Covenant

As a hope-filled, Christ-centered people, the community of St. Jerome Parish will strive to make Christ visible as we reach out to love, serve and support all God's people.

Mission

In love and service St. Jerome Parish will seek to meet it's covenant commitment through life giving liturgy, religious education, outreach and community building.

Mission Activities

• Reach out to parishioners and all people in a way that is inviting, friendly and inclusive.

• Be a centre of caring and concern throughout our parish, especially for the vulnerable, the poor and the young, and consider their needs when making our parish decisions.

• Be compassionate to those in need in our community, country and throughout the world.

• Maintain and develop relationships of an interfaith nature.

• Develop and support personal and communal spiritual growth through our worship, educational programs and development of parish leadership.

• Develop all avenues of communication to enhance effective management and ministry that would allow all parishioners to be informed and have the opportunity to participate in parish life.

Lived: 347 A.D. - 420 A.D.

Canonized: The formal canonization process that we know today did not exist when St. Jerome died. He was commonly regarded where he lived as a holy man and was acclaimed a saint. Other local churches accepted that designation and added him to their list of saints.

Memorial (Feast Day): September 30

Saint Jerome is one of the four great doctors of the western church and the most learned of the Latin Fathers. He was born of well-to-do parents at Stridon (exact location unknown, but at that time it was part of North Eastern Italy, but today it is thought to be in  modern day Bosnia).

His educa­tion, begun at home, was continued in Rome when Jerome was about 12. There he studied grammar, rhetoric and philosophy. It is believed that he was baptized when approximately 20 years old, near the end of his Roman education, probably by Pope Liberius.

Saint Jerome was torn between a love of Christ and an admiration for pagan literature. He spent twenty years in travel and impermanent residences. While in Treves, Gaul, he was profoundly attracted to monasticism. He journeyed back to his homeland and later set out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. While resting at Antioch in mid-lent, 375 A.D., during a near-fatal illness, he had his celebrated dream in which, having been dragged before a tribunal of the Lord, he was accused of liking Cicero better than Jesus Christ. Following this dream Jerome fled to the Syrian desert and there, among the hermits made up his mind to devote his learning to the Church.

Many of his early works were polemics which were directed against pagan and Christian dissenters, which were so caustic that he made hosts of enemies and antagonized even his closest friends.

The most decisive influence on Jerome's later life was his return to Rome (382-385) as secretary to Pope Damasus. Two loves occupied his spare hours: scholarly work on the Bible and intense propagation of the ascetic life.

In company with Paula and other virgins, Jerome undertook a pilgrimage in August, 385, through all of Palestine and the monastic centres of Egypt and finally settled in Bethlehem in the summer of 386 A.D. There, Paula finished a monastery for men under Jerome's direction, three cloisters for women under her own supervision and a hostel for pilgrims. There Jerome lived, with brief excep­tions, until his death.

Jerome's greatest work was his translation of the Bible from the original Greek and Hebrew into Latin - the Vulgate version used in Catholic Churches.

Jerome's Vulgate did more than provide half of Christendom with authoritative Scriptures, its style was elegant but basic enough for anyone to understand -hence, the name Vulgate.
 

"O God, You gave Saint Jerome a great love for Holy Scripture. Let Your people feed more abundantly on Your word and find in it the source of life."