Resultados14 letters/passages
jerome · c. 374 · score 0.02
The clergy feed Christ's sheep; I, as a monk, am fed by them. They live from the altar [1 Corinthians 9:13-14]; if I bring nothing to it, the axe is already laid to my root as to a barren tree [Matthew 3:10]. I may not sit in the presence of a priest. He, if I sin, may hand me over to Satan "for the destruction of the …
jerome · c. 374 · score 0.02
Consider Peter — but remember Judas too. Look at Stephen — but look also at Nicolas, condemned in Revelation by the Lord's own voice [Revelation 2:6], whose vile fantasies spawned the Nicolaitan heresy. "Let a man examine himself, and so let him come" [1 Corinthians 11:28]. It is not rank in the church that makes a man …
jerome · c. 374 · score 0.02
If you are not perfect, you have deceived the Lord. The Gospel thunders its warning: "You cannot serve two masters" [Luke 16:13]. Does anyone dare make Christ a liar by trying to serve both God and Mammon? He says it again and again: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me …
jerome · c. 374 · score 0.02
You believe in Christ — then believe his words too: "Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you" [Matthew 6:33]. Take no bag, no staff. The man who is poor with Christ is rich enough. 2. But what am I doing, pestering you again with entreaties? Enough coaxing! Rejected love has every right …
jerome · c. 374 · score 0.02
You are called a "monk" — does the name mean nothing? What brings you, a solitary, into the crowd? The advice I give doesn't come from a sailor who has never lost a ship. I have been lately shipwrecked myself, and my warnings to other voyagers spring from my own terror. On one side, like Charybdis, self-indulgence suck …
jerome · c. 374 · score 0.02
Then blessed will be the servant whom the Lord finds watching [Matthew 24:46]. Then, at the sound of the trumpet [1 Thessalonians 4:16], the earth and all its peoples shall tremble — but you will rejoice. The world will howl when the Lord comes to judge it. The nations will beat their breasts. Kings who were once might …
jerome · c. 374 · score 0.01
Should your father throw himself across the threshold — step over him and keep walking. Fly to the standard of the cross with dry eyes. In a case like this, cruelty is the only true form of love. 3. A day will come — yes, it will come — when you will return as a victor to your true homeland and march through the heaven …
jerome · c. 390 · score 0.01
There is a grief that faith allows. What faith forbids is despair. Let me tell you what Nepotian was. He was a soldier first — he served in the emperor's guard. But his heart was never in it. While other young officers spent their pay on women and horses, he gave his to the poor. He left the army, took holy orders, and …
jerome · c. 390 · score 0.01
Count the disasters of our generation: Adrianople, where an emperor and his army were swallowed by the earth [the Battle of Adrianople in 378 AD, where Emperor Valens was killed by the Visigoths]. The walls of Rome themselves are no longer a guarantee of safety. What the world outside those walls looks like, I do not n …
jerome · c. 374 · score 0.01
Peter's cowardly advice was an offense to the Lord on the eve of his passion [Matthew 16:23]. And when the brothers tried to hold Paul back from going to Jerusalem, his only answer was: "What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be imprisoned but to die at Jerusalem for the name of the L …
jerome · c. 374 · score 0.01
5. Dear brother, weigh the various forms of sin carefully, and don't imagine that the ones I've mentioned are any less damning than idolatry itself. Hear what the apostle says: "Know this: no fornicator, no unclean person, no covetous man — who is an idolater — has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God" [ …
jerome · c. 374 · score 0.01
Now I can spread my sails to the wind, and my closing words will be like the joyful shout of sailors making port. O desert, bright with the flowers of Christ! O solitude, from which come the stones that build the city of the great King in the Apocalypse [Revelation 21:19-20]! O wilderness, blessed with the special pres …
jerome · c. 374 · score 0.01
Letter 14: To Heliodorus, Monk (373-374 AD) [Perhaps the most famous of Jerome's early letters, and one of the most celebrated pieces of Latin prose from this period. Heliodorus — originally a soldier, then a priest — had accompanied Jerome to the East but returned to Aquileia, unable to commit to the ascetic life of t …
jerome · c. 390 · score 0.01
Heliodorus, Small minds cannot grapple with large subjects. The greater the theme, the more completely it overwhelms a writer who lacks the words to match it. Nepotian — who was mine and yours and ours, or rather who was Christ's, and because Christ's all the more ours — has left us behind, old men struck with grief to …