People often imagine that the Church Fathers looked like their icons and smelled of incense: heroic figures wrapped in fine liturgical vestments of silk and lace, engulfed in billows of smoke from their golden censers; in their writings, however, they more closely resemble the tattered cloak of Jesus or the dusty sweat-soaked habits of the early Desert Fathers and Mothers. John Michael Talbot—a Christian musician and the author of The Lessons of St. Francis—here tells the story of how these religious men deeply influenced his spiritual, professional, and personal life. "The First Epistle of Saint Peter tells us that we are 'a spiritual temple built of living stones'," he writes. "The early Church Fathers represent the first rows built upon the foundation of the Apostles. And that sacred building project continues throughout history to our time today. But it rests on the Fathers. It depends on them."