SAINT JEROME. DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH. (IVth CENTURY).

Jerome, son of Eusèbe, rich and Christian man, was born at Stridon, in Pannonie, at about the year 331. Early, he came to Rome where he studied under Donat and was baptized. With the aim of perfecting his instruction, he travelled in Gaul at first, where he frequented the scholars of time and copied several works by his own hand; then in Greece, where he studied philosophy, and from there, in all the cities of the East, where was some erudite theologian.
In Constantinople, he became attached to the person of Saint Gregory de Nazianze, and he admits himself that it is at his school that he learnt the sacred letters. Finally he went to visit the holy places and generally all Palestine, together with some Hebrew very well informed into the knowledge of the Writings and places where had happened the facts which they bring back.
After these peregrinations, he retired at about the year 374, in Chalcide's desert in Syria. It was a vast solitude, burned by the heats of the sun. Jerome lived there four years, sharing his time between the reading of the holy books and the exercises of the prayer and the penitence. It is there, that in the recollection of Rome and the faults of his life, he struck his breast with a stone, and that he punished the revolts of his flesh by rolling about on bushes of thorns, where from he got up stained with blood.
Ordered priest then by Saint Paulin, bishop of Antioch, he returned in Rome with this holy prelate and saint Épiphane. They came any three to subject to the decision of the holy pope Damase, very controversial questions in the Church of East. Saint Jerome did not delay being appreciated by the Sovereign - pontiff, who named him his secretary. All the correspondence of saint Damase with the various churches and on ecclesiastical subjects was so the work of our saint.
However the recollection of his dear solitude returned ceaselessly in his thought, and he left again Rome and the noise of the world, to withdraw in a convent of Bethlehem which saint Paula had made build.
There, in the silence of the retreat, he was engaged quite complete in the sacred science and in the meditation, in spite of infirmities and diseases which assailed him. The study of the holy books made with the prayer his only consolation. The reputation of science and virtue went growing everyday, and soon he became the oracle of the whole world. From all the points of the globe one consulted him on the most difficult questions. The pope Damase and saint Augustine often applied to him. His vast learning attracted him respect and universal admiration.
Nobody possessed better than him, not only the knowledge of the Greek and Latin letters, but that of languages Hebraic and Chaldean. In the testimony of Saint Augustine, there was almost no author whom he had read. He pursued error with the heat of the faith and avenged the catholic truth. He translated the Old Testament into Latin and the New in Greek, in the prayer of the pope Damase.
Besides several other translations and several comments, we owe him several productions of his personal genius. He had reached an extreme old age when he was attacked by a violent fever. His friends hurried to come to pay the last honours to him:

"Do you come, does he say to them with a serene face, do you come to warn me that it is necessary to leave? How pleasant to me is that news! Here is, indeed, the precious moment which is going to return me to my freedom for ever. O how people make a false idea of the death, when they paint it so hideous.
"Since Jesus Christ loved her, I love her all the more because she makes shine to my eyes the nearest hope of the happy eternity … Could you feel one day how sweet it is to die having lived well! " He says, and his soul escaped from his body worn out by the penitence as much as by the age, and went to receive the reward of his virtues. This precious death arrived the year 420 of Jesus Christ. The rests of saint Jerome were buried in Bethlehem; later they were transported in Rome and deposited in saint Mary’s Church ad Præsepe.


PRACTICES. - Saint Jerome had a vast and deep genius, a very wide science, a heart at the level of his spirit, and however he was engaged in the practices of the penitence which the society men consider as the sharing of weak spirits. He went away from the world and the pleasures which he offers to his amateurs, because he felt them dangerous. Let us learn, at his school, what we have to make to pay the penalties of our sins.

PRAYER. - Lord, penetrate my flesh and my soul by your fear and your love, so that walking on the tracks of the glorious saint Jerome, we get loose from creatures to live only for you.