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Catholic Saints
St. Jerome
00:21:43
An early Church Father from the 4th century, St. Jerome translated the Bible into Latin with the desire to make Scripture more accessible. St. Jerome is the patron of biblical scholars, translators, and archivists and famously said, "Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ."
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A
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.
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Hi, and welcome to Catholic Saints. I am Taylor Kemp, the director of Formed, and with me is Dr. Ben Akers, our chief content officer.
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C
Thanks for having me acquired.
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B
It is a joy to be talking about a saint today. Today we are talking about St. Jerome. Who is St. Jerome?
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C
St. Jerome is one of my favorite saints.
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B
Okay, Great place.
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C
I have lots of saints that are my friends. I hope they count me as their friend.
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B
I'm sure they do.
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C
I hope so. They're charitable because they're charitable. Yeah, right. Because they're full of charity.
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B
They wouldn't choose.
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C
That's right. Holiness is the perfection of charity. That's the definition given in the Second Vatican Council.
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B
There we go.
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C
So perfection.
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B
Jerome has been perfected in charity.
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C
He's a saint, so he would be my friend.
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B
He is your friend.
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C
He is my friend. He is alive.
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B
Yes.
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C
So he's actually a early church father of the Church. He's a doctor of the Church. He's considered actually one of the great Western doctors. Okay, this is how influential he is. I'll give you his dates. He is born somewhere between 342 and 347, and then he dies in 420. He dies on September 30th. 420, great.
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B
So his fifth day is on.
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C
Is on September 30th. It's actually his death day. So in the Catholic tradition, we celebrate that as the dies natalis, the day of birth, not the birthday, but the birthday into eternal life.
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B
Wonderful.
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C
So we celebrate that with him.
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B
Okay, what else do we know about him?
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C
We actually know a lot about Jerome because he's a very prolific writer. Maybe second. Definitely second to Augustine. Augustine's the most prolific, but he's up there with Augustine. He actually even knew Augustine. They corresponds.
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B
Overlap.
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C
They correspond with one another. He's actually born in modern day Croatia on the Dalmatian coast, and his full name is Eusebius Sophrinas Hieronymus wouldn't have.
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B
Expected Jerome to come out of that.
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C
So you know what? So Jerome comes from the Latin Hieronymous, which is Hiero. Holy Nomos. Name.
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B
Holy name.
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C
So his name means holy name. All right, yeah. So Saint. Holy name Jerome, also known as Jerome, is incredibly intelligent, and it's recognized by his family, his village. And so he goes to Rome to study grammar and rhetoric. Okay, so he's not a Christian at this time.
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B
Similar to Augustine, there Too studied rhetoric.
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C
Exactly. Very well educated and very gifted intellectually. So he goes to Rome, learns Latin, learns Greek, learns the classic literature of the Greek poets and the Latin writers and poets as well. And he, in Rome, has a conversion to the Christian faith. So he wants to convert to the Christian faith. He's about 30 years old. They think about when he converts to the faith, but. So he's baptized as an adult. But he struggles in his living out the Christian life while he's in Rome. It's the capital city of the world, right? I mean, there's lots of things to distract oneself with. And so he has a deep. Has a conversion moment. Very powerful. He talks about this, he writes about it. And if you read anything about Drum, this is usually the story that's brought up, is he's dreaming one night and he's brought before a tribunal, a judge, and they say, who are you? What condition are you in? You know, what kind of person are you? He's like, oh, I'm a Christian. And the voice says, no, you're Ciceronian, a follower of Cicero, the Roman philosopher, in order says, no, no, I'm a Christian. He's like, no, I don't recognize you as a Christian. You're a Ciceronean. And he keeps shouting, I'm a Christian. And the voice keeps saying, no, you're not. And he gets in the dream, he's. He's being beaten, and he wakes up in a panic and realizes, wait, I've actually more of a disciple of Cicero than I am of Jesus Christ. So it's a deep conversion moment in his life. He starts to spend time in the catacombs in Rome, visiting the tombs of the apostles. Excuse me, at the churches in Rome, walking and spending time in the dark catacombs where the early martyrs were kept. And from this point on, he never reads another classic piece of literature.
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B
Wow. Okay.
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C
Even though you can tell when you're writing that he refers to classics, but he said, I will only commit to knowing Jesus Christ and his Word. Astute and diligent as he was in studying the classics of the Romans and the Greeks, he doubles down and turns that up with his study of the word of God in Scripture. And so then, after this moment of conversion, he wants to live as a hermit. So he goes into the desert to live an ascetical life, a life of penance and prayer. And he goes to the deserts in Syria, Antioch, and he meets a man who's converted from the Jew, who is a former Jewish man who knows Hebrew converts to the Christian faith. So he spends time with him and says, teach me Hebrew. I want to actually read the scriptures in Hebrew. And so he takes the Hebrew text and then even starts to translate it into Greek.
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B
Okay.
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C
In 382, he moves to Rome, Italy. He goes back to Rome because Pope Damasus becomes the Pope. And Pope Damasus is a fanboy of Jerome. Like, he, like, loved his letters that he saw and, like, would copy them by hand. He said, can you come and be my secretary and my counselor? So Jerome obliges, comes back to Rome, and Damasus, as a personal plea to Jerome, says, can you. We need a better translation of Scripture. We need a better translation. There was a Latin translation called the Vetus Latina, he said, but it was not a great translation. He says, you know languages so well. You know Hebrew, you know Greek, you know Aramaic. Can you translate the Scriptures?
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B
Makes me think of. Because wasn't Augustine's translation of the Scriptures not very good?
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C
Yes, there's some errors and some manuscript and copy errors. So it's a really beautiful pastoral plea of Damasus. Why does he want the Scriptures translated? So that it is accessible to the people.
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B
To the people. Yeah.
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C
And he wants the best translation possible so he can actually get the words of the Old Testament. We can actually get the words of Christ in the. In the New Testament. And so he begins working on this, and he translates the Gospels. And this is where we get what we call the vulgate, if you've heard of that. So vulgate is just the Latin word for vulgar, is the root English word, which just means common. Okay, so not like vulgar language. It means common language of people on.
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B
The street so that people can understand.
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C
Yes. So it's a really beautiful. Make it accessible. And then he begins to translate the Psalms because he. Because Damasus says that this is what we pray every day.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And so can you do that next? So he did the Gospels, then he start working on the Psalms, and then Damasus passes away.
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B
Okay.
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C
So while Jerome is in Rome under Damasus papal reign, he gets to know many of the wealthy people, wealthy families, the old Senate families of ancient Rome. And they have lots of money, and they're also converting to the Christian faith. And they ask. They become friends, men and women, with Jerome in particular. He's friends with two widows, Paula and Marcella. And they go to. They don't want to remarry. They actually want to live a very ascetical and prayerful life. And so they said, can you teach us in spiritual direction. Can you be our spiritual director? And not only can be your spiritual director, can you actually teach us to read scripture like you read scripture? Cool. He said, I'll do better than that. I'll teach you how to read scripture like I read scripture. And pray scripture like I pray scripture. I'll teach you actually how to learn the languages of scripture. And you can help me translate.
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B
Nice.
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C
Yeah. And do exegesis.
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B
Recruiting help.
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C
Yeah, recruiting help. Right. But this is unheard of. This is. Right. This is the fourth century, the fifth century that we're talking about. Like, so he. These really noble women that become his patrons, you know, pay for the things that he needs and pay for all the people that are following Jerome. This creates a jealousy among the Roman clergy. So around the priest.
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B
Yes, you can see that. Yeah.
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C
So Damasus was a reforming Pope. So already, 300 years after Christ, the church needs reformed. Damas is a reforming clergy. So he starts to be accused of being improper relationships with these women.
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B
Okay.
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C
And so he gets. So he gets driven out of Rome.
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B
You read this about so many times. I know.
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C
Is it like they get persecuted?
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B
It's all the time. Yeah.
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C
And so he actually goes to Bethlehem, and these women follow him along with some men. He sets up a monastery for women that he puts Paula in charge of and her daughter Eustochium. And then he was in charge of the male. The male house the monastery. He also builds a house for pilgrims because he's transformed by going to the Holy Land before. He said, this is amazing. We should have more people come. So he builds a house for pilgrims.
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B
Cool.
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Because he remembers that Mary and Joseph had no place to stay, so he wants a place for people to stay.
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B
So.
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So he's in Bethlehem, and he actually teaches part of his day. He teaches the young little boys and girls Greek and Latin for free. He just has a heart for educating and teaching others about the faith. So he has this whole group of women that are working on this hospitality, but also working on translating and interpreting scripture and a group of men as well. And when you look at the people that he interacted with in his life, besides St. Paula, St. Eustochium and Marcela, he met St. Gregory Nazianzen. He actually went and studied scripture under him because he said, I want to learn how to interpret scripture like you interpret scripture.
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B
Wow, that's cool.
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C
St. Rufinus has a beautiful commentary on the creed. St. Nisitas, St. Chrysogonus as well. He knew these men, among others. And as I already mentioned, St. Augustine as well. He writes several kinds of works. Some are exegetical. He's explaining scriptures. Some of his works are what we might be called. They're called, like, controversial in the sense of there's a controversy of the day, there's a heresy that people are debating, and he's going to weigh in on it. He's going to give some doctrine, and then we have some beautiful letters that he writes, over 100 letters where he's explaining a certain passage that someone writes him about or he's giving. This is my interpretation of the doctrine that the Church teaches. Also moral advice like, how do you live out the Christian life in today's world? He was convinced, especially because of that story, the dream that he had, that there was a sharp contrast between the way that the pagans looked at the world, and then a disciple of Christ would look at the world.
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B
The Ciceroneans versus Christians.
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C
The Ciceroneans versus the Christians, that he just said, we can learn. He learned the language and rhetoric and all these beautiful writing, beautiful letters from this tradition. But he saw. But the way that they approach the world, the way they interpret the world is completely different.
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B
It sounds like the letter to Diagnitus. I don't know. When was that? Second century?
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C
Yeah, that's earlier.
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B
Yeah, but that's like contrasting that. If you're a Christian, your life cannot look like the ways of the world. They have to be two different ways of looking at things.
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C
Yes. And some other. And there's just beautiful letters of friendship where he was really reaching out friends in time to friends and consoling them, encouraging them, exhorting them. Now, there's a. You know, people often accuse Jerome of being crotchety.
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B
I was wondering when that was.
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C
Temper, his passion. Right. He was a human.
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B
He was a passionate man.
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C
He was a passionate man. And so the passion comes out in some of his letters.
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B
There's something in that, because you can tell this is a very driven man in that, like, he has this conversion experience and he radically changes his life. He goes into the desert, he learns all these languages, he travels, he seeks out the wisdom of the wise. Like he's someone who is. He's going for it. Like, he has a conversation.
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C
He's a very choleric personality.
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B
Yeah, he is. And so, you know, I feel like that's got to be a consolation for anybody out there who's raising choleric children who are like, very strong will. And you're like, oh, my gosh, how do I reign this person? It's like this passion is good. Like, St. Jerome found the way in God's providence for his passion to be at the service of the church and to build up the church. So that's the task, I guess so to say. But, I mean, you can tell he's a passionate man just by the way he lives his life. Like, he. He had a conversion and he went into the desert and then learned, like, four languages to translate the scriptures in a cave.
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C
He actually said that he learned Hebrew to keep his chastity in check. There you go. It was such a hard language. He's like, I'm going to learn Hebrew to distract me from unchaste thoughts.
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B
There's any students out there who are in Hebrew class. Like, there's the added benefit.
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C
Right. Sign up for Hebrew if you've got a chastity of problems. Yeah, no, and I just have a couple more thoughts, and then we could discuss. He dies in Bethlehem on September 30, 4:20. His feast day is September 30th. And then we have a couple images that we can go through about some of how you recognize Jerome in art. Because this is. You know, people have questions. There are some famous paintings here, but he's a patron saint of biblical scholars.
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B
Okay.
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C
So if you want Scripture scholars, translators, which. Which makes sense. Librarians and archivists. Yeah. I do have this wonderful. There's this wonderful quotation that I hope that you are familiar with as a viewer. It's from the Second Vatican Council quoting St. Jerome. It's a famous quotation. I thought we could have a conversation about it. It's ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. And this comes from his commentary on the Book of Isaiah, where St. Jerome says, so it's a commentary on the book of the Old Testament, Isaiah. And he says, look, if you don't know the Old Testament, ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. This echoes what his friend Augustine would say. Christ is hidden in the Old, revealed in the new. So one of the things that Jerome is saying by this quotation is, if we don't know the written Word of God, Scripture, we're not going to know the incarnate Word of God, Christ as well as we could, as well as we should.
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B
Well, in Scripture, too. I mean, so they're both the Word of God, like Christ is the Word personified. And then Scripture, we say, is the Word of God, but in so many ways, the Word of God, it is God's love letter to humanity. It's him revealing himself in so many different ways through the story of Israel and then the coming of Christ and then the story of the church. But, you know, like Christ, the person is accessible to us because of the Scriptures and in prayer and in the Eucharist most especially. But it also, especially in the Old Testament, it prepares us to understand who the person of Christ is. You can never separate the two. So that makes. I mean, it makes perfect sense. You know, you hear that and you're like, well, yes, obviously. But then it's like, okay, yes, but do. When I go and read and pray with sacred Scripture, am I understanding? Like, these are God's words that were given, like, as they are for the sake of my drawing into a deeper relationship with him. It's just, it's very powerful. I feel like when you approach the scriptures in that way, he has a.
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C
Beautiful phrases in his letters where he'll talk about Eustochium, the daughter of Paula, who's almost like a spiritual daughter to himself. And he's like, look, fall asleep with your head on the Word of God. And then when you wake up, start reading the Word of God. It's like, it's a great way to end the day and start the day.
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B
Which you can do on the Amen app.
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C
Which you can do on the Amen app. That's right. Listen to the meditation. That's good. He says we have to read scripture often. And he was convinced that the word of God that was in scripture was given to us, was given to the church, and we should read it with the mind of the church. But when you read it, there's a word for you. And that word for you is not only for you, but also for others. So it's. You should enter into the dialogue with it and actually share it with others. And so that's why it was important for him not just to read the scriptures, keep it himself, offer good translation, but also to offer exegesis, a drawing out of the text. That's what exegesis means, to draw out of the text, its meaning so that you can share that with others.
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B
Yeah, so scripture has to be part of the life of the Christian, for sure. Daily scripture reading. If you're looking for places to start, the Gospels are just a great place.
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C
That's where he started. That's a great way to start. He has some beautiful phrases like the soul is the temple of God. We say this all the time, the soul of the Holy Spirit. But that's one of his phrases. He considered our souls, when they're full of God's grace, as precious gems that you want to keep polished and clean. And so they shine most brightly. And then there's actually an encyclical written by Pope Benedict XV in 1920, all on St. Jerome.
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B
Wow, okay.
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C
Spiritus Paracletus.
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B
Okay, I haven't read that.
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C
It's a beautiful short document you can find on the Vatican website. But here's one of the quotations from St. Jerome about discovering the precious pearl of the Gospel. There's one most priceless pearl, the knowledge of the Savior, the mystery of his passion, the secret of his resurrection, the whole Paschal mystery. So he saw that the precious gem, the precious pearl, the pearl of great price was actually to know Jesus as he's revealed in the Scriptures.
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B
So great.
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C
Yeah. Well, and so in art, how do we recognize Jerome? We just have a couple images here. There's a famous Caravaggio. So often with Jerome, you'll see him bald headed, with a long beard, kind of unkempt, often, often with his shirt off. And the reason he's got his shirt off is that because of his austere penances, it's also probably hot in the desert when he's working, translating in the cave of Bethlehem. But the austere penances, so he doesn't care for himself, he cares for our Lord always with a book or several books. In this case, he's translating. So you can see he's looking at one about to write on another. Also a skull, just to remind himself. We see this often in saints. It's called a memento mori to remember your death. That always that he remembered the sins of his youth and he always wanted to make atonement for those. And then we see him draped in red here. And the reason he's draped in red is often you'll see Jerome was a priest, he was not a bishop, but you'll see him in red or with a cardinal's hat to signal that he was a counselor to the Pope. That's where the cardinals are. They're counselors to the Pope. In this next image, what we see is an icon and we see Jerome with a lion. And then we'll also see this in the next image as well. Jerome, you'll often see with the lion and the. I think it represents different things that, you know, his kind of, his personality was like a lion. But there's also a story that's added later. It's a legend that said that when he was in the deserts praying, a lion had a thorn stuck in his paw, and he pulls the thorn out and then a lion was his trusted companion. The rest of his life. It's a good teaching. Walk around with a lion.
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B
Well, and I've always heard that was in relation to his. His temper, that, like his. The lion had this thorn, his paw, and that in his, like, conversion or in his struggle for holiness, he took the thorn out and his own anger, like the. Like the lion.
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C
He met the lion. Yeah, I like this.
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B
The merging of the two.
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C
Yeah. As you see him with a book, we see him in the rocky ground again. The idea is that he is. He's doing penance, living aesthetical life. And then the last image, again, probably a famous image of Jerome looking to the cross, but also looking to the word of God.
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B
That's so good. That's a. Yeah.
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C
Is that nice? We should do a sacred art on this one.
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B
That's a great image because you see.
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C
The lion on the bottom, who's holding.
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B
The book up for a lot. Yeah, this is.
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C
And he's looking at Christ. He's looking at the book, but he's about to turn to Christ and say, what does this mean to me? How do I interpret this scene?
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B
Yeah, that's really good. All right. I got a list of some takeaways.
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C
Yeah, great.
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B
Some. What can we learn from him today? I mean, a lot of this has been done out, but I feel like, what are our Ciceros? You know, like him when he's having that dream. What are the things that are keeping us from being a fully committed Christian? I. I loved that he went. When he was in the midst of his conversion. He sought the catacombs, really, the intercession of the saints. That. That's such an important aspect of our lives of faith, is to turn to our heavenly friends, like St. Jerome. The value of the ascetical life. How you cannot. No matter what our states in life are, there is a way in which we are supposed to deny ourselves for the sake of the gospel.
- [19:34]
C
That's good.
- [19:36]
B
I also love that he. You know, he. I'm thinking before he ever translated the Vulgate, which was one of his largest contributions to the church, how he did all that work in the languages to learn, which I'm sure was just. I mean, shoot. He learned Hebrew to tame his own for the sake of chastity in a way. But it would have been a lot of work. It would have been grueling work. I'm sure it would have been monotonous and boring and any drudgery at times to learn all of these things. But in God's providence, then that was supposed to be, like, laid at the feet of the Church in a way. And he became a true servant translating the Vulgate and all these letters and all that he did. And for us, it's like, how has God prepared each one of us and is preparing us knowing that what we are going through is for the sake of the body that is the Church and not our own gain? I love that he sought out faithful guides, St. Gregory of Nazianzen and others. That he is someone who knew, I want to grow in love of Christ and then sought men and women who could help him in that endeavor. And then kind of journeyed with them. And then really just a point I had made earlier, channeling his passion. You know, whatever temperaments we've been given, all of us have been given different gifts. Letting that like, kind of ride, whatever that may be like. I'm sure there were times where he was like, I wish I wasn't this way. And it's like, well, if he wouldn't, he probably wouldn't have done all that he did. And in God's providence, it was like, that is what enabled him to do that. So asking the question again, how can I serve Christ, Christ and the Church?
- [20:58]
C
I love it.
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B
That's all I got.
- [20:59]
C
That's very good.
- [21:00]
B
It's good.
- [21:01]
C
Yeah. So Drum is. Yeah. Jerome's a great patron in heaven, so seek his intercession. St. Jerome. Pray for us.
- [21:07]
B
Pray for us.
- [21:09]
A
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