Saints and Angels - Part II

      Today our Holy Father, Pope Francis, issued an Apostolic Letter entitled SCRIPTURAE SACRAE AFFECTUS at Saint John Lateran in Rome on the Memorial feast of Saint Jerome.  This 6,000 word Apostolic Letter commemorates the sixteen hundredth anniversary of the death of Saint Jerome, who died on September 30 in the year 420 in Bethlehem.  Saint Jerome studied the scriptures and translated the Word of God from the original languages into the common Latin language of the every day person, the Vulgate.

     Here are the opening words of this Letter, which I will be recording tomorrow for broadcast on the local Catholic radio station, WAOB.

     "Devotion to sacred Scripture, a "living and tender love" for the written word of God: this is the legacy that Saint Jerome bequeathed to the Church by his life and labors.  Now, on the sixteen hundredth anniversary of his death, those words taken from the opening prayer for his liturgical Memorial give us an essential insight into this outstanding figure in the Church's history and his immense love for Christ.  That "living and tender love" flowed, like a great river feeding countless streams, into his tireless activity as a scholar, translator and exegete.  Jerome's profound knowledge of the Scriptures, his zeal for making their teaching known, his skill as an interpreter of texts, his ardent and at times impetuous defense of Christian truth, his asceticism and harsh eremitical discipline, his expertise as a generous and sensitive spiritual guide - all these make him, sixteen centuries after his death, a figure of enduring relevance for us, the Christians of the twenty-first century." 

     Jerome translated first the Old Testament and then the remainder of the Scriptures from the original Hebrew.  Up to this time, Christians in the Roman empire could read the Bible in its entirety only in Greek, the language of scholars and the educated.  This translation was called the Septuagint.  Now the "average person" could read or hear the holy Word in their ordinary language.  Our early English translation was from Jerome's Latin Vulgate.  Today's English versions are translations from the original languages and thus clearer and truer.

     We owe a great deal to Saint Jerome for his labor of love.  The Scriptures are the Word of God which guides our every step on our journey to Christ and to holiness.  Saint Jerome, thank you ... and pray for us!