Jerome’s Tears

From Death to New Life in Christ: An Excerpt from Jerome’s Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning

By David G. Bonagura, Jr. 

In this letter, St. Jerome writes to console Julian, a wealthy man whom tragedy had struck repeatedly: he lost two of his daughters and then his wife in short succession. Jerome compares Julian’s trials to Job’s while urging him to follow Christ more radically so that he may join his wife and daughters in heaven. Jerome describes this   act as being “made perfect in apostolic virtue.” As we read this letter, we can imagine Jerome imploring us to move beyond complacency in the spiritual life into   a deeper love for Christ. Letting go of our attachments to this   world is the means to this love.

I hear that in a short time you buried your two daughters in seemingly consecutive funerals. Likewise, Faustina, your most virtuous and faithful wife, or, rather, your sister in the zeal of faith with whom alone you found rest after your daughters’ passing, was suddenly taken from you in death. It is as if you are a shipwrecked man who finds robbers on the shore. According to the image of the prophet Amos, this man “fled from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house and leaned with his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him” (Amos 5:19). The loss of your property followed, as did the devastation of the whole province by the barbarian enemy, the personal ruin of your possessions as the town was pillaged, the driving away of your flocks of cattle and animals, the capture and murder of your servants. Finally, your last surviving daughter, whom frequent bereavement had made even dearer to you, married a man of high nobility, about whom I will not say anything except that you received more sadness than joy from him.

This is a list of your trials. This is the battle of the ancient enemy against you, Julian, a recruit of Christ’s army. If you should look back at yourself, these challenges are imposing; but if you should look at Christ, our bravest warrior, they are games and a mere shadow of a contest. After swarms of evils surrounded blessed Job, his treacherous wife was preserved so he might learn to blaspheme through her. Your wonderful wife was taken from you so you might lack comfort for your distresses. It is one thing to endure a wife whom you do not like, another to desire a wife whom you love. Job, enduring so many deaths out of his children, had a single tomb beneath the ruins of his house. After he tore his garments to show his fatherly love, he fell on his face to adore God, saying, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” ( Job 1:21). …

Do you even think that you have been established at the summit of virtue if you only offer part of all you have? The Lord wants your very self as a living sacrifice pleasing to Him. He wants you, I say, not your things. Therefore, he forcibly reminds you with various trials, just as He instructed Israel with many blows and sorrows. “For the Lord reproves him whom He loves, as a father the son in whom he delights” (Prov. 3:12). 

The poor widow placed her two small coins into the treasury. Because she offered all that she had, it is written that she surpassed all the rich men in offering gifts to God (Mark 12:41–44). The coins are valued not by their own weight but by the will of those offering them. When you extend your wealth to many, and certain recipients rejoice at your liberality, there are still many more to whom you did not give anything. But if you give yourself to the Lord and, having been made perfect by apostolic virtue, begin to follow the Savior, then you will understand where you once were and how you held the last place in Christ’s army.

You had not yet beat your breast over your deceased daughters when the fear of Christ dried the paternal tears on your cheeks. How much greater was Abraham, who moved to slaughter his only son, who he had heard would be heir to the world, because he did not despair that his son would live after his death. Jephthah offered his virgin daughter (Judg. 11:29–40), and for this he is listed in a commemoration of saints by the apostle Paul (Heb. 11:32–34). I do not want you to offer the Lord things that a thief can steal, an enemy can seize, a public ordinance can commandeer. Things can come and go just as tides and waves, and masters in succession seize them for their own benefit. And, so that I may compress everything into one thought, what you want now you will no longer want when you are about to die. Rather, offer what no enemy can take away from you, what no tyrant can seize: offer what will follow you to the underworld, or, rather, to the Kingdom of Heaven and the delights of Paradise.

Author Bio – David G. Bonagura, Jr.

David G. Bonagura, Jr. is the translator of Jerome’s Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning, and the author of Steadfast in Faith and Staying with the Catholic Church. He is an adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s Seminary in New York and religion editor of The University Bookman.