This beautifully bound 4-volume, hard-cover set is a superb series for preaching, spiritual reading and meditation. It contains the Gospel reading for each Sunday and Feast Day, and parallel Gospel texts, along with several sermons for each Gospel from both early Eastern and Western Fathers of the church, including Ambrose, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Leo the Great, Ephraem, Augustine and more.
Also, each sermon is followed by the Catena Aurea (Golden Chain) of St. Thomas Aquinas. There is no better way to enter the mind of the early Church Fathers and the spirit of Sacred Scripture than this series. Keyed to traditional liturgical calendar.
Dr. Toal’s work contains what is in effect the spiritual inheritance of every Christian. The four volumes together give, Sunday by Sunday and for the greater festivals and fasts, selected sermons of the great Fathers and Doctors of the Church.
In the framing of the great corpus of Catholic doctrine and theology, the authority and the influence of the Fathers are secondary only to those of the Apostles and Evangelists themselves. To one we owe the true interpretation of facts or phrases, to another the unfolding of a doctrine out of a single word; to all of them the handing on and enrichment of a tradition which runs back to the foundation of the Church. Their homilies on the liturgical Gospels for Sundays and the greater feasts and fasts cannot fail to add clarity and depth to any reader’s w1derstanding of these key passages from holy scripture; and this. treasury of their commentaries will above all be of constant help to priests whose office it is to preach and expound the Gospel in the continuance of the tradition.
An especially valuable point is the inclusion, after the printed text of each Gospel reading, of the relevant passage of the Catena Aurea or Golden Chain, the great commentary on the Gospels compiled by St Thomas Aquinas from the writings of all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. This has not hitherto been available in English. The four volumes correspond with the four liturgical divisions of the year.
