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Saint Jerome, whose feast day we celebrate today, was a restless soul.
He lived in the fourth century, a fascinating era for Christians. Christianity had finally been legalized by the Roman Empire, yet heresies were abundant. Who Jesus was, what he said, what he did, and why his life, death, and resurrection mattered was still being hotly debated.
Jerome jumped head first into that fire.
He spent the majority of his life on the go, traveling throughout the Christian world, interacting with some of the greatest minds the Church has ever known, while translating some of the earliest Christian writings from Greek into Latin.
He even served as secretary to the pope!
But Jerome’s greatest contribution to Christianity was translating the entire bible from Greek into Latin, using some of the earliest manuscripts we have. Jerome’s translations have served as the foundation for translating the bible into nearly every other language on earth.
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If you look for a painting of him, you’ll often see Jerome depicted at his desk, with a quill in one hand, a bible manuscript in the other, and a skull on his desk.
That skull was a reminder of his limited time here on earth.
By all accounts, Jerome used it well.
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May we do the same, embracing today for what it is: a gift best spent in the service of others.
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Image credits: (1) Harvard Business Review (2) Saint Jerome, Caravaggio (3) Physics, American Physical Society
