Today, we celebrate the memorial of St Jerome, who lived in the late 4th and early 5th century. Jerome was known as one of the greatest Scripture scholars in the early Church. In fact, St Augustine, one of our Church’s greatest theologians, once said: “What Jerome is ignorant of, no mortal has ever known.” Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, which was the common language of his day. That version of the Bible, the Vulgate, is still held in high esteem today. As we are getting ready to start using the new English translation of the Roman Missal in a couple of months, perhaps we have new respect for Jerome and his translation expertise. Jerome is the patron saints of librarians, students, archeologists, and translators.
In our first reading today, the prophet Baruch tells us how the people in Israel who were in exile in Babylon were contrite for their sins, how they recognize the ways they are their leaders strayed from the road of faith to which God was calling them. The people recognize the ways that they rejected the word of God in their lives, the ways that they turned away from him even though he brought them to the dessert to the land of milk and honey.
As God gives us his word to nurture us and guide us in life, as Jerome helped translate God’s word into the language of the people, how he helped us understand what the word of God really means, may we take the word of God into our hearts and our lives. May we be thankful for the word of God.
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