Thursday, September 30, 2010

IT'S THE FEAST DAY OF ONE OF MY FAVOURITE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS...JEROME.

HE TRANSLATED THE BIBLE INTO THE LATIN VULGATE...THE ONE THAT I STUDY...THE DOUAY-RHEIMS BIBLE...WAS TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN THEN TO ENGLISH.

SINCE HE IS THE PATRON OF SCHOOLCHILHREN...I IMPLORE HIM TO PRAY FOR MY GRANDSON...MATTY...WHO STARTED GRADE PRIMARY THIS MONTH.

AMUSING...

MIKE AQUILA...A CONTEMPORARY STUDENT OF THE STUDY OF CHURCH FATHERS...dubbed Jerome “Doctor Cantankerous".  Jerome quarreled with or complained about (or at least growled at) an amazing array of his fellow Fathers: Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, Rufinus, and, of course, Origen (to name just a few).

POEM/SONG ABOUT JEROME
The Thunderer


If you read this out loud you will get the most benefit from it ... or do as I did and hear Mike Aquilina recite aloud in his speech The Church Fathers for Church Teachers. (Mike's speeches are pure gold by the way; highly recommended.)GO HERE TO LISTEN TO MIKE.


OR DOWNLOAD DION'S VERSION HERE FOR 99 CENTS.

The Thunderer by Dion
Format: MP3 Download , From the Album Son Of Skip James



THE THUNDERER

God’s angry man, His crotchety scholar

Was Saint Jerome,

The great name-caller

Who cared not a dime

For the laws of Libel

And in his spare time

Translated the Bible.

Quick to disparage

All joys but learning

Jerome thought marriage

Better than burning;

But didn’t like woman’s

Painted cheeks;

Didn’t like Romans,

Didn’t like Greeks,

Hated Pagans

For their Pagan ways,

Yet doted on Cicero all of his days.



A born reformer, cross and gifted,

He scolded mankind

Sterner than Swift did;

Worked to save

The world from the heathen;

Fled to a cave

For peace to breathe in,

Promptly wherewith

For miles around

He filled the air with

Fury and sound.

In a mighty prose

For Almighty ends,

He thrust at his foes,

Quarreled with his friends,

And served his Master,

Though with complaint.

He wasn’t a plaster sort of a saint.



But he swelled men’s minds

With a Christian leaven.

It takes all kinds

To make a heaven.
*****************************************************

CAPE BRETONESE CHATTER

DO YOU KNOW ANYONE WITH THE NAME JEROME...I RECALL SOMEONE IN MY CHILDHOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD OF ASHBY...BY THAT NAME...A FATHER WITH 10 KIDLETS AND A HUSBAND WITH A MOST SAINTLY WIFE.IN FACT ONE OF HIS DAUGHTERS MARRIED MY UNCLE.THE JEROME I KNEW WAS A THUNDERER TOO.

1 comment:

  1. My brother, Daniel Jerome, now Father Nathaniel (I hope they allowed him to keep the name Jerome) fits the poem exactly. He is in a very cloistered monestary in Quebec and sometimes in New Jersey. We do not get to speak to him often any more.

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