Vigils Reading – St Jerome

A letter from St Jerome to

PAULINUS

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You see how, carried away by my love of the scriptures, I have exceeded

the limits of a letter yet have not fully accomplished my object. We have heard

only what it is that we ought to know and to desire, so that we too may be able to

say with the psalmist: “My soul breaks out with the fervent desire it always has

had for your judgments”. But the saying of Socrates about himself — “I only

know this: that I know nothing”—is fulfilled in our case also.

The New Testament I will briefly deal with. Matthew, Mark, Luke and

John are the Lord’s team of four, the true cherubim or store of knowledge. [Like

the description in the prophet Ezekiel,] with them the whole body is full of eyes,

they glitter as sparks, they run and return like lightning, their feet are straight

feet, and lifted up, their backs also are winged, ready to fly in all directions.

They hold together each by each and are interwoven one with another:

like wheels within wheels, they roll along and go wherever the breath of the Holy

Spirit wafts them. The apostle Paul writes to seven churches… He instructs

Timothy and Titus; he interceded with Philemon for his runaway slave. Of him I

think it better to say nothing than to write inadequately.

The Acts of the Apostles seem to relate a mere unvarnished narrative,

descriptive of the infancy of the newly born church; but when once we realize

that their author is Luke the physician whose praise is in the gospel, we shall see

that all his works are medicine for the sick soul.

The apostles James, Peter, John and Jude have published seven epistles

at once spiritual and to the point, short and long, short that is in words but

lengthy in substance so that there are few indeed who do not find themselves in

the dark when they read them. The apocalypse of John has as many mysteries as

words. In saying this I have said less than the book deserves. All praise of it is

inadequate; manifold meanings lie hid in its every word.

I beg of you, my dear brother, to live among these books, to meditate upon

them, to know nothing else, to seek nothing else. Does not such a life seem to

you a foretaste of heaven here on earth? Let not the simplicity of the scripture or

the poorness of its vocabulary offend you: for these are due either to the faults of

translators or else to deliberate purpose: for in this way it is better fitted for the

instruction of an unlettered congregation as the educated person can take one

meaning and the uneducated another from one and the same sentence.

I am not so dull or so forward as to profess that I myself know it, or that I

can pluck upon the earth the fruit which has its root in heaven, but I confess that

I should like to do so. I put myself before the man who sits idle and, while I lay

no claim to be a master, I readily pledge myself to be a fellow-student… Let us

learn upon earth that knowledge which will continue with us in heaven.