“To be a Christian is a great thing, not merely to seem one. And somehow or other those please the world most…please Christ least…. Christians are made, not born.”-St. Jerome
St. Jerome’s Vulgate Translation:
St. John 1: 1 In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum: In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God: and the Word was God. In ipso vita erat et vita erat lux hominum: In him was life: and the life was the light of men.
Prayer of the Day
O Lord, God of truth, Your Word is a lamp to our feet and a light on our path. You gave Your servant Jerome delight in his study of Holy Scripture. May those who continue to read, mark, and inwardly digest Your Word find in it the food of salvation and the fountain of life; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Jerome was born in a little village on the Adriatic Sea around AD 345. At a young age, he went to study in Rome, where he was baptized. After extensive travels, he chose the life of a monk and spent five years in the Syrian Desert. There he learned Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament. After ordination at Antioch and visits to Rome and Constantinople, Jerome settled in Bethlehem. from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, he used his ability with languages to translate the Bible into Latin, the common language of his time. This translation, called the Vulgate, was the authoritative version of the Bible in the Western Church for more than 1,000 years. Considered one of the great scholars of the Early Church, Jerome died on September 30, 420. He was originally interred at Bethlehem, but his remains were eventually taken to Rome.(From The Treasury of Daily Prayer, CPH)
Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. Revelation 14: 6
Reflection: St. Jerome was an angel. No, he did not have wings nor did he ‘earn his wings’. Remember that the word “angel” in Scripture means a “messenger”. An angel brings messages from the Lord (See Luke 1: 26). Angels protect us. They protect us with God’s Word. So St. Jerome was an angel. Like the angels from heaven, they bring fear to us mortals on earth. Likewise, Jerome was feared because of the Word He translated and taught…but only by those who fear it.
You too can be an angel and a St. Jerome. No, you won’t translate the Bible and that translation last a thousand years. But by bringing the same “eternal Gospel” to one other person, for his saving faith, it will last an eternity for him.
If you want to read more about St. Jerome look here.
A great quote from Jerome’s Letter to Heliodorus:
“The day will come when this corrupt and mortal body shall put on incorruptibility and become immortal. Happy the servant whom the Lord then shall find on the watch. Then at the voice of the trumpet the earth with its peoples shall quake, and you will rejoice. When the Lord comes to give judgment the universe will utter a mournful groan; the tribes of men will beat their breasts; kings once most mighty will shiver with naked flanks; Jupiter with all his offspring will then be shown amid real fires; Plato with his disciples will be revealed as but a fool; Aristotle’s arguments will not help him. Then you the poor rustic will exult, and say with a smile:
“Behold my crucified God, behold the judge. This is he who once was wrapped in swaddling clothes and uttered baby cries in a manger. This is the son of a working man and a woman who served for wages. This is he who, carried in his mother’s arms, fled into Egypt, a God from a man. This is he who was clad in a scarlet robe and crowned with thorns. This is he who was called a magician, a man with a devil, a Samaritan. Behold the hands, ye Jews, that you nailed to the cross. Behold the side, ye Romans, that you pierced. See whether this is the same body that you said the disciples carried off secretly in the night.”
O my brother, that it may be yours to say these words and to be present on that day, what labor now can seem hard?
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