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| To Eustochium.
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Letter
XXXI. To Eustochium.
Jerome writes to thank Eustochium for some presents sent
to him by her on the festival of St. Peter. He also moralizes on the
mystical meaning of the articles sent. The letter should be compared
with Letter XLIV., of which the theme is similar. Written at Rome in
384 a.d. (on St. Peter’s Day).
1. Doves, bracelets, and a letter are outwardly but
small gifts to receive from a virgin, but the action which has prompted
them enhances their value. And since honey may not be offered in
sacrifice to God,728
you have shown
skill in taking off their overmuch sweetness and making them
pungent—if I may so say—with a dash of pepper. For nothing
that is simply pleasurable or merely sweet can please God. Everything
must have in it a sharp seasoning of truth. Christ’s passover
must be eaten with bitter herbs.729
2. It is true that a festival such as the birthday730
| 730 I.e. the day
of his martyrdom, his heavenly nativity. | of Saint Peter should be seasoned with
more gladness than usual; still our merriment must not forget the limit
set by Scripture, and we must not stray too far from the boundary of
our wrestling-ground. Your presents, indeed, remind me of the sacred
volume, for in it Ezekiel decks Jerusalem with bracelets,731
Baruch receives letters from Jeremiah,732
and the Holy Spirit descends in the form
of a dove at the baptism of Christ.733
But to
give you, too, a sprinkling of pepper and to remind you of my former
letter,734
I send you to-day this three-fold
warning. Cease not to adorn yourself with good works—the true
bracelets of a Christian woman.735
Rend not the
letter written on your heart736
as the profane
king cut with his penknife that delivered to him by Baruch.737
Let not Hosea say to you as to Ephraim,
“Thou art like a silly dove.”738
My words are too harsh, you will say, and hardly
suitable to a festival like the present. If so, you have provoked me to
it by the nature of your own gifts. So long as you put bitter with
sweet, you must expect the same from me, sharp words that is, as well
as praise.
3. However, I do not wish to make light of your gifts,
least of all the basket of fine cherries, blushing with such a virgin
modesty that I can fancy them freshly gathered by Lucullus739
| 739 Celebrated for his
campaigns against Mithridates, and also as a prince of epicures. | himself. For it was he who first
introduced the fruit at Rome after his conquest of Pontus and Armenia;
and the cherry tree is so called because he brought it from Cerasus.
Now as the Scriptures do not mention cherries, but do speak of a basket
of figs,740
I will use these instead to point my
moral. May you be made of fruits such as those which grow before
God’s temple and of which He says, “Behold they are good,
very good.”741
The Saviour likes
nothing that is half and half, and, while he welcomes the hot and does
not shun the cold, he tells us in the Apocalypse that he will spew the
lukewarm out of his mouth.742
Wherefore we must
be careful to celebrate our holy day not so much with abundance of food
as with exultation of spirit. For it is altogether unreasonable to wish
to honor a martyr by excess who himself, as you know, pleased God by
fasting. When you take food always recollect that eating should be
followed by reading, and also by prayer. And if, by taking this course,
you displease some, repeat to yourself the words of the Apostle:
“If I yet pleased men I should not be the servant of
Christ”743
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