Jerome is on a short list of those illustrious persons from history to be designated a “Doctor of the Church.” It’s as high an honor as one can receive–a sort of “Saint Among Saints.” He lived from roughly 347 to 420, and is credited with beginning the project of translating the Hebrew and Greek scriptures (the canonical Old and New Testaments) into Latin. He was an extraordinary scholar and he is reported to have spoken Hebrew so fluently and with such perfect accent as to often be confused for a Jew. Likewise, his Greek and Latin were exquisitely refined. The Latin Bible–known as the Vulgate–continued in use in worship for century-upon-century among Roman Catholics…even, and notably, long after anyone outside of the educated clerics either spoke or could comprehend Latin.
What I find worth focusing on from Jerome’s life is that he loved to travel. He regarded travel as being every bit as essential to his faith journey as anything else that he did. He went from place to place with a sincere desire to discover what people in that place had learned about life, about science, about philosophy, about God. Jerome was quite the opposite of the stereotypical “Ugly American” tourist–he wanted to go places that were unlike what he was used to, and approached new people and new experiences (and apparently new languages as well) as gifts: gifts that Jerome treasured, learned from, and applied to his deepen his own awareness and experience of God.
Let’s take a simple proposition put forward for Jews and Christians alike: the assertion that humans are created “in the image of God.” This is not a declaration that only Jews and/or Christians are so created, but that this assertion includes Muslims and Hindus and atheists and Peruvians and Egyptians and Chinese and Canadians and Hopis and Letts and Maoris and cranky people and drunks and evangelicals and homosexuals and elderly people and severely disabled people and gamblers and virgins ALL!
Life opens up for us when we consider even the possibility that everyone without exception can be for us portals to what is Truly Divine. Life changes for us when we go and find this out!