Good Book -- Letter and Spirit

Scott Hahn's recent offering, Letter and Spirit is a good read. I highly recommend it. Unlike most of Hahn's other books, Letter and Spirit is not a Roman Catholic apologetics hardsell. Instead, Hahn uses Roman teaching to set forth an ecumenically catholic understanding of the role of sacred scripture in the liturgy.

Here is an excerpt:

For both Jews and Christians, the scriptural texts, though historical in character, were not merely records of past events. Reading them in public was more than just the preservation of a national saga. The scriptures were intended to sweep the worshiper into their action--"as if the passage had been read on his account." More than two centuries after Jesus spoke his words to the rich young man and to the crowd, Anthony (and his biographer) assumed that the words were addressed directly to himself. The historical words were actualized again in the life of a contemporary listener, a contemporary worshiper. And Anthony's own participation in salvation history was itself history-making for future generations.