53 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
53 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
### Track 1 — Finish What You Started
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**First priority: Finish _On the Incarnation_ by Athanasius**
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You started it, which means the opening arguments are somewhere in your memory. Pick it up from the beginning and go straight through — it's short enough to finish in a week of modest daily reading (maybe 8–10 pages a day). This closes the most obvious gap and gives you a theological lens for everything else.
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Don't move to any other father until this is done.
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---
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### Track 2 — Fill the Biblical Gaps Strategically
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Don't try to fill everything at once. Prioritize in this order:
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**Immediate:**
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- **Psalms** — Don't read it straight through. Read 4-5 psalms daily alongside everything else, for the rest of your life essentially. The fathers treated the Psalms as the great school of prayer. Chrysostom said if you don't know what to say to God, open the Psalms.
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- **Isaiah** — The single most important prophetic book. The NT quotes it more than any other OT book. The fathers called it "the Fifth Gospel." Read it straight through after finishing Athanasius.
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**Then:**
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- **Hebrews** — The most sophisticated NT theological argument, connecting everything in the Old Testament to Christ as the great High Priest. Essential for an Oriental Orthodox reader.
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- **Job** — Profound and difficult. Read slowly.
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- **The remaining short NT letters** (James through Jude) — relatively quick to read
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**Save for later:**
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- Revelation — Read it last, with guidance
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- The minor prophets — important but less urgent at this stage
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---
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### Track 3 — Patristic Reading After Athanasius
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Once you've finished _On the Incarnation_, move in this sequence:
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**1. Gregory of Nyssa — _Life of Moses_** This is the perfect next step for someone who has read Narek. Narek's _Book of Lamentations_ is a text about the soul's journey toward God — darkness, unworthiness, longing, union. Gregory of Nyssa's _Life of Moses_ is the theological and spiritual architecture underneath that same journey. Reading Nyssa will make you understand _why_ Narek writes the way he does. It will feel like finding the blueprint for a building you've already been inside.
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**2. Chrysostom — _Homilies on Matthew_** Rather than trying to remember what you read before, start fresh with a specific text. The Homilies on Matthew are ideal because you know the Gospel well enough now that his commentary will land. Don't read all 90 homilies — read the homily that corresponds to whatever passage you're studying in your Bible reading. Use him as a commentary.
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**3. Return to Narek — _Book of Lamentations_** After Nyssa and some Chrysostom, go back to Narek with fresh eyes. What you read before will open up dramatically. Narek synthesizes Greek patristic theology, Armenian spirituality, and raw personal encounter with God in a way that is utterly unique. He was declared a **Doctor of the Universal Church** by Pope Francis in 2015 — only the 36th person in history to receive that title, and the only Armenian. Reading him after the Greek fathers is a completely different experience than reading him cold.
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---
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## A Simple Weekly Rhythm
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Rather than a monthly plan, here's a weekly structure you can actually sustain:
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- **Daily** — 4-5 Psalms (takes about 10 minutes)
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- **Daily** — 1 chapter of whatever Bible book you're currently in
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- **3-4 times a week** — 5-8 pages of whatever patristic text you're in
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That's modest enough to be sustainable and substantial enough to make real progress. At that pace you finish _On the Incarnation_ in under two weeks, Isaiah in about a month, and _Life of Moses_ in three to four weeks. |