An Irascible Hermit

An acquaintance of mine has asked me to link to and advertise his new blog, which I do with pleasure, especially because of its amusing name - Ruminations of an Irascible Hermit!

It appears that "Methodius" places his blogging under the patronage of the formidable St Jerome, known even as a fellow to be very carefully dealt with - Justin once told me of an hilarious reference to him in a contemporary Greek text, that basically says "Don't provoke him for God's sake!"; and I always recall how Jerome got stuck into, not merely his old friend Rufinus, but even disparaged Augustine (on the basis of a misunderstanding arising from letters to and from him having been mixed up) as "That Numidian bull-ant!"

LOL, I know I react like that all too often (as for example, when perforce at the Novus Ordo to fulfil my Sunday obligation, I read a really pestilently biassed smarmy article by some Jesuit using the feast of Christ the King as a pretext to attack the Church...)

Now Aquinas rightly tells that the irascible appetite is given to man, that by this faculty we be worked up against things harmful to us, so as we then will act to overcome them. "Be angry and sin not", but rather labour energetically to right wrongs, even fighting the good fight in the cause of all that is good and true.

The Psalmist goes on to say, "Repent ye in your chambers..." I always think of the many images of St Jerome in a cave (with or without the lion he tended to), beating his bare breast with a rock, doing penance and asking mercy for all the sins of his tongue, which the Apostle James terms a fire, a world of iniquity, setting on fire our lives, set on fire by hell! (iii, 6), with the which we curse men made in God's image (iii,9): for man's anger worketh not the justice of God (i, 20), and whoso thinketh himself religious, restraining not his tongue, his religion is vain (i, 26). Mea maxima culpa!