Personal Jesus
“Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ”
-St. Jerome
Today we celebrate the feast day of St. Jerome, the man who is responsible for the translation of the Bible into Latin, giving Christians the version of Scriptures known as the Vulgate. The Latin Vulgate version of the Bible is arguably the most influential translation of the Scripture in the history of the Church. I often like to refer to St. Jerome as a caveman, as he spent a large part of his life translating the Scriptures in the cave in Bethlehem where Jesus was born. It always seems appropriate that he would give birth through his writing to a translation of the Word of God that would enlighten so many Christians in the very place where the Word of God was born and took on flesh.
One blessing of the modern world is our easy access to books. It is common knowledge that the Bible today is a perennial best seller. Unfortunately it also seems that even though many bibles are printed and sold each year, there are too many who simply buy a copy that will be placed on a shelf or a coffee table where it is not regularly read. Too many Christians simply have their own personal version of who Jesus is today and opinions of what he would and would not have said and done on earth that does not always correspond with Sacred Scripture. There often seems to be a large group of Christians who simply want to caricature Jesus as a “nice guy” who talked about love and caring for others within one’s comfort zone.
The Gospels paint a different picture of Jesus, and rightfully so. It hardly seems like anyone would ever want to crucify a “nice guy”. It usually takes a person who is regularly challenging the powers that be to push someone to murder that person. Jesus challenged the people of His day and continues to challenge us to live very differently than the way we currently live. He challenges us to love and care for others, but as Staretz Zossima of The Brothers Karamazov reminds us,
…love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it- at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.
May each of us remember to spend some time with the Sacred Scriptures each day so that we will not be ignorant of Christ, but will daily encounter His challenging presence in our lives.
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