Father Dave welcomes Church historian and friend of the show Mike Aquilina to discuss his latest book, “Rabbles, Riots, and Ruins: Twelve Ancient Cities and How They Were Evangelized.” Mike is Executive Vice President and trustee of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology in Steubenville, Ohio.
Mike notes how we often misrepresent ancient cities in our modern eyes. “I do a lot of travel for work, and I love the cities I visit. I love Bismarck, North Dakota, I love Los Angeles, I love [New York City]. But you know what? I’m never going to confuse one of those cities with another. I think when we think about the ancient world, we just mash it all together. We have the generic ancient city in our head where there’s a forum,” he says. “Each of these cities, just like every American city, has a personality, a character, and a topography that’s unique,” he continues.
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Mike explains how cities were vital for sharing information in the ancient world. “If you wanted to have news about anything or wanted to encounter people from other places who might be visiting, what did you do? You left your home and you actually talked to people; that’s how you got your updates on the news of the world,” he says. “In a sense, a city is a smaller world because it brings people together, and it brings people into contact with each other.”
For these reasons, Mike notes how Scripture often uses the image of heaven as a city. “[Cities] bring us together, and the Church brings us together. I always think of that as the great advantage of having the Sunday obligation, because you have to go, look at each other, and deal with each other in the parking lot. You have to talk to each other; it’s a beautiful thing.”
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Mike highlights some lesser-known ancient cities in his book, and Father Dave quizzes him on these locations. Father Dave says, “Some of these answers have these cool names of cities that are hard to pronounce that I never heard before. Here’s your first question: Marcus Aurelius was the emperor during the persecution of what city?”
“Lugdunum,” Mike correctly answers. “Lugdunum is now Lyon, France. It was an important commercial center because it was the way you reached the province of Gaul, which was very important in the west. It had a very active trade with Smyrna, which is now in Turkey…Christians moved from Smyrna to Lugdunum with some frequency, it seems, and one of them became the famous early bishop, Irenaeus.”
Mike underscores what we can learn about evangelization from these ancient cities. “Have that human contact. Get out of the house, meet other people in a real way face-to-face and build friendships from there. It’s hard to do in our day and age, because we do everything in this virtual way, but try to meet people if you can, because that’s how [the first Christians] changed the world,” he says. “Those first Christians, they met people. They met them in the forum and the marketplace, and people were able to encounter Jesus Christ in these Christians. I’m not claiming sainthood for myself or my buddies, but if we’re going to bring Christ to the world, people have to actually meet us.”
