Sep 30 – S Jerome

It’s the Feast of St. Jerome, 3rd Class, with the color of White. In this episode: the meditation: “Our Spiritual Healing”, today’s news from the Church: “A Banner Addressed to Leo XIV in Support of the SSPX”, and today’s thought from the Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

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Saint Jerome is one of the great Doctors of the Church, but he may also be one of the saints you’d least want criticizing your work.

He was brilliant, sarcastic, argumentative, occasionally hot-tempered, and absolutely obsessed with getting the words of Scripture right.

Jerome was born around the year 347 in Stridon, somewhere near the borderlands of the Roman Empire in the Balkans. His family sent him to Rome for an excellent education, and Jerome became fascinated with classical literature. He loved Cicero and the great Latin authors so much that, according to his own account, he once had a terrifying dream in which he stood before God’s judgment seat and was accused of being “a Ciceronian, not a Christian.”

That got his attention.

Jerome eventually embraced a much more serious Christian life and spent several years living as an ascetic in the Syrian desert.

But he brought books.

Lots of books.

He studied Greek, and then did something unusual for a Western Christian scholar of his time: he learned Hebrew, reportedly receiving lessons from Jewish teachers. That decision would eventually change the Bible used by Western Christianity.

In the 380s, Pope Damasus I asked Jerome to revise the existing Latin translations of Scripture, which varied considerably from place to place.

Jerome didn’t simply tidy up the wording.

He spent years comparing manuscripts, consulting the original languages, and eventually translating much of the Old Testament directly from Hebrew. The result became the foundation of what we call the Latin Vulgate, the Bible that would shape Western Catholic worship, theology, art, and culture for more than a thousand years.

And Jerome definitely had opinions while doing it.

His surviving letters show a man who could be warm and deeply pastoral one moment and absolutely devastating toward an opponent the next. He once complained about people criticizing his translations who didn’t know Hebrew themselves. Jerome was not especially interested in losing an argument politely.

Later in life, he settled in Bethlehem, where he established monasteries and spent roughly three decades studying Scripture near the place of Christ’s birth.

Visitors to the Church of the Nativity can still visit a cave traditionally associated with Jerome’s years of work. There’s something wonderfully fitting about imagining one of history’s greatest biblical scholars surrounded by manuscripts in a cave beneath Bethlehem.

Artists often depict Jerome with a lion because of a later legend that he removed a thorn from the animal’s paw and the grateful lion remained with him afterward. He’s also usually surrounded by books, which is probably much closer to historical reality.

Jerome could be difficult.

He could also be wrong.

But he believed Sacred Scripture deserved a lifetime of serious study.

And he gave it one.

Saint Jerome, brilliant Doctor of Scripture and tireless translator of the Word of God, pray for us.

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What is the SSPX Podcast?

The SSPX Podcast is produced by Angelus Press, which has as its mission the fortification of traditional Catholics so that they can defend the Faith, and reaching out to those who have not yet found Tradition.

What is the SSPX?

The main goal of the Society of Saint Pius X is to preserve the Catholic Faith in its fullness and purity, to teach its truths, and to diffuse its virtues, especially through the Roman Catholic priesthood.

Authentic spiritual life, the sacraments, and the traditional liturgy are its primary means of bringing this life of grace to souls.

Although the traditional Latin Mass is the most visible and public expression of the work of the Society, we are committed to defending Catholic Tradition in its entirety: all of Catholic doctrine and morals as the Church has always defended them. What people need is the Catholic Faith, without compromise, with all the truth and beauty which accompanies it.

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