We celebrate the Feast of St. Jerome,
The greatest of the scholars biblical,
The beacon light for Western Christendom
Whom we the Latin Bible’s father call.

A scholar alike him there never was,
Translator for all those that wisdom seek,
It is for Westerners he toiled because
They could not read in Hebrew nor in Greek.

A doctor of the church preeminent,
Enlightened by supernal genii,
But also gifted with a temperament
That brought opponent scholars to their knee.

It’s hard to tell how many years it took
Of wearying translating day and night,
To translate from the Greek our Holy Book.
And Hebrew parts of it by candle light.

Ascetic, most severe austerities,
He practiced as a desert eremite,
Composing many a pandect and treatise
As penitent upon the barren site.



But church books say - irascibility
Accompanied the faith of Saint Jerome,
And Lights with different views would scrambling flee,
And take their own conclusions back to Rome.

A master of polemics with keen wit,-
Be it Pelagius or Origen,-
As his opponents,- his invective beat
And sent them packing by his lashing pen.

Indebted much to Master Origen,
And great, immense Jerome’s indebtedness,
He disawed this master promptly when
The Master’s troubles were too obvious.

Great St. Augustine saved his skin from him
By low subordinate an attitude,
And humbly giving in to every whim,
Servile subordination stopped their feud.

To Master Origen the saint had bowed
But temper - being loath to subtlety-,
His former friend he later disavowed
And others more, with sharp asperity.

Graced with the gift of a quick temperament,
The language gifted beacon, Saint Jerome
Who gave us the Vulgata, often sent
Adversaries in faith skedaddling home.

While fasting with high fever, and deprived
In self-denial of necessities,
The vigor of his pen increased and thrived,
The more he practiced grim austerities.

He studied Plato, Tullus, Cicero,-
The O.T. Hebrew Text deemed him too coarse,
But had a vision that disturbed him so,
It spoke: “Go back to Holy Writ at once!”

Demanding spouse is science, research, art,
For brilliance to shine and spread its light
In works involving spirit, mind and heart,
Comes at the cost that senses be denied.

To Bethlehem retired he sought peace
To work his treatises for Christendom,
But was perturbed by motley refugees
From Huns and from Alaric who sacked Rome.

St. Paula did support his enterprise
With pious matrons that had come from Rome,
And by harsh labor and great sacrifice
They build for homeless, sick and maimed a home.

Of this great saint with short-fused temperament,
Pope Sixtus later asked in wonderment:
“How marvelous he is declared a saint
With pen and tongue so sharp and virulent?”

The Lord knows best, - the Latin idiom
Was hailed by Western folk from near and far,
And served as basis to derive therefrom
For every nation its vernacular.

Immense the asset, worth and benefit,
To hold God's Word in our idiom,
And exegesis clear of Holy Writ
Thanks, praise and honor to great Saint Jerome!

And more, - what comfort and encouragement,
A blessing can a short-fused temper be,
A means per excellence by heaven sent
To reach the highest peaks of sanctity.

See by this model and its shining light
That short a fuse and hot a temperaent
No reason is to be at all denied
To shine for all eternity as SAINT!





© Elizabeth Dandy