Today the Church
celebrates the memorial of St Jerome (c. 347-420), best known for translating
much of the Bible into Latin. His famous
saying still echoes:
Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.Jerome's love of Scripture was inseparable from his love of the Eucharist. His writings provide an important witness to what Christians believed about the Eucharist at the beginning of the fifth century. In a letter to Heliodorus, Jerome speaks of priests as those who:
confect by their sacred word the Body of Christ.
In a text translated and transmitted by Jerome, we find a striking comparison
between reverence for Scripture and reverence for the Eucharist. The text was written by Origen and later
translated and transmitted by Jerome. The source cited by John Paul II
explicitly identifies it as an Origen homily preserved through Jerome. The passage observes that Christians are
distressed if even the smallest fragment of the consecrated bread should fall
to the ground. Such care reflects their belief that Christ is truly present in
the Eucharist. St John Paul II said:
Origen, who comments on our Psalm in one of his homilies, translated and disseminated by St Jerome in the West, actually interweaves the Word of God with the Eucharist: "We read the Holy Scriptures. I believe that the Gospel is the Body of Christ. I believe that the holy Scriptures are his teaching. And when he says: he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood (Jn 6,53), although these words can also refer to the [Eucharistic] Mystery, yet the Body and Blood of Christ is truly a word of Scripture, the teaching of God. When we are about to receive the [Eucharistic] Mystery, if even a tiny crumb falls, we feel lost. When we are listening to God's Word, when our ears perceive the Word of God and the body and blood of Christ, what great danger would we not fall into were we to think about something else?"It is a reminder that the two tables of the Mass, the table of the Word and the table of the Eucharist, belong together.
In Against the Pelagians he refers to clergy participating in:
the offering of the sacrifices.
Such language reflects
the Church's understanding that the Mass is not simply a communal meal but a
participation in Christ's once-for-all sacrifice made present sacramentally in
every age.
The Christ who speaks in the Scriptures is the same Christ who feeds his people in the Eucharist, drawing earth into communion with heaven itself.
