April 12th
St Zeno (AD 380), Bishop of Verona, Confessor; Africa; Feast day April 12th

"For what can be richer than a man to whom God is pleased to acknowledge himself debtor?"

"How earnestly do I desire, if I were able, to celebrate thee, O Patience, queen of all things! but by my life and manners more than by my words.  For thou rest in thy own action and council more than in discourses, and in perfecting rather than in multiplying virtues.  Thou are the support of virginity, the secure harbour of widowhood, the guide and directress of the married state, the unanimity of friendship, the comfort and joy of slavery, to which thou art often liberty.  --By thee, poverty enjoys all, because, content with itself, it bears all.  By thee, the prophets were advanced in virtue, and the apostles united to Christ.  Thou are the daily crown and mother of the martyrs.  Thou are the bulwark of faith, the fruit of hope, and the friend of charity.  Thou conduct all the people and all divine virtues, as disheveled hairs bound up into one knot, for ornament and honour.  Happy, eternally happy, is he who shall always possess thee in his soul."

"O Charity! how tender, how rich, how powerful art thou!  He who possesses not thee, has nothing.  thou could change God into man.  Thou have overcome death, by teaching a God to die."

St Julius (AD 352), Pope, Confessor; Rome, Italy; Feast day April 12th

"If they had been guilty, you should have written to us all, that judgment might have been given by all: for they were bishops and churches that suffered, and these not common churches, but the same that the apostles themselves had governed.  Why did they  not write to us especially concerning the church of Alexandria?  Are you ignorant, that it is the custom to write to us immediately, and that the decision ought to come from hence?  In case therefore that the bishop of that see lay under any suspicions, you ought to have written to our church.  But now, without having sent us any information on the subject, and having acted just as you thought proper, you require of us to approve your measures, without sending us any account of the reasons of your proceedings.  These are not the ordinances of Paul, this is not the tradition of our fathers; this is an unprecedented sort of conduct.  I declare to you what we have learned from the blessed Apostle Peter, and I believe it so well known to everybody, that I should not have mentioned it, had not this happened."