Two famous saints, revered not only in the Catholic Church but also by Lutherans and Anglicans recently had their feast days celebrated.

St Jerome

The Guardian had an article about the Roman Catholic Synod which began on Wednesday, October 4, 2023 (emphases mine):

Women will be allowed to vote for the first time at a meeting of bishops getting under way in Rome on Wednesday, as the Vatican seeks to address some of the church’s thorniest issues in an agenda that has rattled many conservatives.

In an unprecedented move, Pope Francis approved changes to the norms governing the Synod of Bishops in April, paving the way for women to hold 54 of the 365 votes as the church charts out its path for the future.

“For women, this is an extraordinary step forward,” María Lía Zervino, the director of the World Women’s Observatory, told Associated Press. “Not only because of these events in October in Rome, but because the church has found a different way of being church.”

The three-week, closed-door synod will see hundreds of delegates delve into some of the hot-button issues facing the church, from the role of women to priestly celibacy and the blessing of gay couples. The meetings will end with a vote on specific proposals that are then put to the pope for his consideration in the coming years.

Rather than focus on a single topic as is usual, this synod’s agenda will address the broad question of how the Catholic church can be more inclusive. The change is reflected in the voting structure, with lay people also being allowed to vote for the first time.

A few days earlier, on Saturday, September 30, The Times featured an article on the Synod by the Most Rev John Wilson is Archbishop of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Southwark, in south London, ‘The church will listen to its flock at momentous synod’, which made reference to St Jerome:

Today marks the feast day of St Jerome, one of the four great Latin Fathers of the Catholic church.

He played a crucial role in the 4th century by translating the Bible into Latin — the common language at the time — thereby making it accessible to a wider audience.

St Jerome’s translation, known as the Vulgate, became the standard scriptural text for the next 1,000 years. More than this, he worked tirelessly to explain the meaning of scripture so that the Bible was not just read but truly understood and lived by ordinary people.

St Jerome’s motivation was his insatiable love and passion for proclaiming the word of Christ in the Gospel. “Ignorance of scripture,” he wrote, “is ignorance of Christ”. At heart, he wanted to open this word to as many people as possible, so that by encountering Jesus Christ they might know his love and share his life.

It’s St Jerome’s passion for sharing his faith that I have in mind as I prepare to take part in the Synod on Synodality in Rome, a month-long assembly of more than 350 worldwide participants, including about 70 lay people, called by Pope Francis to reflect on how all the members of the church around the world can live out and share together the church’s mission.

The Pope’s desire for the synod echoes St Jerome: to renew the church’s servant mission by sharing more effectively the love of the Gospel in the world.

To achieve this requires a renewed communion, that common union of faith that inspires the church’s outreach. The word synod is rooted in two Greek words: “sun” (meaning together), and “hodos” (meaning way). We seek to make our way together, united in Christ, himself the way, truth and life. Essential to this journey is accompaniment, walking with each other, whoever that other is …

In our synodal reflections in the Archdiocese of Southwark, I have been struck by the distanced way in which some people have spoken about “the church”. It was as if the church was something “other”, rather than a home to which we belong, a body in which we each form a part. St Jerome wrote that the true temple of Christ is the soul of the faithful. This is surely something to discover afresh …

In the sentiment of St Jerome, if our words are failed by our actions, it is no wonder people may begin to think, “why don’t you act as you preach?’ …

Faith in Christ is something truly joyful. It offers hope to the world and to each person. For a snapshot, just search the internet for scenes of World Youth Day in Lisbon this summer where more than 1.5 million young Catholics gathered to celebrate their belonging to Christ and his church. Like St Jerome, these young people were enflamed with the insatiable passion to share the message of the Gospel …

I hadn’t really read about St Jerome in detail, even though I knew he was one of the early Doctors of the Church. They were educated theologians who translated manuscripts, communicated doctrine and condemned heresy, of which there are several which arose during the earliest days of the Church. Wikipedia tells us:

In the 1920 encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus, Pope Benedict XV refers to Jerome as the church’s “Greatest Doctor”.^[3]

Jerome’s Wikipedia entry says that he was born on the Dalmatian border between 342 and 347. That is interesting itself, as I am currently writing about Paul’s letter to Titus while he was in Crete. However, Titus later went to evangelise Dalmatia, which Paul mentions at the end of 2 Timothy.

He was born in Stridon, which was not far from the present-day Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia, located on the Dalmatian border. He went to study rhetoric and philosophy in Rome. In his free time he engaged in the activities that many young university men do. He had a particular interest in young women —  not unlike his contemporary, another Doctor of the Church, Augustine of Hippo had at that age.

After his escapades, Jerome felt guilty. The only thing that assuaged his conscience at the time were visits to the catacombs in Rome on Sundays. A line from Virgil came to his mind again and again:

On all sides round horror spread wide; the very silence breathed a terror on my soul.

Although Jerome initially feared Christianity, he was baptised some time between 360–369 in Rome. He then decided to lead an ascetic lifestyle and went to the desert of Chalcis near Antioch (Syria) to live with like-minded people. There he met Jews who had converted to Christianity. One of them taught him Hebrew. Jerome spent much of this time studying and writing.

James Kiefer’s Christian Biographies has an excellent collection of the lives of canonised saints and other prominent Christians, including Protestants. He says that Jerome had a break from the desert and went to Trier in Germany for a time before returning to the Middle East, this time to Antioch:

On a visit to Trier, he found himself attracted to the monastic life, which he tested in a brief but unhappy experience as a hermit in the deserts of Syria. At Antioch, he continued his studies in Hebrew and Greek.

Afterwards, he went to what we call Istanbul:

In 379, he went to Constantinople where he studied under Gregory of Nazianzus.

Gregory of Nazianzus is another early Doctor of the Church.

Then he returned to Rome for a prestigious assignment before heading to Bethlehem:

From 382 to 384 he was secretary to Pope Damasus I, and spiritual director of many noble Roman ladies who were becoming interested in the monastic life. It was Damasus who set him the task of making a new translation of the Bible into Latin — into the popular form of the language, hence the name of the translation: the Vulgate. After the death of Damasus, Jerome returned to the East, and established a monastery at Bethlehem, where he lived and worked until his death on 30 September 420.

Wikipedia suggests reasons for Jerome’s departure. He fell out with the clergy in Rome, more about which in a moment.

Part of this falling out was caused by Jerome’s temper which mixed for better or worse with his love of Christian orthodoxy. Kiefer tells us:

Jerome was intemperate in controversy, and any correspondence with him tended to degenerate into a flame war. (His friendship with Augustine [of Hippo], conducted by letter, nearly ended before it began. Fortunately Augustine sized him up correctly, soothed his feelings, and was extremely tactful thereafter.) His hot temper, pride of learning, and extravagant promotion of asceticism involved him in many bitter controversies over questions of theology and of Bible interpretation. However, he was candid at times in admitting his failings, and was never ambitious for either worldly or churchly honors. He was a militant champion of orthodoxy, a tireless worker, and a scholar of rare gifts.

While working for Pope Damasus I, Jerome became a spiritual adviser to a group of women from patrician families. Wikipedia says that three were widows — Lea, Marcella and Paula. Paula’s daughters, Blaesilla and Eustochium, were also in that group. These women had turned away from the hedonistic lifestyle in Rome as the empire began its decline and sought the ascetic lifestyle that Jerome had experienced. Jerome wrote many letters advising women how to lead a pure life in Christ. He knew that many of these letters were being distributed elsewhere in the Roman empire to women who wished to become consecrated virgins, devoting their lives to Christ.

On that topic, Jerome also took exception to the Christian clergy in Rome. Those clergymen and their supporters grew disgruntled with Jerome’s opinions and when Damasus died, they alleged that he had had an affair with Paula. A further complication came when Paula’s daughter Blaesilla died. In an effort to repent from her previous lifestyle, Blaesilla followed Jerome’s ascetic practices, but they affected her health so negatively that she died within four months. Wikipedia says that:

much of the Roman populace were outraged at Jerome for causing the premature death of such a lively young woman. Additionally, his insistence to Paula that Blaesilla should not be mourned and complaints that her grief was excessive were seen as heartless, which further polarized Roman opinion against him.^[23]

It is no wonder that he left for Bethlehem.

The thing to remember about St Jerome is his huge achievement in making the Bible more accessible through the Latin Vulgate (everyday Latin) version.

Kiefer explains the Bible before and after Jerome’s translation:

Vulgate Latin is classical Latin in the first stages of evolving into such modern languages as Spanish, French, and Italian. It has begun the process of changing from an inflected language (in which words have various endings, or inflections, which are used to show the relation of the word to other words in the sentence) to a separate-word language like English (in which additional words, such as prepositions, are used, along with word order, to show the function of the word). Thus, in classical Latin, “He spoke to me,” is DIXIT MIHI or MIHI DIXIT, but in Vulgate Latin it is DIXIT AD ME.

In the second century BC, Jewish scholars in Alexandria, Egypt, had translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Tradition had it that this translation was the work of 70 (or 72) scholars, and accordingly the result was known as the Septuagint (often written as LXX). The LXX contains six or more books (there is some leeway here) not found in the standard Hebrew text, known as the Masoretic Text (or MT), and sometimes reads differently from the MT in particular verses. The New Testament writers, except for Matthew, when they are quoting the Old Testament, usually quote from the LXX. The differences in readings between the MT and the LXX were formerly explained by assuming that the LXX translators were sometimes not very good translators. However, very ancient Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible, recently found at Qumran and elsewhere, often agree with the LXX against the MT. Accordingly, it is now generally supposed that the LXX is a fairly accurate translation of Hebrew manuscripts available at the time, and that sometimes the manuscripts that the LXX translators worked from differed from the manuscripts that became the basis for the standardised Hebrew text that we know today.

The early Christians, most of whom knew Greek but not Hebrew, were accustomed to use the LXX as their version of the Old Testament Scriptures. (So, for that matter, did most Jews living in the Roman Empire outside of the land of Israel itself.) The Old Latin translation had been made from the Greek. But Jerome was determined to make his translation from the Hebrew, partly because he considered it to be more accurate, and partly because he wanted a text that he could use as a basis for argument with Jewish opponents, without having them object, “But that is not what the Hebrew text says.”

Intending a translation from the Hebrew, he ran into a difficulty with the Psalms. They were used regularly in public and private worship, and many Christians knew them well enough to notice and resent any radical changes from the wording they had always used. So Jerome translated the Psalms from the Greek, and salved his scholarly feelings by publishing a translation of the Psalms from the Hebrew in an Appendix.

In the end, he produced a version of the Bible that early Christians could understand but which was also accurate as a translation from Hebrew.

Wikipedia says that he is the patron saint:

of translators, librarians, and encyclopedists.^[39]

Also:

Jerome is the second-most voluminous writer – after Augustine of Hippo (354–430) – in ancient Latin Christianity.

St Francis of Assisi

At the weekend, GB News interviewed an Anglican priest who held a special service for pets on Sunday, October 1.

The presenter could not — rightly so — understand why she was doing that. She replied that October 4 was St Francis of Assisi’s feast day. As we know, he was said to be a great lover of animals.

The presenter asked whether she would be explaining to the congregation who the great saint was. She said that she probably would not get into too much detail. For her, the animals were the main feature.

A number of Anglican-affiliated churches in the West have an animal service around this time. Fortunately, our church opted for its usual Harvest service of thanksgiving. The church looked beautiful, enhanced with flowers, fruit and vegetables grown by the congregation in our local allotments. Who knew that a pumpkin or a squash could make such a splendid adornment in church? I learned something that day. But I digress.

More striking to me than his love of nature was Francis’s mission to the Holy Land and care of the lepers in Italy — as well as his embracing poverty and ability to found a new religious congregation whose roots spread far and wide.

Wikipedia tells us that Giovanni Pietro di Bernardone was born in Assisi in 1181. His father Pietro was a wealthy silk merchant who loved France and married a French noblewoman from Provence. Pietro nicknamed his son Francesco (“Free man” or “Frenchman”) and the name stuck.

Francis’s parents loved him dearly and indulged him. He was a handsome young man dressed in the finest clothes and worked for his father. He also enjoyed all the pleasures a young man of wealth would.

However, even then, he began to experience a distaste for the world that would shape the rest of his life. One story is that of the beggar. One day, when selling his father’s wares in the marketplace, a beggar asked him for alms. At the conclusion of his business, Francis sought out the beggar and gave him everything he had in his pockets. His father was furious. His friends were derisory. The second story relates to his time in the army of Walter III, the Count of Brienne, in Puglia. At that time, there was no united Italy. The region was comprised of a series of duchies, some of which were ruled by Frenchmen, such as Walter III. While in Puglia, he had a vision which caused him to return to Assisi and renounce his wealth.

In Assisi, Francis became preoccupied with poverty, such that, when friends asked if he was going to get married, the young man replied:

“Yes, a fairer bride than any of you have ever seen”, meaning his “Lady Poverty”.^[7]

Francis was nothing if not dramatic. He went on pilgrimages and had visions. He prayed a lot. One episode changed his life forever:

He said he had a mystical vision of Jesus Christ in the forsaken country chapel of San Damiano, just outside Assisi, in which the Icon of Christ Crucified said to him, “Francis, Francis, go and repair My church which, as you can see, is falling into ruins.” He took this to mean the ruined church in which he was presently praying, and so he sold some cloth from his father’s store to assist the priest there.^[16]When the priest refused to accept the ill-gotten gains, an indignant Francis threw the coins on the floor.^[7]

In order to avoid his father’s wrath, Francis hid in a cave near San Damiano for about a month. When he returned to town, hungry and dirty, he was dragged home by his father, beaten, bound, and locked in a small storeroom. Freed by his mother during Bernardone’s absence, Francis returned at once to San Damiano, where he found shelter with the officiating priest, but he was soon cited before the city consuls by his father. The latter, not content with having recovered the scattered gold from San Damiano, sought also to force his son to forego his inheritance by way of restitution. In the midst of legal proceedings before the Bishop of Assisi, Francis renounced his father and his patrimony.^[7]Some accounts report that he stripped himself naked in token of this renunciation, and the bishop covered him with his own cloak.^[17][18]

He absented himself for two months, begging and working in the scullery of a monastery. When he returned to Assisi, he went begging for stones to repair the chapel of San Damiano, which he gradually restored. Afterwards, he restored other chapels near Assisi:

among them San Pietro in Spina (in the area of San Petrignano in the valley about a kilometer from Rivotorto, today on private property and once again in ruin); and the Porziuncola, the little chapel of St. Mary of the Angels in the plain just below the town.^[7] This later became his favorite abode.^[16]

It was during this time that he began caring for lepers in a colony near Assisi. James Kiefer’s biography of Francis says:

In his day the most dreaded of all diseases was something known as leprosy. (It is probably not the same as either the modern or the Biblical disease of that name.) Lepers were kept at a distance and regarded with fear and disgust. Francis cared for them, fed them, bathed their sores, and kissed them.

Francis was an early dumpster diver:

He got his meals, not by asking for money so that he might live at the expense of others, but by scrounging crusts and discarded vegetable from trash-bins, and by working as a day laborer, insisting on being paid in bread, milk, eggs, or vegetables rather than in money.

It sounds incredible, particularly for an era known for strict social and class rules, yet:

Soon a few companions joined him.

In 1210:

the Pope authorized the forming of the Order of Friars Minor, commonly called the Franciscans. (“Friar” means “brother,” as in “fraternity”, and “minor” means “lesser” or “younger.” I take the meaning to be that a Franciscan, meeting another Christian, is to think, “I am your brother in Christ, and your younger brother at that, bound to defer to you and to give you precedence over myself.”)

The Order became a sensation in Italy:

Then, as now, many persons were deeply attracted by Francis and his air of joy, abandonment, and freedom. What is overlooked is that these were made possible only by his willingness to accept total poverty, not picturesque poverty but real dirt, rags, cold, and hunger, and lepers with real pus oozing from their sores and a real danger of infection. Many idealistic young men were joining the Order in a burst of enthusiasm and then finding themselves not so sure that such extremes of poverty were really necessary.

In 1219, during the time of the Crusades (1096 to 1291), Francis went on a mission to the Holy Land to convert Muslims. There he met a sultan:

He was given a pass through the enemy lines, and spoke to the Sultan, Melek-al-Kamil. Francis proclaimed the Gospel to the Sultan, who replied that he had his own beliefs, and that moslems were as firmly convinced of the truth of Islam as Francis was of the truth of Christianity. Francis proposed that a fire be built, and that he and a moslem volunteer would walk side by side into the fire to show whose faith was stronger. The Sultan said he was not sure that a moslem volunteer could be found. Francis then offered to walk into the fire alone. The Sultan who was deeply impressed but remained unconverted. Francis proposed an armistice between the two warring sides, and drew up terms for one; the Sultan agreed, but, to Francis’s deep disappointment, the Christian leaders would not. Francis returned to Italy, but a permanent result was that the Franciscans were given custody of the Christian shrines then in moslem hands.

The Franciscans grew and grew. As such, the Order had to evolve. This involved property and possessions, for practical purposes:

When there were only a few friars, they were all known to Francis personally, and the force of his personality kept the original ideals of the Order alive in them. Now that the Order was larger, this was no longer enough. In 1220 Francis resigned as minister-general of the Order, and in 1221 he agreed to a new and modified rule, which he did not approve, but could not resist. He died on 4 October 1226. The Franciscan split into the Conventual Franciscans, who held a limited amount of property in common, and the Spiritual Franciscans, who disavowed all property. They taught that Christ and the twelve apostles had held no property, singly or jointly. This view offended those who held property, and was declared to be heretical (proof text, John 18:10; Jesus said to Peter, “Put up thy sword….”). In 1318, several Spiritual Franciscans were burned at the stake in Marseilles.

This controversy over poverty extended into the tenure of Pope John XXII, the Avignon pope who loved mustard. In 1322, he:

commissioned experts to examine the idea of poverty based on belief that Christ and the apostles owned nothing. The experts disagreed among themselves, but the majority condemned the idea on the grounds that it would deny the church’s right to have possessions. The Franciscan chapter held in Perugia in June 1322 responded with two encyclicals stating that all judgments made by the Roman Church were to be regarded as final and could not be revoked if they were not erroneous.^[58] By the bull Ad conditorem canonum of 8 December 1322,^[58] John XXII declared it ridiculous to pretend that every scrap of food given to the friars and eaten by them belonged to the pope, refused to accept ownership over the goods of the Franciscans in future and granted them exemption from the rule that absolutely forbade ownership of anything even in common, thus forcing them to accept ownership. On 12 November 1323, he issued the bull Quum inter nonnullos, which declared “erroneous and heretical” the doctrine that Christ and his apostles had no possessions whatsoever.^[59][60]

John XXII did not fully resolve the matter until 1329:

Influential members of the order protested, such as the minister general Michael of Cesena, the English provincial William of Ockham, and Bonagratia of Bergamo. In reply to the argument of his opponents that Nicholas III’s bull Exiit qui seminat was fixed and irrevocable, John XXII issued the bull Quia quorundam on 10 November 1324,^[58] in which he declared that it cannot be inferred from the words of the 1279 bull that Christ and the apostles had nothing, adding: “Indeed, it can be inferred rather that the Gospel life lived by Christ and the Apostles did not exclude some possessions in common, since living ‘without property’ does not require that those living thus should have nothing in common.”^[61]With the bull Quia vir reprobus of 16 November 1329, John replied to Michael of Cesena’s Appellatio.^[62]

Returning to Francis, James Kiefer gives us the saint’s first letter to all Christians:

O how happy and blessed are those who love the Lord and do as the Lord himself said in the gospel: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and your whole soul, and your neighbor as yourself. Thereofore, let us love God and adore him with pure heart and mind. This is his particular desire when he says: True worshipers adore the Father in spirit and truth. For all who adore him must do so in the spirit of truth. Let us also direct to him our praises and prayers, saying: “Our Father, who are in heaven,” since we must always pray and never grow slack.

Furthermore, let us produce worthy fruits of penance. Let us also love our neightbors as ourselves. Let us have charity and humility. Let us give alms because these cleanse our souls from the stains of sin. Men lose all the material things they leave behind in this world, but they carry with them the reward of their charity and the alms they give. For these they will recieve from the Lord the reward and recompense they deserve. We must not be wise and prudent according to the flesh. Rather we must be simple, humble and pure. We should never desire to be over others. Instead, we ought to be servants who are submissive to every human being for God’s sake. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on all who live in this way and persevere in it to the end. He will permanently dwell in them. They will be the Father’s children who do his work. They are the spouses, brothers and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There are many Franciscan orders around the world today for both men and women. The Anglican Communion has Franciscan orders, too.

The Poor Clares is also a Franciscan order, founded by Clare of Assisi in 1212:

By 1216, Francis was able to offer Clare and her companions a monastery adjoining the chapel of San Damiano where she became abbess. Clare’s mother, two of her sisters and some other wealthy women from Florence soon joined her new order. Clare dedicated her order to the strict principles of Francis, setting a rule of extreme poverty far more severe than that of any female order of the time.^[3] Clare’s determination that her order not be wealthy or own property, and that the nuns live entirely from alms given by local people, was initially protected by the papal bull Privilegium paupertatis, issued by Pope Innocent III.^[4] By this time the order had grown to number three monasteries.

Wikipedia says that Francis received Christ’s stigmata two years before he died:

While he was praying on the mountain of Verna, during a forty-day fast in preparation for Michaelmas (29 September), Francis is said to have had a vision on or about 13 September 1224, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, as a result of which he received the stigmata. Brother Leo, who had been with Francis at the time, left a clear and simple account of the event, the first definite account of the phenomenon of stigmata. “Suddenly he saw a vision of a seraph, a six-winged angel on a cross. This angel gave him the gift of the five wounds of Christ.”^[33]Suffering from these stigmata and from trachoma, Francis received care in several cities (Siena, Cortona, Nocera) to no avail. In the end, he was brought back to a hut next to the Porziuncola. Here he spent his last days dictating his spiritual testament. He died on the evening of Saturday, 3 October 1226, singing Psalm 141, “Voce mea ad Dominum”.

He was canonised in short order:

On 16 July 1228, he was declared a saint by Pope Gregory IX (the former cardinal Ugolino di Conti, a friend of Francis and Cardinal Protector of the Order).

His visit to the sultan kept the Order in good stead long after his death:

… after the fall of the Crusader Kingdom, it would be the Franciscans, of all Catholics, who would be allowed to stay on in the Holy Land and be recognized as “Custodians of the Holy Land” on behalf of the Catholic Church.^[38]

Francis also came up with the idea of the Christmas crèche, or manger scene:

At Greccio near Assisi, around 1220, Francis celebrated Christmas by setting up the first known presepio or crèche (Nativity scene).^[39] His nativity imagery reflected the scene in traditional paintings. He used real animals to create a living scene so that the worshipers could contemplate the birth of the child Jesus in a direct way, making use of the senses, especially sight.^[39] Both Thomas of Celano and Bonaventure, biographers of Francis, tell how he used only a straw-filled manger (feeding trough) set between a real ox and donkey.^[39] According to Thomas, it was beautiful in its simplicity, with the manger acting as the altar for the Christmas Mass.^{[citation needed]}

Francis is the patron saint not only of animals and ecology but also:

against dying alone; against fire; patron of the Franciscan Order and Catholic Action;^[65] of families, peace, and needleworkers.^[66] and a number of religious congregations.^[65]

He is the patron of many churches and other locations around the world, including: Italy;^[66]San Pawl il-Baħar, Malta; Freising, Germany; Lancaster, England; Kottapuram, India; General Trias, Philippines; San Francisco, California;^[66]Santa Fe, New Mexico; Colorado; Salina, Kansas; Metuchen, New Jersey; and Quibdó, Colombia.

St Jerome and St Francis of Assisi are two amazing saints with two amazing life stories. Above all, they fully dedicated their lives to God through His Son Jesus Christ.