‘A Devotion to Holy Scripture”: Love what St. Jerome loved

 

Published October 30, 2020 on Aleteia.com 

7 things to understand about Pope Francis’ Apostolic Letter on the importance of sacred Scripture.

On September 30, 2020, from the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, in liturgical memory of the priest and Doctor of the Church St. Jerome, and on the occasion commemorating the 1,600th anniversary of his death in Bethlehem, Pope Francis promulgated the Apostolic Letter SCRIPTURAE SACRAE AFFECTUS (A Devotion to Sacred Scripture). With this letter, the pope not only pays tribute to the life and work of this great human being and Christian, but he also reaffirms the doctrine of the Catholic Church on Sacred Scripture, the primary source for the faith and religion of all believers in Christ, Catholics, and, furthermore, for the experience and human endeavor of every man and woman of goodwill.

The life and work of St. Jerome, the pope says, includes “his tireless activity as a scholar, translator and exegete. Jerome’s profound knowledge of the Scriptures, his zeal for making their teaching known, his skill as an interpreter of texts, his ardent and at times impetuous defence of Christian truth, his asceticism and harsh eremitical discipline, his expertise as a generous and sensitive spiritual guide—all these make him, 16 centuries after his death, a figure of enduring relevance for us, the Christians of the 21st century.” That is why St. Jerome has bequeathed to us as a legacy “a devotion to sacred Scripture, a living and tender love” for the written word of God.

 

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How St. Jerome dealt with his excessive anger

To highlight the excellence opportunity and necessity of this pontifical document, I will underscore—at once—seven essential ideas that correspond to the seven sections into which this Apostolic Letter is divided.

First, observing and analyzing the portraits that important painters have made of St. Jerome, the pope finds in them the repetition of two features that define the saint’s profile as a man, primarily, absolutely consecrated to God (monk and penitent) and, secondly, as a scholar, absolutely and rigorously dedicated to the understanding of the Holy Scriptures.

 

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A prayer by St. Jerome, to invoke God’s mercy

Second, Francis highlights Jerome’s deep love for Sacred Scripture which, according to the pope’s understanding, is a passionate love similar to that experienced, lived and conveyed by the great prophets of the best Old Testament tradition for the Word of God.

Regarding the study and understanding of Sacred Scripture, and encouraging us all to do the same, the pope says of Jerome that, “In an integrated and skillful way he employed all the methodological resources available in his day – competence in the languages in which the word of God was handed down, careful analysis and examination of manuscripts, detailed archaeological research, as well as knowledge of the history of interpretation – in order to point to a correct understanding of the inspired Scriptures.”