I wonder if the inhabitants
of Bethlehem or the local Christians who
come to pray in the Nativity Grotto then
go to the Latin parochial church
adjoining it are taken by curiosity as
it takes the tourist coming from afar.
The person, when he enters the square
courtyard dating back to the Middle Ages
and which resembles a nave of the Saint
Catherine Church, asks his guide about
this portrait the statue of which stands
erect on a granite column in the middle
of the courtyard. He is exactly Saint
Jerome who somehow opens the door for us
to visit the nativity of Christ. He
holds in his hand the Bible and looks
upwards as if he repeats to our hearing
his famous saying. “Ignorance of the
holy books is ignorance of Christ”. He
calls upon us to recognize Christ
incarnated in the holy places, so that
we live like him here on earth in order
to quality to live with him in heavens.
If we come few meters
forward we face the bronze gate of the
Church, which in turn, reminds us of
Jerome’s character whom, this time, we
don’t see alone, but in the company of
his friends the saints. Here he is
accompanied by Izebius of Cremona, at
first his aide, then his successor in
running the monastic convent he
established. And here he is accompanied
by Paula and Astochium (the mother and
the daughter). They are among his
followers and faithful disciples.
If we descended to the
grottos adjoining the Nativity Grotto,
other memories of Saint Jerome come back
to us. He lived here for nearly half of
his earthly age which extended to 73
years, of which he spent 34 years in
Bethlehem in a hermitage or a grotto
that carries his name till today (It is
the grotto that gave the name to a group
of grottos called: The Saint Jerome
Grottos). If turned our sight to above
the altar in this hermitage which was
changed today into a small church, we
shall see beautiful mosaic representing
him and his beloved disciples (whom we
referred to shortly: Izebius and Paula
and Astochium). We find his tomb in a
grotto having his portrait holding the
Bible to his heart. To the right, these
words are written: “I loved it with all
my heart”.
2.The Charm of Bethlehem
“I loved it with all my
heart”. It is true that what is meant by
these words are the holy books, the word
of God. But we can also say:
“I loved it with all my heart”, that is
this city, this grotto, this hermitage,
these places. The well-known popular
provesb, “he who lives with the people
for forty days becomes one of them”,
applies to Jerome. How come we don’t
call our saint “the citizen of
Bethlehem”, he who lived in it for 34
years and died near the grotto of his
Lord and God?
Bethlehem enchanted our monk
with its charm. Why is this attraction
for Bethlehem per se? why not Jerusalem,
Nazareth, or the Judean Desert for
example? We here draw the attention to
the fact that Jerome, when he was 25
years old, decides to make the
pilgrimage to the holy places. However,
a serious sickness got him during his
travel and forced him to stay for a long
time in Antioch, Syria. In 386 AD (that
is sixteen centuries ago), he fulfilled
his desire to travel to Palestine. There
he stayed till the end of his life. So,
he had the right to say. “Bethlehem is
my beloved homeland”. Bethlehem remained
dearer to him than his birthplace,
Stridoni in Dalmatia, between Italy and
Yugoslavia. It remained dearer to him
than Rome where he lived for many years
as a happy and lively student in his
youth, then as a monk and as a priest in
his adulthood. He was the friend of the
old Pope, Saint Damasius, and his
secretary. He decided to leave Rome
where his enemies were many in that
city. In Rome, he used to write and
preach about austere and monastic life
and called for a more true and original
Christian life. This aroused the anger
in the ranks of the clergy and the
people and even in the ranks of monks
themselves many of whom were more monks
by name than by deed. By his sermons
about the beauty of monastic life and
profound interpretation the Bible, he
attracted a good number of virgins and a
large number of young men who embraced
the consecrated life. This aroused the
argen of some ruffians who spread rumors
and doubts about him which reached the
extent of fabricating heinous lies
against him.
On this basis, he saw that
it was better to leave Rome, the city of
heresayings and settle in Bethlehem, his
new quiet homeland where he was able to
establish a convent in which he and his
disciples lived according to the Bible,
to inspire the example of the desert
monks near him, to live near the holy
places and discover in them “The Fifth
Gospel”, and to improve his knowledge of
Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek in order to
have a better knowledge of the Bible and
to interpret it in a better way. All of
this, in addition to other causes,
doubtless, prompted him to leave Rome
and settle in the city of Bethlehem
where the incarnate word, Jesus Christ,
was born.
3.The Travel To Bethlehem: Yearning
And Consolation
Jerome did not leave for
Bethlehem without regret. True, there
were many enemies in Rome, but the
friends, disciples and followers of both
sexes were no less, and whom he had to
leave. In Rome, the cultural center of
the Empire, he was able to consult the
teachers of syntax, rhetoric, philosophy
and theology, and go to the best public
and private libraries in Rome, this
living center of Christianity which
contains the remains of Saint Peter and
Saint Paul, and near his holiness the
Pope and the clergy around him. He felt
this deep love for the church and the
Roman See.
Travel here means sacrifice
and leaving many dear persons and
forsaking a style of life he got
accustomed to... Bethlehem was waiting
for him with its poverty and simplicity,
its barren grotto, its manger, and its
poor people. Nevertheless God chose it
to be His first earthly dwelling.
However the God of love
rewarded his servant for this honesty
which made him sacrifice everything in
order to search for the necessary one.
“But seek first his kingdom and his
righteousness, and all these things
shall be yours as well”. (Matthew 6:33)
And there is his God giving
him friends anew, the true friends who
wish to follow his way. When he embarked
from Osta (Rome’s port), his brother
Paulinus (or Paulinianus), the priest
Vinchentius and other hermits
accompanied him in order to stay with
him. Shortly after this, and during his
travel to Antioch (via Cyprus), the
virgin Astochium and her mother Paula
who were from the noble ladies of Rome
dedicated to the Lord, joined him.
During his travel, he met many friends.
In Antioch, he met anew Paulino, the
bishop of this city, who ordained him a
priest some years ago. He also met
Ivagrios, his mentor in monastic life.
He also went to Egypt to visit the great
monks there. He reached, the Nitria
Desert (The Natroun Valley) where ties
of friendship connected him to Blind
Didimos (from Alexandria).
Jesus of the Grotto did not
make him devoid even of books which were
dear to his heart in the same way that
he was badly in need of books as he was
a scholar, juries prudent translation,
and interceptor of the Bible. the
carried with him some of these books
from Rome. These were the books that he
collected with great patience whereby he
copied them or asked that they be copied
from the original manuscripts, or those
books that he translated from Greek. In
addition, he was able to go to books
available in Jerusalem whether they were
Christian or Hebrew. In some instances,
he traveled to Caesarea by the sea in
the north to consult the famous
“Izabella” book, and it is a book
compiled by Originus the Great, that
contained the Bible in six languages
written on six parallel columns. Besides
that, he used to continually enrich his
library with books that he translated
from the Greek language (theological or
monastic books) or those that he copied
from the various manuscripts.
Lastly, there were the holy
places sanctified by the Savior through
this living in them. These holy places
made for the holy places of Rome (with
its churches and catacombs which he
often used to visit), and even these
places surpassed those of Rome. These
holy places were a valuable impetus to
meditate on the mysteries of the Lord,
the Savior, in addition to their being a
great aid to understanding the Bible.
All of this deepened in himself the love
for the local church and the
institutions, holy places, priest and
the faithful people in it. Before he
finally settled in Bethlehem, he
insisted to make the pilgrimage with his
lucky companions to the places
sanctified by the Lord through his
presence in them. Thus he expressed his
piety and he was a learned and able
guide for those who accompanied him.
4. In the Monastery of Bethlehem
The generosity of
Paula, the noble and rich Roman widow,
who like her daughter Astochium left
everything to devote herself to serve
Christ and the poor, and who from the
beginning followed the way of Jerome
since the day, of Rome, enabled him to
build in a short time two monasteries in
Bethlehem for hermits arriving from
Rome: one for men and the other for
virgins and widows. In addition to that,
Paula insisted on building at her own
expense a house for the pilgrims on the
old road between Bethlehem and Jerusalem
on the hill opposite to the Tantour
hill.
At first, that is during the
two or three years required for building
the monasteries, they lived “in a
cramped house” like the majority of the
families at that time. This followed the
example of the poverty of the holy
grotto. The two monasteries, for men and
woman, were near but independent. The
monks and nuns together participated
with the inhabitants of Bethlehem in the
religious celebrations that were held in
the magnificent church built by Empress
Helena and her son Constantine over the
Nativity grotto on Sundays only. Here
everything speaks about the Lord Christ
which, to some extent, made him forget
the memory of the greatness of Christian
Rome and yearning to its churches. This
encouraged him to write to his friends
and followers in Rome urging them to
follow him in Bethlehem. Thus, for
example, he wrote to the noble lady
Marcella, saying:
“It is true that you live in
Rome where there are the holy church,
the remains of the apostles and martyrs,
the true testimony to Christ, the faith
preached by the apostles, paganism which
was overturned, and Christianity which
was glorified. But there are also the
splendor of the city, its greatness and
magnificence, the need to show off, the
curiosity, the habit of greeting and
saluting, hearing and gossiping, and the
need to put up with-even unwillingly-
these masses of people. All of this is
utterly alien to the monastic life of
the monks. What a difference is it from
the village of Christ! We previously
said that everything here is
characterized by rural simplicity.
Regardless of the chanting of psalms,
silence dominates everything. You can
look at any direction: the farmer who
ploughs, you hear him chanting
hallelujah while he holds his plough.
The reaper is occupied with psalms while
sweat runs down his face. The gardener
who prunes his grapevines with his
curved scissors sings one of David’s
hymns. These are the canticles of the
earth on which we are living. These are
the hymns of love as they call them. The
shepherds do not sing other than these
hymns. Their civilization matures on
these bases”. (Letter 46:11-12)
This is the outside
environment of Bethlehem which might be
idealistically described by Jerome. As
for daily life, it evolved inside the
monastery within the framework of the
social life based on work and prayer.
Saint Jerome was the spiritual father
and the head of the men’s community. As
for Saint Paula, she directed the
women’s group. At first, the two groups
were small. However, their number
increased with time. New followers and
new monks came over. Specially when the
Goths under Alarico invaded Rome in 410
A.D., many Christians sought refuge in
the Holy Land specially in Bethlehem
requesting hospitality in the monastery
or in the pilgrims’ house.
All of this caused material
problems in addition to problems related
to organizing the communal life. As for
the material problem, that is, problems
dealing with the cost of living, Saint
Jerome and his group managed through
their manual work as the monks in the
nearby Judean Desert did. At times of
need, Jerome did not hesitate to send
his brother Paulino to his birthplace to
sell a farm that he still owned and use
its price to meet the needs of the
monastery and the pilgrims.
As for organizing the
communal life, it depended, as we
previously mentioned, on work and
prayer.
5. Prayer and Work: Praising God and
Serving People
A) Prayer:
The day of the monks passed
on the rhythm of their prayers. They
prayed together in the early morning and
several times throughout the daytime
(the nine o’clock prayer, the twelfth
o’clock, the three o’clock, and the
evening prayers) and finally at night.
Psalms were the mostly read prayers or
they were sung. Doubtless, the Eucharist
occupied the central place. Jerome was a
priest but he did not undertake the holy
service out of his modesty. Other
priests living in the monastery
celebrated the holy sacraments. However,
this was not always available to the
extent that Saint Epephanius (who
visited the monastery in 362 A.D) found
that the holy Eucharist was not
celebrated since more than a year
because of the unavailability of a
priest. This prompted him to ordain
Paulinos, Jerome’s brother, a priest
against his will. This worsened the
deteriorating relationships with John,
the bishop of Jerusalem, who prevented
them from entering the Nativity church.
However, this situation improved when
five priests entered the service in the
monastery and who undertook the service
in the holy sacraments.
The spiritual life of those
who were dedicated to the Lord was
nourished by the continuous reading of
the Bible. There was an individual
reading accompanied by meditation and a
communal reading nourished by the
explanations of Jerome, the deep and
knowledgeable in whom no love resided
more than the love for the Bible. He
used to say that knowing the Bible means
knowing Christ, and that going deep in
the Old Testament and the New Testament
means delving in the depths of Christ’s
mystery. Jerome used to deliver to his
monks and nuns spiritual lectures based
on the Bible, knowing that he copied or
translated excerpts or whole books from
the Bible. This helped him much to know
the Bible better and to apply it better
because such a deed was transformed into
prayer:
B) Work:
The work of the monks was
manual and mental. They used to conduct
manual work following the habit of the
desert monasteries. Thus they prepared
straw mats and baskets from palm leaves.
In addition to that, they performed
their usual housework in their
monasteries or they contributed to the
various services for the pilgrims in the
neighboring house. They also responded
to the needs of the poor and the
destitute.
As for the mental work, it
had the priority. Thus under the
management of the master Jerome, they
dedicated themselves to studying the
Bible and helped him in his extensive
correspondence or they taught the Latin
language to the children of the town.
Above that they performed parochial
work. They prepared those who preached
to for the sacrament of baptism by
teaching them the Christian facts so
that they lead them to faith based on.
Conviction in life.
In all these deeds, Jerome
was in the vanguard. The monk
Postomianos who shared with him life for
a period of time left us this impressive
testimony about Jerome’s never-tiring
commitment whereby he says:
“He was always preoccupied
with reading, overwhelmed with books. He
did not rest neither at night nor in the
daytime. He was always busy reading or
writing something”. The meager light in
his hermitage, the humidity, and
tiredness caused inflammation of the
eyes.
Although Jerome imprisoned
himself in a small hermitage, and
although he left the world, he did not
sever his relationship with anybody,
whether his faithful friends or his
intellectuals polemics. The witness of
these relations is his wide
correspondence with many persons. His
one hundred and fifty letters written
mostly in Bethlehem are worthy of
interest for their from and content.
They also clearly reveal to us his rich
personality, his delicate and fierce
nature, the extremely sensitive and very
angry, and the austere and the merciful.
The witness of his polemic
discussions is the various polemic books
that indicate to us the nature of the
intellectual fighter in the issues of
creed and life. He was particularly
interested in the Original discussion
(knowing that, at first he was a great
admirer of Originos, but later he became
an opponent of some of his beliefs) and
the Palagian discussions (concerning the
relationship between the grace of God
and the freedom of man). The Pelagians
who came to Palestine from Africa with
their leader Pelagius were about to burn
his monastery in 416 A.D. Jerome himself
was exposed to fatal danger. This old
scholar escaped with his monks by
seeking refuge in the tower of the
monastery.
6. The Beginning And The End:
The grain of wheat which
dies and gives life.
Only three years remained in
the life of our saint. He was preceded
to heavens by some of those accompanied
him from Rome among them were Paula and
her daughter . Astochium. This struggler
who was undone by tiredness, hard work,
the sacrifices of austere life and
polemics, this fighter for the sake of
God who praised Him in all means and
glorified Him with all his night, was
always looking up to Heavens. When God
summoned him to come to Him at the age
of nearly seventy-three in 419 (or 420
A.D.), he answered the call of his
Greator. After his death, his
monasteries continued for some time, but
they were closed due to the lack of new
elements that provide them with
continuity.
Today not only his (empty
tomb) reminds pilgrims and the
inhabitants of Bethlehem of him, but
particularly his “spirit” that permeates
his grottos. Anyone who visits these
grottos breathes the love of the Bible,
the love of the church, and desires to
live a Christian life which is more
simple and more true.
We wish that immortal
message of Saint Jerome find its way to
our heart. Through this, the aim of this
sixteenth centennial memory of his
coming to this holy city is realized by
a saying of his: “to mix our tears with
the tears of others, that is, to love
the stranger a true love, and to live
the suffering Christ who is rising from
the dead a deep love”.
