Books That Change Lives - for eternity

In January 2004, my mom had an enormous task. Before she had even had sufficient time to adjust to my father's death, she was faced with the job of sorting through his clothes and books and papers. She gave some of the books to my cousins - like my dad, their husbands were ministers. But the boxes of books that did not interest them became mine.

It's a little crazy how important those books were to me back then - like having a piece of my father. I scanned the titles, looking for any insights he might have penned in the margins, hoping for some bit of wisdom from beyond the grave.

In the bottom of one box, I found an old paperback book. It had the look of something dad picked up at a used book sale. It had an old smell about it, and further investigation proved that the book was almost a relic - published in 1963.

It was the kind of book I never would have read, left to my own inclination. But it was among those precious books which came out of my father's personal library. So, when I reached into that box (as I had so many others) and I held the book in my hands, I didn't snub it. I opened the front cover and began scanning the first few pages.

I had never read a book by a saint. Probably couldn't even name any of them, save the names of the original Apostles. Who was St. Augustine anyway? And why did Dad care about him? The title smacked of things Catholic. The Confessions of St. Augustine. And the illustration on the cover certainly underscored the Catholicity of the book. A bishop. Staff in hand. The Tree from the Garden of Eden, encircled by the Great Serpent.

No, this was not a book I would have picked up, if it had not been connected to my father. I didn't know that St. Augustine was a favorite of Protestant ministers. I didn't know enough about seminary to know that Protestant theologians liked to hand pick sections of this saint's works - to support sola fide. I didn't know that they also disregarded anything that smacked of overt Catholicism, or that this saint believed in Church Authority, the Magisterium, the Real Presence, or Apostolic Succession.

In fact, I didn't know anything about St. Augustine - not even how to pronounce his name, which I said AW-gus-teen rather than Uh-GUS-tin.

But that's just the kind of thing God uses. He seems to delight in taking us down unfamiliar roads and showing us unfamiliar things.

And that is how this book became the first of many, many books to grace my nightstand - all written by Catholic saints with names as unfamiliar to me as the teachings of their Church.

That is how I stumbled upon Mother Church. I picked up a book by St. Augustine and was so amazed by the Truth I discovered - that I began to seek out books by saints, deliberately.

And six months later, I walked through the door of a Catholic Church and began to say yes to a journey that God had already begun . . . the journey home.