Feast of Saint Jerome – Bible Translator and hope of Curmudgeons!

Feeling cranky before your daily caffeine fix? Does the slow driver in front of you make you grumpy? Does the fact that no one loaded the dishwasher or put toner in the printer drive you crazy?

Then take heart! Today is a special feast day for us curmudgeons. We too can achieve sainthood, just like St. Jerome!

St. Jerome is the patron saint of:

• students and archivists and translators – anyone really with a big time-consuming task ahead of them.
• Curmudgeons
• Parents with wayward older children

St. Jerome – who received the finest education his parents could give them and then as a young man chucked it all to fall in with a bad crowd and live a sinful life. Yet his upbringing stuck with him, so much so that he was baptized by Pope Liberius in 360 AD.

St. Jerome wrote that

“it was my custom on Sundays to visit, with friends of my own age and tastes, the tombs of the martyrs and Apostles, going down into those subterranean galleries whose walls on both sides preserve the of the dead.”

Here he enjoyed deciphering the incriptions!

He was then able to pull it together, study hard, and eventually performed his life’s work of translating the entire Bible into Latin!

So a few things stick out for me in this –

• Piety was instilled in him at home – and eventually, he found his way back.
• He was surrounded by pagan and hedonistic influences – much like our sons are today and…
• It was something that interested him in deciphering inscriptions, that at least kept him connected to his faith and brought him back.

As parents, I think this should give us hope. As long as we surround our kids with the love of Christ and the practice of the faith when they are young, they will always have that experience to ground them as they get older.

My own children had a period of time away from the church. But as they got older they slowly returned. All three of my married children have been married in the church and had marriage prep with a priest and through a diocese. My granddaughter was baptized in the church and her father is a regular churchgoer after several years away.

So St. Jerome’s experience of being raised in the church and having a church family to fall back on is still important and relevant for us today.

St. Jerome, pray for us!