A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, you are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden upon by men. You are the light of the world.
A city set on a hill cannot be hid nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Today, we celebrate the feast of Saint Jerome.
The liturgy says pastor, priest, and doctor. Incidentally, Saint Augustine of Hippo lived from March to 04/30, and saints Jerome's dates are pretty close to death, close enough for all practical purposes. And I think we should try to keep these two men together. Here is Saint Augustine over there in Hippo in Northern Africa, and here is Saint Jerome wandering around the Mediterranean Basin. That's the simplest way of putting it.
These two men were contemporaries, they were in correspondence with each other, they had major differences of opinion between them, and I think each had a deficiency of admiration for the other, to put it euphemistically. Now Saint Jerome is a very, very difficult man to deal with. He is reputed to have been, and I am not denying it, I'm not even calling it into question, probably the most learned man of his day. We're not sure where he came from, up around Cilicia someplace. Maybe it's even been claimed that he came from Spain.
Anyway, he comes to Rome and becomes rather a well known character. As a matter of fact, he eventually became secretary to the pope. And what isn't generally known, he even had aspirations of succeeding Damasus. Anyway, while he was in Rome and in between times, he was ordained a priest, a kind of a freelance priest. While in Rome, he became a spiritual adviser to a group of noble ladies.
And in some instances, this is forgotten. We have pictures of Saint Jerome hijacking or doing something to get over to Bethlehem, and if you've been there, they'll show you where he worked, where he did all his translation as if he were or a hermit, as if he was doing this all on his own without any support from anybody else. Well, once he left Rome, he was accompanied by a number of monks and also by a number of these noble ladies who dedicated their lives to him. Well, that's pretty good job if you can get it, you know. Anyway, another thing I want to remind you of, because it's getting so that I'm getting kind of a fixed idea about it.
But so many of these men, I guess some women do, who have achieved spectacular, shall we call them successes, because that word is a big word, they go through some kind of a traumatic experience. Now, Jerome went through it, just looking a bit up in preparation for today, this was the first time I found this. But he went through a period when, for some reason or other, he had a dream. And in this dream, somebody accuses him of being a Ciceronian and not a Christian. That changed his life.
He'd hide himself to a desert and whatever that means just sort of an isolated, forlorn place, And then, of course, he was a completely competent Latin scholar. That's one reason that he's so popular. And he had already a pretty good command to Greek, but then he devoted himself to Hebrew. And then he went on his journeys with this entourage of monks and these noble ladies, especially Paula, who catered to his needs. So they wandered around and did they went on big tours because what he was doing was trying to build up a background of the Hebrew world, of the Jewish world, including parts of Egypt, Sinai Peninsula.
So he winds up finally in Bethlehem with his entourage and they set up shop. You see, we think of Jerome so much almost exclusively as a translator of the Bible. First of all, from the Old Testament, from the original Hebrew, which was the first one, remember, to the to Latin, and then his translation of the New Testament. Well, was much more than this. He was certainly that, but he was much more than that.
He was a man of torrent, fierce controversy. Practically every friend he had, he got into difficulty with him so that his life was tempestuous. But in spite of that, he accomplished an incredible job. In about fifteen years alone, that is the actual work of translation, he translated the all of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Latin. Now, I was pretty close to the work that was done on the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine translation.
And when you read, just read the number of men who were involved in that, with all the mechanical assistance we have today plus all kinds of human assistance. And here is Jerome sitting down at his desk, plotting along, writing out longhand, his translations, or dictating them right off the cuff. He did some of them straight off some of the shorter works of the old testament. It's an it's a it's an absolutely incredible performance that any man could have done it. And while today, scripture scholars, of course, have their criticisms of Jerome's translation, nevertheless, there is not a single one of can neglect Jerome, can overlook him or ignore him, and none of them can can assert that it wasn't a superlative job.
One man did it, and this was only a this was only part of the man's life. It wasn't as I say though, he did the all of the Old Testament in fifteen years while conducting all other kinds of controversies chiefly about origin origin. So when we call this man a doctor and pastor, first of all he was a very different pastor from many other pastors. And if he is a doctor of the church, he certainly is not the ordinary normal doctor. He is sui generis, sui generis.
Now here's the point, it's not when you think of what Saint Augustine's influence was upon all of Western Christendom, all of the Western Christendom, from the fourth century all the way down to nineteen hundred and eighty anno Domini. And up until the thirteenth century, Augustine was the unrivaled, unchallenged champion of Catholic Christian thought. There was nobody comparable to Augustine. And then at that same time, coming from the same centuries, almost within ten years of each other's days three fifty four to four thirty, from Bethlehem and from Syria and from Greece and from Cilicia and from Italy and from Rome, from all of these parts, you have this man Jerome who gave to the world the Old Testament in Latin and the New Testament out of Greek into Latin. And that book endured to the present day.
As far as I know, the Council of Trent declared the Vulgate the Vulgate is Jerome's translation, should say. The Vulgate is Jerome's translation. It's, of course, Latin. As far Trent said that that was the official text of holy scripture for the holy Roman Catholic church. As far as I know, it is it still is.
It still is. Now how can we, in Garrett Park, on September 30, estimate what that Latin text has done for the Western world and to some extent for the Eastern world. Who can estimate it? And it was done by one man, not by a committee. But let me add in conclusion, he didn't do it alone.
He did the work. That's true. It was his genius with languages and all of that because he made it his business to get behind the Hebrew text, to try to understand the Hebrew mentality and the atmosphere and the climate and the references. He just didn't he he was not a machine turning this stuff out. So he tried to give the world in Lent, not only the words but the feeling, the atmosphere, and the climate of the of the Hebrew text.
And in that way, he tried to join together at least three separate Hebrew traditions So he was not just a potter. But this man, as I say, gave to the western world the bible and the vulgar which we still use. And it's very to me intriguing that here over at Hippo, Alexandria, Alexandria, you have Augustine and then for the most part down in in Bethlehem where our lord was born, there you have in this little room where this man in fifteen years gave us the Hebrew Old Testament into elegant Latin. But he didn't do it alone. He was supported by other men and by this group of faithful women of whom Paula was the leader.
This fact is often overlooked. And so today when we pay tribute, I don't know how you do it to a man because there is no way that his influence on Western culture can be even remotely estimated. Nobody can give a guess at it. There's no way you can weigh it or evaluate it. We pay tribute to him in a way that would most please him because what changed his life was a dream where he was accused of being a Ciceronian and not a Christian.
What he wanted to be was a man of God. That I'm he this is explicit. That is one thing he wanted to be in spite of all his human weaknesses, which was chiefly due to our very strong temper. He wanted to be a man of God and to serve God and to serve truth, And that's the reason we have that selection today in the gospel reading. A light of the world, a Lucifer, a bearer of light.
The most we can do if we have any memory or gratitude is to try to use what he so loved, cherished, and found absolutely so essential to the Christian life, and that is the word of God. In the name of the father, son, the holy spirit. Amen.