7. How often, when I was living in the desert, in the vast solitude which gives to hermits a savage dwelling-place, parched by a burning sun, how often did I fancy myself among the pleasures of Rome! I used to sit alone because I was filled with bitterness. Sackcloth disfigured my unshapely limbs and my skin from long neglect had become as black as an Ethiopian's. Tears and groans were every day my portion; and if drowsiness chanced to overcome my struggles against it, my bare bones, which hardly held together, clashed against the ground. Of my food and drink I say nothing: for, even in sickness, the solitaries have nothing but cold water, and to eat one's food cooked is looked upon as self-indulgence. Now, although in my fear of hell I had consigned myself to this prison, where I had no companions but scorpions and wild beasts, I often found myself amid bevies of girls. My face was pale and my frame chilled with fasting; yet my mind was burning with desire, and the fires of lust kept bubbling up before me when my flesh was as good as dead. Helpless, I cast myself at the feet of Jesus, I watered them with my tears, I wiped them with my hair: and then I subdued my rebellious body with weeks of abstinence. I do not blush to avow my abject misery; rather I lament that I am not now what once I was. I remember how I often cried aloud all night till the break of day and ceased not from beating my breast till tranquillity returned at the chiding of the Lord. I used to dread my very cell as though it knew my thoughts; and, stern and angry with myself, I used to make my way alone into the desert. Wherever I saw hollow valleys, craggy mountains, steep cliffs, there I made my oratory, there the house of correction for my unhappy flesh. There, also-the Lord Himself is my witness-when I had shed copious tears and had strained my eyes towards heaven, I sometimes felt myself among angelic hosts, and for joy and gladness sang: "because of the savour of thy good ointments we will run after thee."391
12. Do you wish for proof of my assertions? Take examples. Sampson was braver than a lion and tougher than a rock; alone and unprotected he pursued a thousand armed men; and yet, in Delilah's embrace, his resolution melted away. David was a man after God's own heart, and his lips had often sung of the Holy One, the future Christ; and yet as he walked upon his housetop he was fascinated by Bathsheba's nudity, and added murder to adultery.421 Notice here how, even in his own house, a man cannot use his eyes without danger. Then repenting, he says to the Lord: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight."422 Being a king he feared no one else. So, too, with Solomon. Wisdom used him to sing her praise,423 and he treated of all plants "from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall;"424 and yet he went back from God because he was a lover of women.425 And, as if to show that near relationship is no safeguard, Amnon burned with illicit passion for his sister Tamar.426
NOTES
421 2 Sam. xi.
422 Ps. li. 4.
423 Solomon was the reputed author of the Book of Wisdom.
424 1 K. iv. 33.
425 1 K. xi 1-4.
426 2 Sam. xiii.
http://www.catholicism.org/pages/stjerome.htm
"In the remotest part of a wild and sharp desert, which,
being burnt up with the heats of the scorching sun, strikes with horror
and terror even the monks that inhabit it, I seemed to myself to be in
the midst of the delights and assemblies of Rome. I loved solitude, that
in the bitterness of my soul, I might more freely bewail my miseries, and
call upon my Savior. My hideous emaciated limbs were covered with sackcloth;
my skin was parched dry and black, and my flesh was almost wasted away.
The days I passed in tears and groans, and when sleep overpowered me against
my will, I cast my wearied bones, which hardly hung together, upon the
bare ground, not so properly to give them rest, as to torture myself. I
say nothing of my eating and drinking; for the monks in that desert, when
they are sick, know no other drink but cold water, and look upon it as
sensuality ever to eat any thing dressed by fire. In this exile and prison,
to which, for the fear of hell, I had voluntarily condemned myself, having
no other company but scorpions and wild beasts, I many times found my imagination
filled with lively representations of dances in the company of Roman ladies,
as if I had been in the midst of them. My face was pale with fasting; yet
my will felt violent assaults of irregular desires; in my cold body , and
in my parched-up flesh, which seemed dead before its death, concupiscence
was able to live; and though I vigorously repressed all its sallies, it
strove always to rise again, and to cast forth more violent and dangerous
flames. Finding myself abandoned, as it were, to the power of this enemy,
I threw myself in spirit at the feet of Jesus, watering them with my tears,
and I tamed my flesh by fasting whole weeks. . . I went alone into the
most secret parts of the wilderness, and if I discovered anywhere a deep
valley or a craggy rock, that was the place of my prayer, there I threw
this miserable sack of my body. The same Lord is my witness, that after
so many sobs and tears, after having in much sorrow looked long up to heaven,
I felt most delightful comforts and interior sweetness; and these so great,
that, transported and absorbed, I seemed to myself to be amidst the choirs
of angels; and glad and joyful I sang to God; After thee, O Lord, we
will run in the fragrancy of thy celestial ointments."
The work, as we said, was commissioned by the great pope, St. Damasus I. Another pope, Clement VIII, believed that the saint was divinely assisted in translating the Bible. And in our own century, Pope Benedict XV, on the occasion of the fifteen-hundredth anniversary of the saint’s death, proclaimed in 1920:
"The Church venerates in Jerome the greatest doctor given her by heaven for the interpretation of Holy Scriptures."
In ep. 22 ad Eustochium, de virginitate, beatitudo vitae monasticae et poenae proclamantur: ''O quotiens in heremo constitutus et in illa vasta solitudine, quae exusta solis ardoribus (SALL., iug. 19,6) horridum monachis praestat habitaculum, putavi me Romanis interesse deliciis!... Ille igitur ego, qui ob gehennae metum tali me carcere ipse damnaveram, scorpionum tantum socius et ferarum, saepe choris intereram puellarum. Pallebant ora ieiuniis et mens desideriis aestuabat in frigido corpore, et ante hominem suum iam carne praemortua sola libidinum incendia bulliebant. Itaque omni auxilio destitutus ad Iesu iacebam pedes, rigabam lacrimis, crine tergebam et repugnantem carnem ebdomadarum inedia subiugabam...
Sicubi concava vallium, aspera montium, rupium praerupta cernebam, ibi
meae orationi locus, illud miserrimae carnis ergastulum; et, ut mihi ipse
testis est Dominus, post multas lacrimas, post caelo oculos inhaerentes
nonnumquam videbar mihi interesse agminibus angelorum, et laetus gaudensque
cantabam: post te in odorem unguentorum tuorum currimus'' (1,3; 7).
http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/blasius2/letter2/lett2e.html