Welcome to our daily rosary meditation. Let's begin in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Let's call to mind all those we've promised to pray for.

Today is the Feast of St. Jerome. It should give us hope that Jerome did not start out as a saint. None of them ever do.

He lived from 347 to 420 a.D. and was baptized and became a

Christian at the age of 19. As a young man he had a hunger for knowledge, so he dedicated himself to learning languages,

Greek and then Hebrew.

Most of all, he loved reading the Roman and Greek philosophers like Cicero, to which he devoted

all his leisure time. While on his way to Jerusalem, however, to study Hebrew, Jerome fell gravely ill and everyone thought he was on the brink of death.

It was then that God gave him a vision of his particular

judgment which he would receive at the moment of his death. Of this Jerome testifies. Suddenly I was caught up in the

spirit and dragged before the judgment seat of the judge. And here the light was so bright and those who stood

around were so radiant that I cast myself upon the ground and did not dare to look up.

Asked who and what I was I replied I am a Christian

But he who presided said you lie, you are a follower of Cicero and not of Christ. At that moment his soul came back to his body, when he arose,

he shared with those around him the vision he received and from that day forward he read the books of God with greater zeal than he had ever read the books or writings of men.

Now we are all like Jerome.

Think how much time and energy and attention we give to news, entertainment,

sports, YouTube, Tik-Toc, and how little time in comparison to reading and thinking about the

word of God in scripture and the writings of the Saints and the teachings of the Church.

At our particular judgment, at the moment of our death,

who will Christ declare that we follow? Or Father who art in heaven, hallow would be your name, thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us to stay our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us

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