Memorial of Saint Jerome, Priest and Doctor of the Church
Memorial of Saint Jerome,
Priest and Doctor of the Church
St. Hieronymus - "princeps exegetarum" - “prince of exegetes"
“Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ”
Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus was born between 331 and 347 in Stridon, on the Pannonian border with Dalmatia, in today's Croatia; he died on September 30, 419 or 420 in Bethlehem. Doctor of the Church, apologist of Christianity, saint of the Latin, Coptic Church, the Orthodox Church, Anglican Communion and Lutheranism. Author of the translation of the Holy Scriptures into Latin.
His parents were wealthy people, Romans and Catholics. Despite this, Jerome was baptized in his adolescence. He studied in Stridon and then in Rome. In Rome, he learns grammar, rhetoric and style, learned the works of Sallustius, Titus Livius, Virgil and Cicero. He learns the art of argumentation by listening to court hearings. Passionate about literature, he accumulates and enlarges his library throughout his life. After being baptized by Pope St. Liberius, he decided to abandon worldly life. He went to Trier capital of the Roman northern territories of the Western Roman Empire at the time and began a career as a clerk. At the same time, he started studying theology. After completing his study, disappointed with the work at the imperial court, he went on a journey to the East, to Jerusalem. Due to health reasons, he did not reach his destination, stopped in Antioch. He learned Greek, studied Scripture, attended exegetical lectures.
In 377, in Antioch, he was ordained a priest, with the request, however, that he wished to continue his ascetic life. He set a scientific work as the goal of his life.
He became acquainted with the works of Aristotle and took his first steps in the field of writing. Here he had a vision that he was standing before God's judgment. To the question: "Who are you," he replied, "I am a Christian." "You lie," said the Lord, you are more a devotee of Cicero than a Christian. Where your treasure is, there is your heart. Jerome took this reproach to heart and went to a hermitage near Aleppo, Syria. There He spent three years. During this time, he thoroughly familiarized himself with the Holy Scriptures, learning the Hebrew language. Then he spent three years in Constantinople, where he had the opportunity to listen to the sermons of St. Gregory of Nazianzus. During this time, he translated Origen's homily and the "History" of Eusebius of Caesarea into Latin.
In 382, he goes to Rome to attend the Synod of Bishops called by St. Damasus. Jerome became the personal secretary of the pope and the archivist of the synod. The Holy Pope of Damasus ordered Jerome to translate the Holy Scriptures into Latin. This was due to the many existing Bible translations. The manuscripts were mixed with each other, taking different variants of the entries from the Greek originals. Most of the differences were in the Gospels, and nearly every version contained a different text of Scripture.
Jerome began translating the books of the Old Testament using the Septuagint. It was a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic into Greek made between 280 and 130 before Christ's birth in Alexandria. It was made by 70 Jewish scholars, hence the Latin name Septuagint meaning this number. Eventually, he translated the Old Testament from the original Hebrew, resigning from the existing translation.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of translating the Scriptures for the Church and culture in the Middle Ages. The Vulgate was reputed to be the best translation in antiquity. The name Vulgate is a name taken from the Latin "vulgate editio" which means the popular edition. It had a significant influence on literature, art (especially sacred art) and music. Medieval Latin drew its patterns from the Vulgate and many terms entered modern languages (creatio, testamentum). Dante's "Divine Comedy" and Boccaccio's "The Decameron" cite a translation of Jerome. Medieval church hymns use the Vulgate. In Magnificat, John Sebastian Bach quotes the Vulgate. The Vulgate was the basis for the Polish translation of the Bible by Fr. Jakub Wujek. The first English Bible, Wycliffe’s translation of 1382 (updated 1400) was based on the Vulgate. It is the translation of St. Jerome that has established the order of the Gospels, previously in the west it was: Mt, J, Lk, Mk, and in the Greek manuscripts Mt, Mk, Lk, J and it is still used today.
Gutenberg's Bible, the first printed book, was the Vulgate. Up to the 21st century, over 8,000 of its manuscripts have survived. The Council of Trent on April 8, 1546, in its fourth session, ruled that the ancient edition of the Vulgate was to be considered authentic and only permissible in liturgy, teaching and discourses.
Over the centuries, the text that was copied over and over again has become contaminated. In the Middle Ages, there were several attempts to correct the text, but they did not bring the expected result. Following the council's recommendation, a revised version of the Vulgate was published in 1592, called Clementine by the then reigning Pope Clement VIII. In 1907, Pope St. Pius X appointed a commission to prepare the Neo-Vulgate, it was to be a modernized translation of the original, Jerome wording of the Holy Scriptures. In 1926 the Book of Genesis was published, and in 1979 the last of the volumes. Since 2001, Neo-Vulgate has been the official Bible of the Catholic Church. It is the basis for all other translations used in the liturgical books.
After the death of Pope St. Damasus in 384, Jerome settled in Bethlehem. Accompanied by Paula and Eustochium, Jerome went to Bethlehem. There he lived for thirty-four years till his death in 420, building a monastery over which he presided and a convent headed first by Paula and after her death by Eustochium. The saint set up a hospice for the countless pilgrims to that place. His scholarship, his polemics, his treatises and letters often provoked anger and always stimulated those who read them. 'Plato located the soul of man in the head,' he wrote, 'Christ located it in the heart.' In Bethlehem, in the year 406 after 24 years, Saint Jerome finished the translation of the Holy Scripture.
Apart from translating the Bible, he also translates the "Cenobitic Rule" (the formula of religious life in a community) and the letters of St. Pachomius, who is the creator of this formula. The translated version of the "Rule" will have a significant impact on the spirituality of St. Benedict and religious life in Catholicism.
St. Jerome died on September 30, 419 or 420 in Bethlehem next to the Nativity Grotto. He was buried in Bethlehem, and his remains were later transferred to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. The Pilgrims who travel with me to the Holy Land had a chance to be at the Grotto where Saint Jerome translated the Bible and where he died.
“Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ”
“Obeying Christ's command: "Search the Scriptures" (cf. Jn 5:39) and "Seek and you will find" (Mt 7: 7), I fulfill my duty. Christ will not say to me what he said to the Jews: " You are misled because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God." (cf. Mt 22:29). For if, as Paul says, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (cf. 1 Cor 1:24), and if the man who does not know Scripture does not know the power and wisdom of God, then ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”
In his teaching, he emphasized the joy and importance of intimacy with the biblical texts: "Do you not think that you live - already here on earth - in the kingdom of heaven, when you live among these texts, when you consider them, when you don't know anything else and don't look for anything else?”
Truly "in love" with the Word of God, he asked himself: "How can we live without knowing the Scriptures, by which we learn to know Christ himself, who is the life of the faithful?" The Bible, the instrument "through which God speaks to the faithful every day", thus becomes the stimulus and source of Christian life in all situations and for all people. Reading the Scriptures is a conversation with God: "When you pray - he writes to a young Roman aristocrat - you are talking to the Bridegroom; when you read, He speaks to you." Studying and meditating on the Bible makes a person wise and full of peace.”
Thus, Jerome advised the priest Nepotian: "Read the Scriptures very often; moreover, never let the Holy Book out of your hands. Learn here what you will teach." To the Roman matron Letícia gave the following advice on her daughter's Christian upbringing: "Make sure she studies the daily passage of Scripture ... After praying, let her read, and after reading, let her pray ... Instead of jewels and silk garments, let her love the Books of God ". Through meditation and the knowledge of the Scriptures, "balance of spirit" is maintained. Only a deep spirit of prayer and the help of the Holy Spirit can lead us to understand the Bible: "In interpreting the Scriptures, we constantly need the support of the Holy Spirit."
Thus, a passionate love for Scripture permeated whole live of St. Jerome, a love that he always wanted to evoke also in the faithful. He recommended to his spiritual daughter: "Love the Holy Scriptures and wisdom will love you; love them with tenderness and it will protect you; worship them and you will receive her caresses. They will be for you like your necklaces and earrings". And further: "Love the knowledge of the Scriptures, and you will not love the vices of the flesh."
For St. Jerome's basic criterion for the interpretation of Scripture was compliance with the teaching office of the Church. As Pope Benedict XVI said, we can never read the Scriptures by ourselves. We will come across too many closed doors and easily fall into error. The Bible was written by the People of God and for the People of God under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Only in this unity with the People of God can we truly enter with our "we" into the core of the truth that God himself wants to tell us. For him, an authentic interpretation of the Bible must always be in line with the faith of the Catholic Church. It is not about a requirement imposed on this Book from outside; it is the Book that is the voice of the pilgrim People of God, and only in the faith of this People we are in the right tone to understand the Holy Scriptures. Hence, Jerome exhorted: "Stay firmly attached to the traditional teaching that has been instilled in you, that you may invoke according to teaching and resist those who contradict it."
In particular, since Jesus Christ founded his Church on Peter, every Christian, he concluded, must remain in union "with St. Peter's Cathedral. I know that the Church is built on this rock." As a result, he bluntly stated: "I am with everyone who is in union with St. Peter's."
Until Tomorrow
fr. george