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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost

September 30, 2022

Jerome

The Invitatory

Send out your light and your truth, that they may lead me, and bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.

The earth is the Lord’s for he made it: Come let us adore him.

Reading: Luke 24:44-48

Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones

Jerome is reputed to be the foremost biblical scholar of the ancient Church. His translation of the Bible, along with his commentaries and homilies on the Bible, have rendered him a major intellectual force in the Western Church.

It is believed that Jerome was born in 347. He converted and was baptized during his student days in Rome. He studied in Hebrew and Greek. In 379, he went to Constantinople to study under Gregory of Nazianzus. Jerome is best known as the translator of the Bible into Latin. A previous version existed, but Jerome's version far surpassed it in scholarship and in literary quality. Jerome was well versed in classical Latin (as well as Greek and Hebrew), but deliberately translated the Bible into the style of Latin that was actually spoken and written by the majority of persons in his own time. This kind of Latin is known as Vulgate Latin (meaning the Latin of the common people), and accordingly Jerome's translation is called the Vulgate.

Scripture is the accounting of many centuries of how God has revealed himself to God’s people. The readings vary from being forthright and earnest to poetic and mysterious. We come close in our grasp of God, but never can we fully attain that. It is, nonetheless, critically important that we value and honor the tradition of Scripture and its account of and proclamation of the Gospel over so much time. I imagine these verses from Luke’s Gospel were included in the celebration of Jerome because of his work in translating the Bible into Latin and assisting greatly in our understanding of the Gospel message and its revelation through its Biblical account.

These first verses serve as the origin of apostolic preaching and tradition. There is an insistence upon the fact that Jesus must suffer and rise again. The Passion narrative emerged as an established expression in the early Church. The narrative gradually expanded by means of reference to the earlier Scriptures for deeper insight and meaning.

The hope of resurrection is central to Luke. This hope is partly a continuation of an old argument about what counts as Scripture: not just the Pentateuch (as the Sadducees argued), but also the prophets and the writings. And it is an argument about how it is possible to hope in the world.

The fulfillment of the scriptures is still ongoing: what is written in the scriptures has been fulfilled in Jesus. The disciples, who serve as witnesses to Jesus' life and ministry, will proclaim the same message of salvation in his name. There is continuity between God’s promises given to Israel and their fulfillment in Jesus the Messiah. Moreover, Jesus is sending the disciples and conferring upon them the promise of God to be fulfilled in the church. As we still live in the time between Jesus’ ascension and his return, we can reimagine the reality of salvation here and now. As God fulfilled the promises given to Israel in Jesus Christ, we trust God’s faithfulness to these promises given to us.

The Lord's Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven,

    hallowed be thy Name,

    thy kingdom come,

    thy will be done,

        on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

    as we forgive those

        who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

    but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

    and the power, and the glory

   for ever and ever. Amen.