusty, and barely breathable. The corridors were infested with rats.

At the end of the day, the miners joined their families in one-room houses. They cooked and they ate in the place where they slept.

Calogero worked in the mines for a solid decade before the dust took over his lungs and turned them black …

The story gets happier. Read on.

Taylor Marshall posted a review of my book Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols.

And Carmela reviewed Take Five: Meditations With Pope Benedict XVI.

Dr. Douglas Lowry is a friend of mine. A retired Franciscan University business prof, he now develops internet search tools. Doug wants us all to become better informed about the contents of the health-care plan that’s now before the U.S. Senate. So he’s developed a free tool to search the entire bill.

To search the U.S. Senate Health Care Bill, go to: www.marpx.com.

Alicia Van Hecke at Love2Learn Blog posted a very kind profile of Yours Truly, for Catholic Speakers Month.

Primeros Cristianos (EarlyChristians.org) are promoting their “exclusive interview” with the host of this blog.

The brilliant and charming Karen Edmisten displayed her brilliance and charm by posting an appreciative review of my book Fire of God’s Love: 120 Reflections on the Eucharist.

A blog called One Billion Stories posted an extremely appreciative review of my book The Mass of the Early Christians.

A discussion group at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas, is reading my book Sharing Christ’s Priesthood: A Bible Study for Catholics.

I have to admit: I do love it when a reviewer appreciates my prose.

I had the great pleasure of talking up two of my books with Commander Craig on Catholic Radio 2.0.

We discussed Angels of God: The Bible, the Church and the Heavenly Hosts and Fire of God’s Love: 120 Reflections on the Eucharist.

New reviews of Fire of God’s Love appeared in several high places:

Happy Catholic

Blessed Is the Kingdom

Salvation Is an Adventure

The National Catholic Register quotes me at length in Faithful Is the New Countercultural, an article by Joseph Pronechen.

I wrote about my late friend Father Ronald Lawler for Franciscan Way magazine. The text is up at the St. Paul Center’s blog. The child and the bunny in the photo are of my household.

It’s in honor of this great man that the St. Paul Center established the annual Lawler Lecture, which has showcased some of my favorite patrologists (and Father Ronald’s as well): e.g., Robert Louis Wilken and Father Thomas Weinandy.

Sorry I’ve been so quiet. I was back in the studio with Scott Hahn to tape another 13-week series for EWTN. This one, our eighth, is based on Scott’s upcoming book Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots. I’ve now hosted more than a hundred shows for EWTN.

And, of course, by night I continue laboring at my painstaking reconstruction of the bylaws of the Q Community’s volunteer fire department. It takes its toll.

Almost daily I receive requests for photos of myself in the armor of a Roman centurion.

OK, maybe not that often … maybe I’ve never received such a request. But since I have the photo, I’m posting it, along with a shot of me with Barbara Bell (author of Minimus) and the illustrious Zee Poerio of Excellence Through Classics. I don’t know the name of the other armored man.

Barbara Bell, author of the children’s book Minimus (Cambridge University Press) is visiting Pittsburgh and offering a FREE Latin lesson to kids and adults on Thursday, July 23, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at St. Louise de Marillac Parish Center, 312 McMurray Road Pittsburgh, PA 15241. Bell is director of the Primary Latin Project and a member of the Order of the British Empire. Since Minimus the Mouse is ten years old this year, there will be cake and cookies to celebrate. The event is free, but registration is required. To register, please call 412-833-1010.

For Catholics, the calendar is the hermeneutical key to the Scriptures. At every Mass we hear an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, and a New Testament reading, often following a pattern of promise and fulfillment, and usually relevant in some way to the time of the season.

My beloved wife and I went to noon Mass today, as is our custom, but today we went to celebrate our twenty-fourth wedding anniversary. If I could remember the periodic table, I’d know what element is almost silver. But I don’t. In any event, I found the readings of the day thought-provoking (and funny) in light of the occasion — children of Israel becoming alarmingly numerous, enemies in one’s own household. Good thing our help is in the name of the Lord.

Jim Davila reports that the ancient Assyrian monastery of St. Gabriel is back on the losing end, as a Turkish court has turned its forest lands over to a governmental agency.

A trusted friend directed me to a Spanish-language site on early Christianity, Primeros Cristianos. It includes good resources on the Fathers, the persecutions, Church growth, the catacombs, and much more.

Pope Benedict XVI has named an American, Dominican Father J. Augustine DiNoia, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments. Father Gus (now Archbishop-designate Gus) has been with the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 2002, and before that he was the doctrine guy for the U.S. bishops. When I was doing newspaper work, he was the perfect source, peerless in clarity and brevity. When I’ve visited Rome with my friend Scott Hahn, Father Gus has always been a gracious and entertaining host. Catholic News Service tells the story of his well-deserved promotion and points us to sound files of his lectures.