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St. Ambrose of Milan: First of the Four Great Latin Fathers
Part One of the Church Fathers series
When I decided a few weeks back to start a series on the Church Fathers, I approached it with the same attitude I had the first time I played golf more than 40 years ago: how hard can it be? Had I bothered to recall the number of my clubs that now rest on the bottom of a pond in front of the 3rd green at Rockwood Municipal, I would have had my answer: a lot harder than it looks on TV. Unlike golf, however, I am determined not to give up so quickly on the Fathers (but trust me, Mark Twain was right when he called golf a good walk spoiled).
I mentioned in an introductory article to the series that there are roughly 175 men who are considered Church Fathers, and they lived over a period of more than 500 years. Deciding where to even start was like picking my favorite Springsteen songs outside of the Born to Run album; there were just too many to choose from. But then the answer came to me, both from Bruce and from that first article.
If I was making a list of my favorite Springsteen songs, I would start with four songs from that greatest of all albums: “Born to Run,” “Thunder Road,” “Backstreets,” and “Jungleland.” With those as my foundation, I’d move on to the others. Ironically (or providentially, if you believe in that sort of…
