00:00Today, September 30, the church celebrates Saint Jerome, one of the grandfathers and doctors of the church.
00:10This day also commemorates other lesser-known figures such as Saint Gregory the Illuminator, evangelizer of Armenia.
00:21But it is Jerome who remains at the center of liturgical memory.
00:25Born Vernon 347 in the town of Stridon, on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia, present-day Croatia, Jerome grew up in a well-to-do Christian family.
00:39Very early on, he was sent to Rome for his studies.
00:43There he studied Latin and Greek literature, discovering the richness of classical culture.
00:49But what deeply marked his youth was also a spiritual thirst that no philosophy could satisfy.
01:00Baptized in Rome in his twenties, Jerome decided to devote himself to Christ.
01:06Attracted to the ascetic life, he went to the East, near Antioch, and lived as a hermit in the Syrian desert.
01:14These years of solitude, fasting and prayer gave him a great knowledge of the Scriptures, but also a keen awareness of his human fragility.
01:28It was during these times of inner struggle that he perfected his mastery of Hebrew,
01:33convinced that the Bible had to be read in its original languages to be faithfully understood.
01:38Returning to Rome in 382, Jerome was appointed secretary to Pope Damascus.
01:47The pontiff entrusted him with a crucial mission: to revise the Latin translation of the Bible.
01:55At that time, versions were circulating with many errors, and the word of God was in danger of being altered.
02:01Jerome undertook this titanic work, relying on Hebrew and Greek texts.
02:11This was the birth of the Vulgate, the official Latin translation of the Bible,
02:16which profoundly marked the entire Western Christian tradition,
02:20and remained the reference for more than a millennium.
02:22But Jerome was not only a scholar.
02:26He was also a demanding spiritual director,
02:30especially with groups of Roman women
02:32who desired to live in consecrated celibacy and Bible study.
02:37His correspondence, most of which has come down to us,
02:41demonstrates great intellectual vigor and sometimes polemical fervor,
02:46for Jerome had an ardent temperament, quick to controversy.
02:50His writings against certain heresies of his time are of implacable severity,
02:56but always in the service of the truth.
03:02After the death of Pope Damascus, Jerome left Rome and retired permanently to Bethlehem,
03:07near the Grotto of the Nativity.
03:10There he founded a monastery and a religious community surrounded by disciples.
03:16He spent the last thirty years of his life in study,
03:20prayer and translation.
03:23It is in this atmosphere of recollection and fidelity to Scripture
03:27that he fell asleep in the Lord on September 30, 420.
03:31The legacy of Saint Jerome is immense.
03:38His passionate love for the word of God made him the patron saint of translators,
03:42exegetes and librarians.
03:45His famous maxim remains a pressing invitation to this day,
03:50“To ignore the Scriptures is to ignore Christ.”
03:53Through him, the Church recalls that the Tretian faith cannot be separated from the attentive study of the word.
04:02Jerome invites us to taste Scripture every day as living food,
04:06light for our path and strength for our struggles.
04:08Prayer to Saint Jerome
04:11Lord God, who gave Saint Jerome an ardent love for your word,
04:19grant us through his intercession to read the Holy Scriptures every day with the same inner fire,
04:26to discover the face of Christ and to conform our life to your Gospel.
04:32Through Jesus, your beloved Son, who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.
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