Saint Jerome
Feast day: September 30
Saint Jerome, priest and Doctor of the Church, who translated and revised the Latin Bible (30/09).
Who is he?
Saint Jerome was a priest and a great scholar of the early Church. He is most famous for translating most of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Latin and revising the Latin Gospels. He is a Doctor of the Church and the patron saint of translators, librarians and people who study the Bible.
Life story
Jerome was born around the year 347 in Stridon, an ancient town near the border of Dalmatia (the area of today’s Croatia and Slovenia); its exact location is no longer known. His parents sent him to Rome to study. He was an excellent student and loved books so much that he took his little library with him wherever he went. In Rome, he received the sacrament of Baptism.
He wanted to live entirely for God, so he went into the desert in Syria to live as a hermit, fasting, praying and learning Hebrew, the language of most of the Old Testament. It was a very hard language, but he patiently learned it word by word. After that, he was ordained a priest.
He went back to Rome to be secretary to Pope Damasus. The Pope gave him the job of revising the Latin translation of the Gospels. Later, he went to live in Bethlehem, near the cave where Jesus was born, and stayed there for more than thirty years. He translated most of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Latin. That translation later became known as the Vulgate, and the Church used it for many centuries.
Saint Jerome was hot-tempered, and his words were sometimes harsh. He knew this and had to fight against it all his life. He said a very famous sentence: “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” He died in Bethlehem on 30 September 420.
According to a medieval story, a lion with a thorn in its paw once limped into the monastery. Jerome pulled out the thorn and washed the wound, and the lion stayed with him. The story means that kindness can tame even fierceness.
Why is he a saint?
Saint Jerome used his whole life and his talents to help everyone read and understand God’s Word. He was not perfect, but he humbly repented, prayed and made many sacrifices. His love for the Bible has helped countless generations of Christians meet Jesus.
A lesson for you
- Every day, read a few verses of the Gospel, for example the Gospel of that day’s Mass.
- Study hard, especially foreign languages: knowing one more language gives you one more way to help others.
- If you often lose your temper, don’t give up: ask God to help you improve little by little, like Saint Jerome.
Identifying marks
- An open Bible: he spent his whole life studying and translating the Bible.
- A gentle lion beside him: according to a medieval story, he pulled a thorn out of a lion’s paw, and the lion stayed with him.
- A red cloak and a wide-brimmed red hat: old paintings show him as a Cardinal to honor him, even though there were no Cardinals yet in his time.
- An old man with a long white beard: he lived many years of prayer and study.
- A skull and a stone (*): they recall the years he spent in the desert living a hard life of penance.
(*) Only in some pictures and statues.
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