05 September 2007

St. Lawrence Justinian, Bishop, Confessor

St. Lawrence, of the noble family of Giustiniani, Bishop and first Patriarch of Venice, was “the pride and the ornament of the Catholic Episcopate.” He died in 1455.

The results are in from the first day of classes here, and, I have to say, I think I'm going to like it here. German this morning was entertaining and not too challenging; we started with cognates, and there are quite a few of them. Then in Political Philosophy I was quickly disabused of the notion that Plato generally expresses his own opinions through the mouth of Socrates in his dialogic writing style. After lunch, I had Natural Philosophy and St. Augustine's City of God. Except for German so far, there are exactly four students in each of my classes. It makes the seminar style classes, as opposed to lectures, a little more challenging, but hopefully my loquacious nature will serve me well in that regard.

Tonight, in preparation for tomorrow's class on the Synoptic Gospels, I am reading our Supreme Pontiff's recent book Jesus of Nazareth, as well as Romano Guardini's The Lord.

2 comments:

Mark K. Spencer said...

I envy your class size, John; the classes here are entirely too big, some as many as 25 people. 4-8 strikes me as the perfect size for a class.

Isn't Jesus of Nazareth a good book?! I thoroughly enjoyed it. God bless.

Unknown said...

I think I prefer a range of something like 10-12, but too small is better than too big, I suppose.

I'll have to postpone my impressions of the Holy Father's book until I have read more of it, but the first chapter is promising.