scripture doc

Nehemiah 2:1-8; Psalm 137 Let my tongue be silent if i forget you; Luke 9:57-62

"I will follow you wherever you Go."

The response that Jesus desires from the human heart is placed before us today in the gospel. 

The will of man engaged in the footsteps of Christ, "I will follow where you go."

What is Jesus' response to such a word spoken from the human heart, such a desire expressed. 

"No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God."  There is no room for indecisiveness.  We must mean what we say and say what we mean and recognize that the kingdom before us is worth all we leave behind. 

Today we celebrate the memorial of St. Jerome, a scripture scholar, a hermit, a papal secretary, a guide for souls, and a hot-tempered man of God, not to mention a doctor of the church. 

St. JErome dedicated his life to living the sacred scriptures.  He translated sacred scripture into Latin, learning on his own both Greek and Hebrew.  It is from him we have the "Vulgate" bible, the official bible of the Church, the Latin translation, with a few minor corrections along the way. 

St. Jerome asked the question, "How could one live without knowledge of Scripture, through which one learns to know Christ, who is life of believers?"  The Bible is an instrument "by which God speaks ever day to the faithful," thus it becomes a source of Christian life for all situations and for each person.

He says, "if you pray you speak with the spouse; if you read it is he who speaks with you."

Following on the footsteps of St. Jerome Pope Benedict reminds all that the "privileged place for reading and listening to the Word of God is the liturgy, in which celebrating the Word and making Christ's Body present in the Sacrament, we actualize the Word in our lives and make it present among us...thus, by caring the Word of God within us, we therefore carry within us eternity, eternal life."

"Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ," so coined St. Jerome.  As we avail ourselves to the personal encounter with scripture we avail ourselves to the footsteps of Christ and thus we learn to follow wherever He goes.