EDI TO R I A L UP FRONT BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR
THE POWER OF THE WORD
This
year marks the 1600 th anniversary of the death of St Jerome. It is an anniversary that is likely to pass unnoticed by the world. It is, however, an anniversary that deserves to be marked for many reasons. If you want to learn some of them, the ideal way might be to read the letter of Pope Francis issued on the occasion of his feast-day, September 30 this year. Letters like this are usually known by their opening Latin words. In this case, we need the whole of the first sentence rather than just its first three words Scripturae Sacrae affectus: “devotion to sacred Scripture, a ‘living and tender love’ for the written word of God: this is the legacy that Saint Jerome bequeathed to the Church by his life and labours.” Pope Francis takes the Bible seriously and he is anxious that we should too. Last year, on the same occasion of the feast of St Jerome, he inaugurated an annual Catholic ‘Bible Sunday’ to be held on the third Sunday of the new liturgical year. Bible Sundays have long been a feature of our sister churches of the Reformation tradition. They produce resources on which we might profitably draw as we prepare of our Bible Sunday on January 24. A good link is the Bible Society (www. biblesocietyni.co.uk for Northern Ireland or www.nationalbiblesocietyofireland.ie for the Republic). Bible groups, parishes and schools that have some time might consider ways of preparing for Bible Sunday now before we are deluged by preparations for Christmas. Some people I know took advantage of the coronavirus lockdown to blow the dust off the neglected family bible and start reading again. The “living and tender love for the written word of God” of which Pope Francis speaks is more than simply rising to the challenge to read a long-forgotten book. The Bible for the believer is above all a book of the heart. The Holy Father uses Jerome’s experience as a way of deepening the human
story of our encounter with the Word. He imagines Jerome as an old and experienced sailor passing on his dearly-bought experience to a younger man: “This is what I would like to make you understand, taking you by the hand like an ancient mariner, the survivor of several shipwrecks, attempting to teach a young sailor”. He suggests that to understand St Jerome’s rather complex, and often awkward, personality fully, we need to hold two aspects of his life as a believer in a creative tension. “On the one hand, an absolute and austere consecration to God, renouncing all human satisfaction for love of Christ crucified (cf. 1 Cor 2:2; Phil 3:8.10), and on the other, a commitment to diligent study, aimed purely at an ever deeper understanding of the Christian mystery.” Most of us will be fortunate if we reach the level of consecration to God that is nourished by reading the Gospel story, especially the story of the cross. Few of us will be able to devote ourselves to diligent study, and fewer still to the level Jerome reached. There are some who do it and for them we give thanks. Jerome’s single-handed translation of the whole Bible, which became the official version for centuries of the Latin church, was done with scant resources. Realising that he would need a better grasp of the Hebrew of the Old Testament, he set about finding some one to help him. Hebrew was by then a dead language, familiar through its liturgical use to devout Jews and they too probably had to struggle with its meaning. He recalls three of his Jewish teachers – one from Tiberias who helped him with the translation of Chronicles, another "reputed to be of the highest standing among the Hebrews" led him through the challenging poetry of the Book of Job and Bar Anina who, like Nicodemus and Jesus, “came to him by night at Bethlehem.” Most translations today are done by teams of scholars. The New
Revised Standard Version for example, was the work of about 30 scholars all familiar with the original languages as a result of many years teaching and learning, to say nothing of the astonishing range of electronic aids that have taken the place of Jerome’s stylus and ink. The pope quotes approvingly the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who says “the limits of my language are the limits of my world.” The challenge of making sense of language and meaning is still at the heart of our engagement with the Word. Jerome could fight passionately over a word he thought was incorrect or defend himself when others said he was mistaken. But it is more than just individual words. “One of the problems we face today and not only in religion,” says Pope Francis, “is illiteracy: the skills of interpretation that make us credible interpreters and translators of our own cultural tradition are in short supply. I would like to pose a challenge to young people in particular: begin exploring your heritage. Christianity makes you heirs of an unsurpassed cultural patrimony of which you must take ownership. Be passionate about this history which is yours. Dare to fix your gaze on the young Jerome who, like the merchant in Jesus’ parable, sold all that he had in order to buy the 'pearl of great price' (Mt 13:46).”
Brendan McConvery CSsR Editor
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