Today being St. Jerome’s
Memorial I was reflecting on his great quote “Ignorance of the Scriptures is
ignorance of Christ” and realized that it needed a little updating. Now it is a
little audacious to update this great Doctor of the Church’s quote, but he had
assumptions at that time that not everybody assumes today. So here is my version
“Ignorance of the Scriptures and Apostolic Tradition is ignorance of Christ”.
During his time no one would have thought of reading the scriptures outside of
the context of Apostolic Traditions but sadly this is not true anymore.
Apostolic Tradition is the rosetta stone to unlock the full meaning of
scripture, without it the meanings become unfocused or misunderstood. All
interpretation is done in the context of tradition, the questions is whether we
use our own tradition or we correctly use Apostolic Tradition. This is another
reason that I rejoice about being Catholic, since I can read the Bible without
the urge of starting my own church or inventing a brand of Christianity to suit
myself.
