"Consistency" is essential to every Christian man, especially to preachers, so that their actions, if in disagreement from their speeches, will not embarrass them". As he lingered once again on the figure of Saint Jerome, the Pope, during today’s general audience from Saint Peter’s Square, insisted on the need to "attune life with God’s Word". As to consistency, Jerome warns that "the Gospel must be translated into attitudes of true charity": hence the need to "dress Christ in the poor, visit Him in the suffering, feeding Him in the hungry, lodging Him in the homeless". "The love of Christ, fuelled by study and meditation, makes us overcome any difficulty", said Benedict XVI, according to whom Saint Jerome "also left us a rich and varied lesson on Christian asceticism", especially as he recalls that "a brave commitment to perfection demands constant vigilance". The ascetic journey, according to the author of the Vulgate, "can also include the practice of pilgrimage": in particular, Jerome mentioned the Holy Father "boosted pilgrimages to the Holy Land, where the pilgrims were welcomed and accommodated in the buildings that had been built around the monastery of Bethlehem by the generosity of the noblewoman Paola, Jerome’s spiritual daughter".
