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…in September

We celebrate a trio of indomitable Doctors of the Church in September who were known for a combination of spiritual intensity and insightful Scripture commentaries: Saint Jerome, Saint John Chrysostom, and Saint Hildegard of Bingen.

Saint Jerome, whose feast falls on 30 September, was the patristic translator of the Old Testament and Gospels from the original Hebrew and Greek which became part of the Latin “Vulgate” edition—used by the Church for centuries after—and an author of extensive biblical commentaries. He lived at the turn of the 5th century, and the arc of his life makes quite a story. An unpromising start as a wayward, pagan philosophy student in Rome was followed by a conversion to Christianity and a journey of transformation through ascetical penance, prayer, and an ever-deepening scholarly life. After tackling the Gospels, he undertook the translation of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew instead of later Greek translations, and so he moved to the Holy Land in pursuit of a better understanding of Hebrew language and commentaries. His quest began with several years of prayer and preparation in the Syrian desert. He proposed that “whoever is ignorant of the Scriptures is ignorant of Christ”, and so he centred his life around them. He died in Bethlehem in 420 AD.

It is worth noting that even this great Saint and scholar was a struggling three-dimensional human with a sarcastic pen, famous temper, and fiery personality: God does not wait for us to be perfect to give us a vocation in the world. It is a good reminder that we can fight for the kingdom of God even while battling our own shortcomings, and that every element of our personality can be put to good use. The key, such Saints can teach us, is to keep returning to and relying upon God’s grace, rather than shirking or postponing the work he has for us in the world.

Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Hildegard might also be said to fall under the “indomitable” category. Saint John (13 September) was a contemporary of Saint Jerome, born in Syria and dying in Turkey. His army-officer father died shortly after he was born and he was raised by his intelligent young mother, who ensured he obtained both a solid Classical education and training in Christian piety amid the turbulent religious battles of Antioch at that time. After encountering the earnest and gentle Bishop Meletius, the trajectory of his studies turned from the secular to the spiritual, and his life oriented towards the priesthood. He often gave hours-long, eloquent sermons full of insight, uncompromising moral zeal, and wit. He was eventually appointed Bishop of Constantinople under extremely difficult circumstances.

From an inauspicious start as a quiet, sickly member of a large family, Saint Hildegard of Bingen (17 September) also went on to become a formidable Doctor of the Church. An extraordinary polymath, she was not only a prolific writer of all kinds of theology, hymns, poems, and scientific treaties, but a respected Abbess, teacher, and spiritual advisor. Quite startling for a woman from the 12th century whose own family had shown little interest in her education, and who was tucked away in an obscure Benedictine monastery in Germany from a young age. But her story is that of a prayerful lover of God who turned all her energies to his purposes through every avenue that she could find. Her interior life, steeped in mystical visions and a daily immersion in the word of God, blossomed into a great and influential tree by the end of her long life, to the glory of her creator.

Hildegard, Jerome, and John on Scripture

“It is not possible…ever to exhaust the mind of the Scriptures. It is a well which has no bottom,” said Saint John Chrysostom in his homily 19 on The Acts of the Apostles, and in homily 37 on the Gospel of John: “The divine words, indeed, are a treasury containing every sort of remedy.” Saint Jerome spoke lovingly of the importance of keeping the word of God close to us: “What honey is sweeter than to know the wisdom of God?” and “May it be for you as your necklaces and your earring.” He also reminds us to go deeper: “Just as we have to seek gold in the earth, for the kernel in the shell, for the chestnut’s hidden fruit beneath its hairy coverings, so in Holy Scripture we have to dig deep for its divine meaning.”

Jerome faced the struggles any biblical translator does, balancing accuracy with accessibility (in his time, doubly challenging because contemporary Latin was rather inflexible in character). He aimed to capture but also to illuminate God’s word, and did so as prayerfully as possible, but every language has its own flavours and idioms from which it cannot be separated. There are layers of word senses in both the original and destination language, and for Scripture there is of course the Divine inspiration to consider as well, so it cannot be a purely academic exercise. But all these great biblical scholars agree: a relationship with the word of God in the Bible is essential, so translation of the texts is necessary—how deep of a relationship can anyone obtain today with a text in Ancient Greek or Ancient Hebrew after all? Perhaps the key lies in remembering that whatever translation we read is a living thing and not just “words”, and trying not to get stuck on the surface, especially in our personal or communal prayer lives. This quote attributed to Saint Hildegard puts this into very poetic terms: “Underneath all the texts, all the sacred psalms and canticles, these watery varieties of sounds and silences, terrifying, mysterious, whirling and sometimes gestating and gentle, must somehow be felt in the pulse, ebb, and flow of the music that sings in me. My new song must float like a feather on the breath of God.”

“O God,” reads the Collect on the 30th, “who gave the Priest Saint Jerome a living and tender love for Sacred Scripture, grant that your people may be ever more fruitfully nourished by your Word and find in it the fount of life.” There are many images for the role Sacred Scripture plays in our lives, but “food” and “fountain” are two of the most recurrent. Both images are dual aspects of the same point: God’s word, flowing through Scripture from unseen depths, brings life. And life in and with God means more than independent self-fulfilment: it entails life with the Church and at the service of others. While all three September Saints mentioned here are great intellectuals, they were far from being ivory-tower academics because they were rooted in the Scriptures. Time and again they remind us in their writings and teachings to take up the Gospel message, that is to love and serve others. Intellectual charity despite clear profundity and originality is a characteristic of Saint Hildegard as well, as Pope Benedixt XVI flagged when he declared her a Doctor of the Church in 2012.

England’s Friend, Another Doctor

Another Doctor of the Church, celebrated on the 3rd of this month, who embodied that intellectual and personal humility despite his elevated position, is Saint Gregory the Great (depicted in this issue’s Art enclosure). It was he who sent the “Apostle to the English”—Saint Augustine—to convert Kent, and though he never visited our shores himself, that one act revivified the spread of the Gospel here in the late 6th century. This “Servant of the Servants of God” made a point of dining with twelve impoverished people every evening, knowing that the poor can be hungry for the sustenance of both bread and the word of God. He reminded his flock that “we cannot truly love God without loving our neighbour, nor can we truly love our neighbour without loving God.” Pope Benedict XVI once said of him that “he was a passionate reader of the Bible, which he approached not simply with a speculative purpose: from Sacred Scripture, he thought, the Christian must draw not theoretical understanding so much as the daily nourishment for his soul, for his life as man in this world.”