I keep hearing the echo of my words in our conversation, and I fear that we're running the risk of like, phew! But it's too much

fun.

I think highlighting the Psalms, though, is very helpful for people, because it's a book they're far more familiar with than 1 and 2 Chronicles.

Right.

The place of the Psalms in the life of Israelite religion makes no sense without 1 and 2 Chronicles.

And they probably don't even realize that because if they've read 1 and 2 Chronicles, it didn't emerge for them.

But your book makes it very clear here.

That commemoration for the chronicler taps us into the greatest power of all.

Yeah.

Like, "Where are the sins of David? Where are the sins of Solomon?" Um, but when you're, when you're doing a kind of theological approach to history, Augustine admits this is exactly what he does in The City of God.

He says at one point, "I'm leaving behind the city of man to tell the story of the city of God, and then I'll circle back around to the story of the, of the city of man when, you know, later." But it's like you then understand that some of the relief isn't to tell it in kind of as it happened, as a journalist there with a camera running around, um, but is instead a kind of very deliberate, selective history.

I also think what's interesting to me about the Chronicler in this case is, um, you know, there's all these attempts with source criticism, et cetera, to kind of posit, you know, in the Pentateuch, to take apart these first five books of the Bible, the different sources and all these intentions-

Right.

And that's been a story for 2,000 years.

That's not just a contemporary reality.

But one of the great gifts is that God has chosen that He will work His sacraments regardless of the sinfulness of the person who's carrying out the sacrament, and that's an argument Augustine won over the Donatists, right? That he's gonna defend sacramental efficacy.

Letters from Home, a podcast from the St. Paul Center.

[upbeat music] Greetings.

Today is Tuesday of the tenth week in ordinary time.

My name is Dr. Shane Owens with the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Today, in particular, I wanna meditate on the text taken from, uh, the Sermon on the Mount here from Matthew five.

It's a quite brief gospel, so I will read it.

"Jesus said to His disciples, 'You are the salt of the earth.