Learning to Mourn with St. Jerome: The Theology of Consolation

Christians best remember St. Jerome (c. 347-420) for translating the Bible into Latin, and rightfully so, but his body of work includes far more than the Vulgate. He wrote extensive commentaries on many of the Biblical books, he translated sermons and other works from Greek into Latin, and he wrote lengthy letters—which today we call essays—on various topics that range from spirituality, theology, apologetics, Biblical exegesis, exhortations, reproaches, and thanksgiving.

One hundred and twenty-three of his letters survive. The ones dedicated to the theme of consolation are the most celebrated genre of all.

Jerome’s consolatory letters, available in English translation, showcase a saint at his theological and literary best: a master of the Scriptures, a zealous advocate for an ascetic life, a master of dramatic prose. They also offer snapshots of the deceased and those who mourn them. The letters’ recipients vary from intimate friends to distant correspondents whom Jerome never met in person, yet all receive personal affection and spiritual consolation born from hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and rooted in Scripture.

To read Jerome’s consolatory letters today is not to take instruction on how to speak to the bereaved; it is an exercise in what Russell Kirk (1918-1994) called the “moral imagination,” a “power of ethical perception which strides beyond the barriers of private experience and momentary events” to unite men and women across time and space in the endeavor of humane living. 

Through the moral imagination, we can recall deceased loved ones whose lives in certain ways reflect the lives of the deceased whom Jerome celebrates. We can put ourselves in the place of the letters’ recipients and allow Jerome to soothe our own wounds that have never completely healed after the scourge that death inflicted. We can contemplate the blessed upon whom God has bestowed eternal life, men and women who are separated from us by centuries yet united to us through baptism as fellow members of the communion of saints.

Hence, Jerome’s consolatory letters are to be experienced rather than studied. They are sensory, not analytic; evocative, not somber; searching, not superficial—for his addressees centuries ago and for us today.

In the ancient world the “literary letter” was not merely a means to seek after friends and communicate news. It was an artform of its own, a highly stylized and often lengthy composition. These letters typically were not reserved for the addressee alone; they were intended to be read to a whole household or community, as the letters of St. Paul were read to the Christian churches.

Likewise, the letter of consolation was not simply a means to express one’s condolences upon learning of a death. It was an established literary genre of its own that the ancient Greeks practiced in the centuries before Christ’s birth. It had a four-part set form: introduction, lamentation, consolation of the living, and eulogy for the deceased. These four elements could appear in any order, but they were always present in such letters.

Jerome is widely acclaimed as the great master and innovator of the letter of consolation. In his letters he repeatedly refers to the “precepts of the rhetoricians” of ancient Greece that are supposed to direct his content and style. But invoking these precepts is a rhetorical tact of his own—he mentions them only to flout them, and, in doing so, he subtlety asserts his superiority over them.

When it came to evaluating his own work, humility was not among Jerome’s virtues. In praising the dead, he sometimes found a way to praise himself: “I have given this gift of my aging talents and these funeral rites owed to you, my Fabiola.”

Though he experimented with different themes and structures in his ten surviving consolatory letters, he has distinguished himself by suffusing these letters with a multitude of references to events and persons in the Scriptures, where he writes to Julian, “true medicine for wounds and certain remedies for grief are found.” Most of these references are fleeting; some are repeated in a second letter, such as the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) and the mysterious deaths of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11); and a few provide the basis for an extended comparison, such as the widower Julian to Job and Paula’s family to the four cherubim seen by Ezekiel (Ezek 1:4-25). In writing to Oceanus, Jerome, recalling his prior consolatory letters that were forged to meet particular griefs, acknowledged that “for a variety of people a variety of remedies from Scripture had to be applied.”

Other elements of style permeate Jerome’s letters. In acknowledging the sorrow of the addressee, he openly expresses his own grief at the deceased’s passing, often through consecutive rhetorical questions intended to stir the reader’s pathos. An extended eulogy features in every letter; he singles out the deceased’s virtues and connects them to associated stories in the Scriptures. Allusions to Biblical figures, and, to a lesser extent, to memorable lines from classical Roman texts, situate the addressee and the deceased as chosen members within God’s divine plan of salvation.

But Jerome’s consolatory letters are the greatest of the genre not merely because of their style; they express a rich and provocative theology of consoling that instructs the addressee how to mourn and how each one might begin to live the Christian life more deeply. Jerome instructs us to mourn with hope fixed on Christ, whose resurrection transformed death into sleep for all those who believe. With this hope, the bereaved can answer God’s call to follow Him more closely, even if that means setting out on a new vocational journey. St. Paul writes:

If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. (Rom 14:8-9)

The intensity of the present age can cause us to lose touch with those who have gone before us, whether they have passed from our lives or long before we were born. Jerome’s consolations, by connecting us through grace with those we have not known, restore our intimacy with those we love but have gone on to God, the source of love and life.

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