Wednesday of 1st Week of Lent is a deadly wound that can lead to the deadly of lust. Lust is the deadly sin whose false God is or making a person one’s FEAR LEADS TO LUST God. Lust can be a language or can be a language depending on if we choose to communicate with a false God or the one true God. We “ is the safeguard of . In the matter of purity, there is often choose to communicate our fear to lust rather than no greater danger than not fearing danger.” – St. communicating to the Word of God. fell in love with the Word of God in scripture and so through scripture fell in love with the ST JEROME person of Jesus Christ. We too can start to love God even in the midst of our when we read scripture. How have you gone to lust when you were afraid instead of going to God’s word in scripture? Jerome became fluent in Latin and Greek, and read the literatures of those languages with great pleasure. He acquired many worldly ideas, For your prayer made little effort to check his pleasure-loving instincts, and lost much St. Jerome would have prayed with Jonah 3:1-10. Use your of the piety that had been instilled in him at home. Jerome allowed his imagination as you slowly read Jonah 3:1-10. Please reflect on how the fears to lead him to lust as he sought to dull fear with pleasure. Yet in Ninevites once let fear lead them to the sin of lust but after Jonah’s of the pagan and hedonistic influences around him, Jerome was message they let their fear lead them to God. Reflect on how when you baptized by Liberius in 360. This began his conversion process. are afraid your true is not for pleasure or a person but for the In a letter to the virgin St. Eustochium, he wrote, "How often when I love of God especially in scripture. was living in the desert, in the vast which gives to hermits a savage dwelling place, parched by a burning sun, how often did I fancy myself among the of ! ... 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 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 .... "

Jerome experienced a lot of lustful temptations in the desert at first due to fear. It took him time to realize that the more he feared the lustful thoughts the more they grew. His lust was literally being fueled by his fear. Jerome learned Hebrew to more intensely study scripture and as a way of turning from fear to God. In time whenever Jerome became afraid he turned to scripture instead of to lust. The word of God became Jerome’s medicine for when he became afraid rather than letting the pleasure of lust be a false medicine. Jerome was a great proponent of scripture since he knew its ability to free us from fear.