Thursday, September 30, 2010

Jeronimo, St.


Patron saint of hot-heads.
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St. Jerome is one of my favorite saints - he is said to have been irascible...  I'm sure that fault has been explained away and sanitized by most of his biographers - but I like a saint who speaks his mind and then spends the rest of the day beating his breast bloody with a rock as a penance for what he said.  That is so me.  (I wonder why he's always shown naked in art?  I once knew this old guy at the gym (CB Club) who always walked around the men's locker room naked, talking to everyone - not just near the lockers or showers either - he'd watch the news in the men's lounge naked too, talking to his fully clothed buddies.  I don't know, I thought it was weird.)  Anyway.
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St. Jerome's advice to bloggers:
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Beware also of a blabbing tongue and of itching ears. Neither detract from others nor listen to detractors.
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"Thou sittest," says the psalmist, "and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son. These things hast thou done and I kept silence; thou thoughtest wickedly that I was such an one as thyself, but I will reprove thee and set them in order before thine eyes."
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Keep your tongue from cavilling and watch over your words. Know that in judging others you are passing sentence on yourself and that you are yourself guilty of the faults which you blame in them.*
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It is no excuse to say: "if others tell me things I cannot be rude to them."
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No one cares to speak to an unwilling listener. An arrow never lodges in a stone: often it recoils upon the shooter of it. Let the detractor learn from your unwillingness to listen not to be so ready to detract.
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Solomon says:--"meddle not with them that are given to detraction: for their calamity shall rise suddenly; and who knoweth the destruction of them both?"--of the detractor, that is, and of the person who lends an ear to his detraction." - Letter of St. Jerome to Nepotian
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*"Know that in judging others you are passing sentence on yourself and that you are yourself guilty of the faults which you blame in them." - Holy crap!  I ALWAYS forget that part!


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Thanks to Idle Speculations for the text.

4 comments:

  1. Bruce is playing for you over on my blog!

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  2. Anonymous2:45 PM

    You are so funny! :)

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  3. Mr. Terry...I'm gonna end up in the same "place" good ole St. Jerome ended up before he entered the Kingdom..."irascible"...I'm afraid my Irish blood has condemned me to be a "pain the a~~" in so many ways to so many people...problem is, my English blood makes me ever so polite, reserved and well, passive-aggressive...unless they've really p***** me off; then it's "the gloves are off".
    St. Jerome, pray for all of us "red haired" idjeets!!

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  4. St Jerome doesn't just speak to me...he kinda yells at me.

    Now where's my rock?

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