Mourning with St. Jerome: An interview with David G. Bonagura, Jr.

St. Jerome is well known as the translator of the Bible, but his reputation as a scholar and master of Latin prose has been largely forgotten. In the Renaissance, the famous humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) praised Jerome as “the saintly man who of all Christians was by common consent the best scholar and writer…the supreme champion and expositor of our faith.” Not to be outdone, Pope Benedict XV, commemorating the fifteen-hundredth anniversary of Jerome’s death in 1920, called Jerome “the Greatest Doctor” five times in his encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus.

Jerome’s special charism as doctor of Latin prose and of the faith is perhaps best evident in his moving letters of consolation to friends mourning the loss of spouses, children, relatives, and friends. These letters are available together for the first time in English in David G. Bonagura, Jr.’s new translation entitled Jerome’s Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning (Sophia Institute Press, 2023).

Bonagura recently spoke with Catholic World Report about Jerome, his letters, and his theology of mourning.

Catholic World Report: What attracted you to translate Jerome’s letters, and what did you learn from them?

David Bonagura: Jerome had a deep love of pagan Rome’s classical literature, yet he saw it as a “guilty pleasure” rather than a means to the truth. He indicts himself for his predilection when he hauntingly describes a dream in which he died and then was condemned to hell by God who denounced him: “You are not a Christian. You are a Ciceronian! Where your treasure is, there also is your heart!” As a Latin teacher, my interest in Jerome begins right here!

This dream appears in one of Jerome’s 123 surviving letters, which are akin to the modern essay in length and style, and cover a half-dozen themes from scriptural exegesis to doctrinal issues to pastoral guidance. As a graduate student, I examined how Jerome incorporated classical allusions into his most celebrated letters: those of consolation.

As I worked on the thesis, I thought Christian readers of all kinds could really benefit spiritually from Jerome’s approach to grief.

CWR: Who are the recipients of Jerome’s letters and whom are they mourning?

Bonagura: Five of the seven recipients are Jerome’s friends from his days in Rome as either a student or as secretary to Pope Damasus from 382 to 384. They are mourning spouses, a nephew, a daughter, or friends. Three of these recipients are little known saints of the Catholic Church. Jerome’s ties to the sixth recipient, Julian, are not clear.

Perhaps most interesting is the seventh recipient, Theodora of Spain, whom Jerome never met. She and her husband Lucinius, who had expressed great desire to obtain Jerome’s commentaries on the Bible, were planning a trip to the Holy Land to meet Jerome, but he died suddenly before making the trip. Moved by their zeal for the Scriptures, Jerome writes to her, “because I am tormented with regret, for I did not get to look upon [your husband’s] face.”

CWR: What makes these letters of consolation so compelling?

Bonagura: Three features stand out to me.

First, Jerome’s prose is powerful: he balances with perfect harmony both imagery and narrative, elegance and concision. He tailors his words to meet the recipient where he or she is, and he is honest in his descriptions of the deceased. For example, he works the hardest, so to speak, in his letter on the death of Fabiola, whose holiness Jerome defends from detractors after she repented of her illicit second marriage; Fabiola is now a canonized saint.

Second, he brilliantly wields Scripture in every letter, offering persons, images, stories, and wise sayings from both the Old and New Testaments to help comfort the bereaved. It is in the Scriptures, Jerome writes to Julian, that “true medicine for wounds and certain remedies for grief are found.” For Jerome, Scripture is the authority: there is nothing more powerful than God’s word.

Third, Jerome does not hesitate to deal out “tough love” to these recipients in their grief. In every letter, he exhorts the recipient to let go of his or her grief and seize a new opportunity to serve the Lord more devoutly now that the deceased has passed on. For example, he urges Julian, who lost his wife and two daughters within a year, to take up a new life as a monk! With this and similar exhortations, Jerome poignantly reminds us not to yield to the temptation to wallow in our grief, but to take up our cross and go back to work in the Lord’s vineyard with a new, transformed purpose.

CWR: Does Jerome have a “style” for consoling?

Bonagura: Yes. Consolatory letters were an established literary genre developed by the ancient Greeks. They consisted of four parts that could vary in length: introduction, lamentation, comfort for the bereaved, and eulogy for the deceased. Jerome consciously works within this tradition—yet, in a few letters, by denigrating the “precepts of the rhetoricians” he asserts his prowess over it! In his letter to Heliodorus, Jerome mentions that he has read many consolations of the pagan writers before declaring that the Christian faith “surpass[es] what their unbelief has offered them.”

Though he is not systematic in his presentation, Jerome does offer a “theology of consoling.” First, he urges unwavering confidence in Christ’s resurrection that has conquered death. As he writes to Paula, “With Jesus, through whom paradise has been opened, joy follows death.” Second, mourners should not focus on the loss of the deceased, but on the gift that they had in that person. Third, as mentioned, he urges the bereaved to overcome their grief by pursuing a new path in Christ.

CWR: How should today’s readers approach this book? What should they take from it?

Bonagura: One thing this book is not is a guide to “what to say at a wake,” though Jerome’s theology of consoling can offer some help in that regard. Rather, reading this book is an exercise of, as Russell Kirk called it, the moral imagination through which we unite past and present in an attempt at humane living.

In reading Jerome’s descriptions of the deceased, we can imagine our own loved ones who have gone before us in their place. In doing so we can allow Jerome to console us today in our own grief and in our own memories. We also can take the wisdom Jerome gives to his primary addressees as if he were offering it to us. It never hurts to be reminded, for example, of what Jerome writes to Paula who is grieving the loss of her daughter: “It is never too late for conversion.” Or, as he describes the death of the holy widow Marcella, “Between your tears she smiled, conscious of a good life and of future rewards.” Though he is known for his intellect, Jerome has an uncanny ability to touch the soul—including our own, across so many centuries.