- St. Jerome (420). Doctor of the Church, Priest. (Current, Traditional) Translated the Bible to the Latin Vulgate
ST. JEROME, born in Dalmatia, A.D. 329, was sent to school at Rome. His boyhood was not free from fault. His thirst for knowledge was excessive, and his love of books a passion. He had studied under the best masters, visited foreign cities, and devoted himself to the pursuit of science. But Christ had need of his strong will and active intellect for the service of His Church. St. Jerome felt and obeyed the call, made a vow of celibacy, fled from Rome to the wild Syrian desert, and there for four years learnt in solitude, penance, and prayer a new lesson of divine wisdom. This was his novitiate. The Pope soon summoned him to Rome, and there put upon the now famous Hebrew scholar the task of revising the Latin Bible, which was to be his noblest work. Retiring thence to his beloved Bethlehem, the eloquent hermit poured forth from his solitary cell for thirty years a stream of luminous writings upon the Christian world.
REFLECTION: “To know,” says St. Basil, “how to submit thyself with thy whole soul, is to know how to imitate Christ.”
WORD OF THE DAY
ORDINARY MEANS. Whatever means are commonly considered ordinary for the preservation of human life. They are ordinary if generally accepted as such or if they are readily available to persons in the time, place, and circumstances in which they find themselves. Such means are food, shelter, and the avoidance of unnecessary bodily danger; also the use of accepted medical and health facilities. Assumed in this matter of preserving life is the sincere desire to remain alive or to keep another person alive according to the dispositions of divine providence. There is no question of directly intending to terminate one’s own or another’s earthly existence.
Modern Catholic Dictionary, Fr. John Hardon SJ (Get the real one at Eternal Life — don’t accept an abridged or edited version of this masterpiece!)
