Daily Gospel Reflection
Join the Notre Dame family of faith. Receive God’s Word and a unique reflection in your inbox each day.
September 30, 2025
When the days for Jesus to be taken up were fulfilled,
he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem,
and he sent messengers ahead of him.
On the way they entered a Samaritan village
to prepare for his reception there,
but they would not welcome him
because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem.
When the disciples James and John saw this they asked,
“Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven
to consume them?”
Jesus turned and rebuked them,
and they journeyed to another village.
Today’s gospel text marks the point in Luke’s story at which Jesus becomes laser-focused on Jerusalem and his death there: he “resolutely determined” to journey there, or more literally, he “made his face firm” to go to Jerusalem.
Much of the rest of Luke’s gospel will be taken up with that travel narrative from Galilee to Jerusalem. Jesus has come to announce the year of the Lord’s favor (4:19) and so doesn’t countenance his disciples’ thirst for a fiery vindication of his message, the way God had vindicated Elijah in his contest with the prophets of Baal. Rather, Jesus resolutely faces the death that awaits him, assured that it means something in the economy of God’s restoration of the world.
Maybe it’s just a function of middle age as my own mortality trudges unwelcomingly into view, but in recent years, I have come almost to envy, if I can put it that way, the fact that Jesus approaches his death assured that it will be meaningful. Beset with so many awful headlines in the news, I can’t help but ponder: Were the children in Gaza given that assurance? Or the Ukrainian civilians in Bucha? Their deaths, and so many others, seem so unnecessary, so capricious, so meaningless.
I have come to hope that Jesus’ death might be not only meaningful, but meaning-making, as he takes up the many anonymous deaths that have gone unremarked and holds them in light.
The apostle Paul once referred to himself as “always carrying around in the body the dying of Jesus.” In turn, it seems fair to imagine that Jesus always carries around in his body the deaths of those whom he loves, leading them—and each of us—gently on to a final day of vindication, not in violent fire, but in the life-giving recreation of the Holy Spirit.
Prayer
Dear Lord, help us be resolute in following through on our commitments. Let us have the wisdom to say “Yes” to what really matters, and the discipline to keep our word. We ask your courage to say “No” to that which pulls us out of balance with you. Amen.
Saint of the Day
A doctor of the church, Jerome was born 342 in what is now northeastern Italy. His father provided him with a good education, sending him to Rome to learn from the best teachers. His teachers were not Christian, however, and Jerome began to fall into habits of decadence that were the order of the day in Rome.
With friends, however, he would visit the tombs of the martyrs and apostles in church crypts or catacombs. Soon, Jerome was moved to devote his life to God.
In 374, Jerome settled in Antioch, the premier Christian city of Asia Minor. Jerome fell ill and had a delirious vision in which he stood before Christ in judgment and fell short because he had put rhetoric and study before faithfulness.
The experience touched him deeply, and he decided to retreat to live in the desert to seek holiness—he spent four years alone, focusing on prayer and fighting temptation with fasting, all the while suffering from poor health. His time in the desert focused his will and fired his passion for faithfulness, inspiring his eventual return to the city.
To distract his fiery will from temptation, Jerome dedicated himself to learning Hebrew from a fellow monk who had converted from Judaism. He found the Semitic language challenging, but he set his sharp mind to the task and persevered.
When he returned to Antioch, Jerome was ordained a priest, but felt drawn to the monastic life. He went to Constantinople to study Scripture under the great St. Gregory of Nazianzen. Later, he journeyed to Rome to attend a church council and was retained there by Pope Damasus I to be his secretary. At the pope’s request, Jerome retranslated and corrected the Latin version of the Greek Gospels, which had a number of errors in their transcription through the years.
Jerome possessed razor-sharp wits and often used pointed sarcasm to direct criticism at non-believers and other Christians with slack faith. “I never spared heretics and have always done my utmost that the enemies of the Church should also be my enemies,” he wrote.
Those who disliked him gossiped about him profusely, so Jerome decided to depart Rome for Palestine. He lived in a stone cave and opened a free school and hospice outside Jerusalem, near Bethlehem.
He continued to correspond with Church leaders, including St. Augustine, about certain heresies or distortions of the faith, quick to point out where error was present. Jerome's quick temper and salty tongue were only matched by his quickly converted heart. He is often depicted striking his breast with a stone (as in the statue here, from Dillon Hall) because he was as quick to repent as he was to convict.
He is known best for his work translating Scripture—the Church recognizes him as a great doctor of the church for his work translating not only the Gospels, but the entire Greek New Testament into Latin. Jerome translated both the Christian Scriptures and the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures—into what was the vernacular language of his day—Latin—thus his translation became known as the Latin Vulgate.
When Rome fell in 410, the wealthy elite that had slandered him were scattered. Many wandered through the Holy Land as beggars. Jerome interrupted his study and translation work to attend to their needs. “Today we must translate the words of the Scriptures into deeds,” he wrote. “Instead of speaking saintly words we must act them.”
Jerome died on this date in 420, and some of his relics rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica. He is depicted in stained glass windows in the Basilica as well, including one pane that shows him with a lion that represents his time as a desert hermit, as well as his fierce defense of the faith.
Jerome argued forcefully in support of the intercession of the saints who have died. He once wrote: “If the apostles and martyrs while still living upon earth can pray for other men, how much more may they do so after their victories? Have they less power now that they are with Jesus Christ?”
St. Jerome, the sarcastic holy hermit who defended the faith and diligently translated the words of Scripture—pray for us!