12th Day of Christmas: St. John Neumann, Saint Telesphorus, Pope and Martyr
St John Neumann knew 8 languages and was a huge promoter of parochial schools in the USA. –catholicculture.org
According to St. Irenaeus, St. Telesphorus, who governed the Church from 126 to 136 during a period of violent persecution, suffered martyrdom for the faith. –ucatholic.com
In this life we know God only indirectly, by faith, our reason aided by the authority of revelation and by grace. This is St. Paul’s “dark glass” (1 Cor 13:12) through which we peer toward Him in longing. Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He is the Father’s Beauty. He is Truth and Beauty and Glory itself.–Fr. Z
I MADE IT!! Blogged 12 Days of Christmas!!
It has been a bit of a challenge to increase my understanding of the calendar and to look at Saints I have not paid much attention to, and to put together a post of a sort I might enjoy reading. For me, a blog post with links to other blog posts on the same subject is a pleasure. I also like blog posts that quote other blogs. So that is what I did this past 12 days.
My next goal is to blog the coming portion of the Liturgical Calendar that is Ordinary Time. Hopefully by tomorrow I’ll know what I’m going to write about. Perhaps I’ll keep on doing the Saints. Maybe I’ll take a look at the Gospel for each day and blog about what the Early Church Fathers wrote about that passage of scripture. Perhaps I’ll go on and on about a sewing project, or maybe a little of all of it. I have no idea. The major reasons I am doing this blog is to learn to blog, to develop a daily writing habit that can stick with me the whole rest of my life, and to figure out what I should write about out of the MANY areas of interest in my life.
For this moment, I am glad to have stuck with 12 days. I did OK, I think, with making posts I am pleased with having written. I’d like to be more interesting and I know it is in me to do better. The thing is that I have spent so many years with other people setting my assignments that I am not totally sure how to generate my own ideas. I can come up with dissertation topics but I don’t really want to write dissertations on my blog. I want to do something more basic, friendlier and something that I can relax into and enjoy doing.
For instance, right now I am merely talking to you, dear reader, as if I know you and as if you actually want to know what is on my mind. Part of me is self evaluating and reminding me that the number of people who actually want to know what is on my neurotic and convoluted mind can likely to counted on one hand. Part of me doesn’t care if nobody out there is reading this.
I love to write. I need to write. So I am writing and maybe, sometimes, there will be something worth reading in the mess I leave behind. This blog, like my life, is a work in progress, a passage from Quicksilver to Gold, and so I write this to the ether that might contain a reader or two and say– thank you for reading!
God bless you!