63.

 Again and again, as in the passages just given, does Jerome celebrate the intimate union between Christ and His Church. For since the Head can never be separated from the mystical body, so, too, love of Christ is ever associated with zeal of His Church; and this love of Christ must ever be the chiefest and most agreeable result of a knowledge of Holy Scripture. So convinced indeed was Jerome that familiarity with the Bible was the royal road to the knowledge and love of Christ that he did not hesitate to say: "Ignorance of the Bible means ignorance of Christ."[¹²¹] And "what other life can there be without knowledge of the Bible wherein Christ, the life of them that believe, is set before us?'[¹²²] Every single page of either Testament seems to center around Christ; hence Jerome, commenting on the words of the Apocalypse about the River and the Tree of Life, says:
One stream flows out from the throne of God, and that is the Grace of the Holy Spirit, and that grace of the Holy Spirit is in the Holy Scriptures, that is in the stream of the Scriptures. Yet has that stream twin banks, the Old Testament and the New, and the Tree planted on either side is Christ.[¹²³]