THOSE EXCELLENT SCHOOLS WERE, nevertheless, exceptional. For the most part, the Fathers carried out their educational program by creating a liturgical culture—a ritual culture that enabled people to steep in the Faith, soak in it, absorb it. The calendar was crucial. There were the biblical feasts that told the story of salvation history again and again. There were the memorials of the apostles and martyrs, which preserved the Church’s history and held up examples for imitation. There was the lectionary,
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