Be Ready at All Times

Two visitors from a local chapter of a national church that makes home visits came by last week. The young women wanted to give me some encouraging words of scripture.

I said, "Sure."

One woman produced her bible. "These are from Saint James."
"Saint James?" I asked.

"Yes."
"Really? Because if you want encouragement from the New Testament, Saint James is really not your best choice."

"You read the bible?"  They smiled but looked surprised.
"Yes. As Saint Jerome says, "Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of God."

"Who is Saint Jerome?"  She asked.
Grateful I'd just recently read a piece on him, I answered.  "He's a doctor of the Church, born around 342 AD."
One of the ladies began to feel a bit nervous and backed away.
"What religion are you?" the other asked.  She seemed excited to have this conversation.

"Catholic.  Celebrating the 12 days of Christmas right now. Like the lights?" Three of my smaller ones came running by the door.  They were singing "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." and holding dinosaurs, sheep from the Nativity scene and My Little Ponies.

She smiled. The other one took the opportunity."We don't celebrate Christmas..." but her friend jumped in,  "Can I ask you?  I've always wanted to know what the 12 days were."

"Oh.  That's a either French or English carol, depending upon who you ask, and some say it's a means of secretly passing along the catechism of Catholicism from a time when it was illegal in places like England to be Catholic.  There's dispute about it, and I'm not super up to speed.  I know the partridge in the pear tree is Christ on the Cross. But we do celebrate Christmas from December 25th through the feast of the Epiphany." I wished I could give her more, but I didn't know enough to answer.

She nodded.  "Cool." and as an afterthought asked, "Would you like to read some of the writings about our Church?" holding out a pamphlet.

"No thanks. I write that kind of stuff myself, for a Catholic publication."  She asked for my name and as they left, she admired the Christmas decorations.

I'm thinking, if she leaves their church, they'll take our address off the list for places to visit.