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Handout #88 |
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In his monastery in Bethlehem, Jerome learns of the capture of Rome |
| Alas, news was suddenly
brought to me of the death of Pammachius and Marcella, the siege of Rome,
and the falling asleep of many of my brothers and sisters. I was so
stupefied and dismayed that day and night I could think of nothing but the
welfare of the community; it seemed as though I was sharing the captivity
of the saints, and I could not open my lips until I knew something more
definite; and all the while, full of anxiety, I was quavering between hope
and despair, and was torturing myself with the misfortunes of other
people. But when the bright light of all the "world was put out, or
rather, when the Roman empire was decapitated and, to speak more
correctly, the whole world perished in one city, I became dumb and humbled
myself, and kept silence from good words, but my grief broke out afresh,
my heart glowed within me, and while I meditated the fire was kindled.
Everything, however long, has its end, the centuries that have passed never return, and it is true to say that all that begins must perish, and all that grows undergoes decay and death. There is no created work which is not attacked by old age and consequently disappears. But Rome! Who would believe that Rome, built up by the conquest of the whole world, had collapsed, that the mother of nations had become also their tomb; that the shores of the whole East, of Egypt, of Africa, which once belonged to the imperial city, were filled with the hosts of her menservants and maidservants, that we should every day be receiving in this holy Bethlehem men and women who once were noble and abounding in every kind of wealth but are now reduced to poverty? We cannot relieve these sufferers: all we can do is to sympathize with them, and unite our tears with theirs. Jerome, Preface to Commentary on Ezekiel, Books I and 3. |
