Sept. 30, 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
ST. JEROME (Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus) (b Dalmatia 345, d Bethlehem 420), Priest, Writer, Mystic, Doctor of the Church
St. Augustine said of him, "What Jerome is ignorant of, no mortal has ever known." And Jerome's own most famous saying is "To be ignorant of the Scriptures is to be ignorant of Christ". He is best-known for translating the Scriptures into Latin, the earliest standard edition of the Bible which came to be known as the Vulgate. More than a millennium later, the Council of Trent ordered a new and corrected edition as the authentic text to be used in the Church. A modern scholar has said, "No man before Jerome or among his contemporaries and very few men for many centuries afterwards were so well qualified to do the work." Nor better prepared in his time. After early schooling in Dalmatia, he went to Rome, the center of learning at that time, and thence to Trier, Germany, spending several years in each place, with the very best teachers. He then traveled extensively in Palestine, marking each spot of Christ's life with an outpouring of devotion. He was a master of Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Chaldaic. Mystic that he was, he spent five years in the desert of Chalcis so that he might give himself up to prayer, penance and study. Finally he settled in Bethlehem, where he lived in the cave believed to have been the birthplace of Christ. He was above all a Scripture scholar. He also wrote commentaries which are still a great source of scriptural inspiration. He was an avid student, a thorough scholar, a prodigious letter-writer and a consultant to monks, bishops and Popes.
On September 30 in the year 420, Jerome died in Bethlehem. His remains are buried in the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/093012.cfm
AT THE APOSTOLIC PALACE TODAY
Sunday Angelus - In the Holy Father's last Angelus for the summer at Castel Gandolfo, he commented on today's
Gospel in which Jesus allows a man to cast out demons in his name, saying Christians should always welcome it
when someone not in the Church does something good; and commenting on a passage from the Letter of James, he said
Jesus taught there was nothing wrong in having wealth if such wealth is used to help others. He then made an appeal
for an end to violence in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where in the past 2 weeks,
a flare-up of intermittent fighting between a rebel group and irregular militia forces has forced thousands
to flee their homes.