We hear one of Jesus’ disciples declare today: “I will follow you wherever you go.” Those are very easy words to say, especially when we don’t know where the road will lead in our journey of faith, when we don’t know the sacrifices we are going to have to make and what we are going to have to leave behind.
St Jerome, the saint we celebrate today, was one of the four original Early Church Fathers named as Doctors of the Church in 1298. This group also included St Ambrose, St Gregory the Great, and St Augustine. That shows the high esteem in which St Jerome was held. Born in the middle of the 4th century in a small village in Dalmatia in the Roman Empire, in the area of present-day countries of Slovenia and Croatia, Jerome was not known for his kindness and compassion. In fact, Jerome was known to be very quick tempered and would attack others in his writings, especially if he thought they were heretical or disobedient. I guess that in our day Jerome would be one of these bloggers on the internet. However, what Jerome is know for is his translation of Scripture and his Scripture commentaries. His translation of the Bible in Latin called the Vulgate was the official version of the Bible in the Catholic Church. A corrected version of the Vulgate was promulgated at the Council of Trent in the 16th century. Jerome was a master of the important languages for a Scripture scholar: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldaic. He complete his studies in Rome and in Trier, Germany. Jerome spent a lot of time in the Holy Land and also five years in the dessert, devoting that time to prayer, penance, and studies. Jerome died in Bethlehem in 420. He is buried in the Basilica of St Mary Major in Rome. He is the patron saint of archivists, scholars, and librarians. Paintings of Jerome usually portray him with a skull, which is a remind of the inevitability of death and the vanity of the temporal things of this world.
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