Apr 12th - Zeno of Verona

The liturgical practices of the past help us today, and the reason we know them is due to the efforts of teachers who wrote them down. The Easter Vigil is an ancient liturgy of the Church and, as the most important feast of the year, contains everything we are in sign and symbol as well as the warm welcome to new Catholics.
Martyred under Gallienus, St. Ambrose speaks of him as an bishop of holy memory. As such, Zeno provides for us many insights into the early thinking of the Church and, different from many contemporary writers, not just the baptismal liturgy but insights into the early Pascal liturgy of the Church. It is a powerful witness and comfort that almost 2000 years later we are still at it in the same way, for the same reasons, and hopefully with the same results.
Zeno also gives us great insight into the way to treat the Hebrew Scriptures, constantly referencing them and drawing them forward into Christ.

---

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

-- On Patience