St Jerome - the Library of Christ

As many of you know, the patron of this blog is the original irascible hermit himself, St Jerome - Doctor of the Church. 

Pope Francis has recently written an Apostolic Letter commemorating him, encouraging us to deepen our knowledge of scripture and follow the example of St Jerome. I highly recommend you check it out, one of the best things written by Pope Francis! 

Through the intercession of St Jerome the Library of Christ, may we all grow in love for the Word of God - especially hermits and those with fiery tempers. 

Here are two quotes which stood out for me : 

Devotion to sacred Scripture, a “living and tender love” for the written word of God: this is the legacy that Saint Jerome bequeathed to the Church by his life and labors. Now, on the sixteen hundredth anniversary of his death, those words taken from the opening prayer of his liturgical Memorial[1] give us an essential insight into this outstanding figure in the Church’s history and his immense love for Christ. That “living and tender love” flowed, like a great river feeding countless streams, into his tireless activity as a scholar, translator, and exegete. Jerome’s profound knowledge of the Scriptures, his zeal for making their teaching known, his skill as an interpreter of texts, his ardent and at times impetuous defense of Christian truth, his asceticism and harsh eremitical discipline, his expertise as a generous and sensitive spiritual guide – all these make him, sixteen centuries after his death, a figure of enduring relevance for us, the Christians of the twenty-first century..... 

Jerome consciously chose the desert and the eremitic life for their deeper meaning as a locus of fundamental existential decisions, of closeness and encounter with God. There, through contemplation, interior trials, and spiritual combat, he came to understand more fully his own weakness, his own limits, and those of others. There too, he discovered the importance of tears.[9] The desert taught him sensitivity to God’s presence, our necessary dependence on him and the consolations born of his mercy. Here, I am reminded of an apocryphal story in which Jerome asks the Lord: “What do you want of me?” To which Christ replies: “You have not yet given me everything”. “But Lord, I have given you all sorts of things”. “One thing you have not given me”. “What is that?” “Give me your sins, so that I may rejoice in forgiving them once more”.[10]