67.

 Immense, then, was the profit Jerome derived from reading Scripture; hence came those interior illuminations whereby he was ever more and more drawn to knowledge and love of Christ; hence, too, that love of prayer of which he has written so well; hence his wonderful familiarity with Christ, Whose sweetness drew him so that he ran unfalteringly along the arduous way of the Cross to the palm of victory. Hence, too, his ardent love for the Holy Eucharist: "Who is wealthier than he who carries the Lord's Body in his wicker basket, the Lord's Blood in his crystal vessel?"[¹²⁸] Hence, too, his love for Christ's Mother, whose perpetual virginity he had so keenly defended, whose title as God's Mother and as the greatest example of all the virtues he constantly set before Christ's spouses for their imitation.[¹²⁹] No one, then, can wonder that Jerome should have been so powerfully drawn to those spots in Palestine which had been consecrated by the presence of our Redeemer and His Mother. It is easy to recognize the hand of Jerome in the words written from Bethlehem to Marcella by his disciples, Paula and Eustochium:
What words can serve to describe to you the Savior's cave? As for the manger in which He lay - well, our silence does it more honor than any poor words of ours. . . Will the day ever dawn where we can enter His cave to weep at His tomb with the sister (of Lazarus) and mourn with His Mother; when we can kiss the wood of His Cross and, with the ascending Lord on Olivet, be uplifted in mind and spirit?[¹³⁰]

Filled with memories such as these, Jerome could, while far away from Rome and leading a life hard for the body but inexpressibly sweet to the soul, cry out: "Would that Rome had what tiny Bethlehem possesses!"[¹³¹]