I am sitting in a friend’s house in Southern California surrounded by books one minute into New Year’s Day. My friends are devout Catholics and have many volumes that are of interest to me. Everything from The Curé d'Ars, St. Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney to a pamphlet entitled Confession: A Little Book for the Reluctant.
There are books here and in my public library at home covering the whole spectrum of Catholic Christianity. I could spend weeks, months, a lifetime reading through these selections. And I intend to do so. This quote by Horace Walpole sums up my experience since I started this journey in 2006:
The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
Which brings me to the title of this post, taken from a book in the library here written by the physicist Richard P. Feynman. I'm not really interested in Feynman’s book, but his title is apt for my purposes: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. With the Bible and the Liturgy of the Hours in one hand, and volume after volume of great works that illuminate them both in the other, I find myself a happy Catholic ready to celebrate a Happy New Year.
St. Augustine’s Confessions? Barely got past the dust cover, so that is on my “bucket list” of Catholic books to read. Aquinas? Looking forward to it. I've read de Osuna's Third Spiritual Alphabet, and that is outstanding. Webster likes the Catholic fiction like Kristin Lavrinsdatter while I really enjoy the nonfiction works of the Early Church Fathers.
I'll probably read this one this year as well: The Grunt Padre, the biography of Lt. Vincent Capadonno, USNR, a Roman Catholic Chaplain who was awarded the Medal of Honor serving with the 5th Marines in Vietnam.
Learning about our Faith is a real joy. What is on your Catholic-book bucket list for this year? Now, to bed and up early for the Tournament of Roses Parade. Happy New Year and Happy Reading!
