St Jerome, our favorite Curmudgeon!

"There is nothing more irresistable than a man who loves his God."

Dalmatian Border (Croatia) c.345 A.D.

A sharp-tongued scholar was born in the Roman Empire boonies. His name was St Jerome—and before history was finished with him—his work would be read by all believers. His claims to fame are diverse. He

• translated the Bible over 30-years
• annoyed half the Christian world
• refuted heretics with gusto, and
• become one of the most quoted Doctors of the Church.

Best of all, he would acquire a reputation as Christianity’s favorite curmudgeon.

Let us be blunt.

Jerome was not a saint passing out inspirational bookmarks. He was not a patron of congeniality. He was brilliant, combative, sarcastic, impatient-with-nonsense and thoroughly unimpressed by fools. Even admirers admitted he possessed an “ardent and at-times, impetuous” personality. He was so loved, the Church canonized him anyway.

That should comfort every rough-edged Christian trying to become holy.

St Jerome’s life was a long war against ignorance. He believed souls were at stake when Scripture was neglected or distorted. His famous line still lands like a hammer.

“Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” —St Jerome

In his late 30s, St Jerome had achieved the Church’s equivalent of a theologian, ghostwriter, biblical scholar and resident grouch; all rolled into one. At age 35, his fierce intellect caught Pope St. Damasus I’s attention, who gave him a task and a desk. He entrusted Jerome with a monumental task: revise and translate the Scriptures into reliable Latin. Existing Latin versions varied widely, creating confusion throughout the Church. Most sane men would have accepted the assignment with gratitude. Jerome accepted it with determination. Then, he fought those telling him how to do it.

He learned Hebrew when many Christian scholars considered the language unnecessary. He checked manuscripts. He compared texts. He questioned assumptions. He worked with the stubborn persistence of a man who feared God more than critics. In the parlance of our time, he was an OCD-perfectionist. Thanks be to God.

Predictably, critics arrived. Jerome’s response was rarely delicate.

His letters contain some of the finest theological scholarship ever written and some of the most devastating put-downs in Christian literature. Modern public relations departments would have hidden his correspondence in a locked vault.

Yet his sharpness was not vanity. Jerome viewed false teaching as spiritual arson. If doctrine protected souls, then attacking error was an act of charity, albeit one delivered with the gentleness of a Roman catapult.

Résumé of Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus

Name: St. Jerome

Education:

• Studied rhetoric and classical literature in Rome
• Mastered Latin and Greek
• Learned Hebrew through demanding study & ascetic discipline

Major Positions: 

• Priest
• Secretary & collaborator of Pope St. Damasus I
• Founded Monastery in Bethlehem

Major Accomplishments:

• Produced the Latin Bible known as the Vulgate
• Wrote extensive Biblical commentaries
• Authored De Viris Illustribus, an important early Christian literary history
• Defended Christian doctrine against multiple heresies
• Became one of the four great Latin Fathers of the Church
• Declared a Doctor of the Church

Patron to:

• Biblical scholars
• Translators
• Librarians
• Students
• Archivists

“Begin now, to be what you will be hereafter.” —St Jerome

Back to the story. After leaving Rome, Jerome settled in Bethlehem near the cave of Christ’s birth. There he founded monastic communities, welcomed pilgrims, wrote commentaries, translated Scripture, answered theological controversies and continued offending those who had it coming!

The old saint’s satire came from a simple conviction: Truth matters.

• St Jerome mocked vanity because he had battled his own.
• He rebuked laziness because he had spent decades studying.
• He attacked fashionable errors because he knew eternal realities were not subject to trends. God never changes.

In many ways he feels startlingly modern. Every age manufactures fake news experts who are unfamiliar with sources, the self-righteous who’ve only watched the movie and sheeple who prefer slogans to Scripture. St Jerome would have recognized them instantly and sharpened his tongue and/or quill.

About 1600 years later, Christians still quote him. He never confused popularity with Truth. Then, came the silence.

The scholar who had spent a lifetime surrounded by manuscripts found himself on the final page. The controversialist prepared to meet the Author of Life.

On September 30, 420 AD, in Bethlehem, near the grotto of the Nativity and the monasteries he had founded, St. Jerome died. The feather quill fell from his hand. The Word he had spent a lifetime translating, stood before him face to face.

In the tone of Jerome … 

Let idle praise, pass by my door. I seek Your Truth and nothing more.
Correct my pride with Scripture’s rod. And burn away what angers God.
Lord, let no polished error stay, though crowds ask for the "easy" way.
Give me grace to love the Truth, though all the world has railed at You.
My tongue is quick, my heart is hard, too quick to strike or drop its guard.
The books I’ve read, the words I’ve known, are dust beside Your heavenly throne.

What use is learning, vast and deep; if I should lose one wandering sheep?
When praise would puff my soul with pride, let Bethlehem be my home to hide.
There God lay small upon the straw and humbled every boastful law.
Now let the Scriptures’ living flame, be inked to shout Your holy name.
Salvation’s the reason why You came, not me rising to scholarly fame.
Grant each page with toil and breath, bear fruit beyond my hour of death.
As years pass by, the lamp burns low, and weaker now these eyes do grow.

Yet while one fading light remains, your holy Word shall fill my veins.
Judge of living and the dead, remember all the sweat I’ve shed.
Not for my works do I draw near, but for the Cross I hold most dear.
Take all my books, my skill, my art, and search the contents of my heart.
If words therein deserve Your rod, consume them by the fire of God.
Then by Your mercy let me stand, a beggar in Your promised land.
And seeing Truth unveiled above, I’ll drop to prone in eternal love.

Quotes: 

What Jerome is ignorant of, no man has ever known. - Saint Augustine of Hippo

In the remotest part of a wild and stony desert, burnt up with the heat of the scorching sun so that it frightens even the monks that inhabit it, I seemed to myself to be in the midst of the delights and crowds of Rome. In exile and prison to which for the fear of hell I had voluntarily condemned myself, I many times imagined myself witnessing the dancing of the Roman maidens as if I had been in the midst of them: in my cold body and in my parched-up flesh, which seemed dead before its death, passion able to live. Alone with this enemy, I threw myself in spirit at the feet of Jesus, watering them with my tears, and I tamed my flesh by fasting whole weeks. I am not ashamed to disclose my temptations, but I grieve that I am not now what I then was. - Saint Jerome's letter to Saint Eustochium

The measure of our advancement in the spiritual life should be taken from the progress we make in the virtue of mortification; for it should be held as certain that the greater violence we shall do ourselves in mortification, the greater advance we shall make in perfection. - Saint Jerome

You say in your book that while we live we are able to pray for each other, but afterwards when we have died, the prayer of no person for another can be heard. But if the apostles and martyrs while still in the body can pray for others, at a time when they ought still be solicitous about themselves, how much more will they do so after their crowns, victories, and triumphs? - Saint Jerome from Against Vigilantius, 406

I interpret as I should, following the command of Christ: "Search the Scriptures," and "Seek and you shall find." For if, as Paul says, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, and if the man who does not know Scripture does not know the power and wisdom of God, then ignorance of Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. No one should think that I mean to explain the entire subject matter of this great book of the prophet Isaiah in one brief sermon, since it contains all the mysteries of the lord. It prophesies that Emmanuel is to be born of a virgin and accomplish marvelous works and signs. It predicts his death, burial and resurrection from the dead as the Savior of all men. Whatever is proper to holy Scripture, whatever can be expressed in human language and understood by the human mind, is contained in the book of Isaiah. - Jerome: from a commentary on Isaiah

Sources:

Francis P (2020). Scripturae Sacrae Affectus: Apostolic Letter on the sixteenth centenary of the death of St Jerome. Vatican

Herbermann CG (Ed.) (1910). St. Jerome. In, The Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent

Herbermann CG (Ed.) (1910). Pope St. Damasus I. In, The Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent

My Catholic Life. Saint Jerome: Priest and Doctor of the Church