- 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
PAPAL LETTER. A publication or announcement issued directly by the Pope or by an official delegated by him. Matters of faith and morals were generally the subjects of these letters, designated as decreta. Others of more dogmatic importance were commonly called epistolae tractoriae. They were incorporated in collections of canon law and ranked with canons of synods in importance. Gratian and other canonists insisted that every papal letter of general character was authoritative for the entire Church. There were many forged papal letters during the Middle Ages. From the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries a papal document was given legal form by posting it on the doors of St. Peter’s, the Lateran, or the Apostolic Chancery and in the Piazza del Campo di Fiori. Now they acquire force by publication in the Acta Apostolocae Sedis. These papal writings are published in a variety of forms, e.g., apostolic letters, constitutions, rescripts, bulls, and briefs. The original letters are deposited in the Roman archives. Private collections of papal letters also exist.
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!)
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