In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  
There are two powerful lessons from today's gospel. Of course, there may be many more insightful reflections, but the first is that we see the response of the apostles that were with Jesus when they see that He was rejected and that they would not receive Jesus. They wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume them. And we see that our Lord turns and rebukes them for this. And it's just an insightful reflection of how the apostles were not truly perfected when Jesus called them. They had imperfections, they had faults, and they had misunderstandings. Yet Jesus corrects them, and they continue to persevere in their spiritual growth and recognizing how our Lord takes care of such situations. And they see in it that He shows them, though they rejected Him and would not receive Him, He shows them mercy and forgiveness and goes on to the next village. They journey to the next village.
And it's just that our Lord is teaching us that we're not going to be welcomed by everyone in our own journey, that as followers of Christ, as we follow Jesus Christ and follow His teachings, that we too will not be welcomed by everyone or appreciated by everyone or liked by everyone. But our Lord teaches us, even in this, not to allow our hearts to become bitter or to become spiteful towards these people, but to pray for them, pray for them that they may be converted and they may be our eternal friends in heaven, that we offer our prayers for them, nonetheless, wanting them to come to share the joy and light, divine life of Jesus Christ.
Today, we honor a very special saint in the Church, St. Jerome, priest and doctor of the Church. St. Jerome was from the area of the Adriatic Sea across from Italy, which is now could be called the area which is around the coast of Dalmatia, which was former Yugoslavia. And when he was converted, he was baptized. And our Lord appeared to him in a dream. He had become a little bit sick. And he had a dream in which he was standing before Jesus to be judged. And Jesus said to him in the dream, "You are not a Christian. You are a Ciceronian," meaning that Jerome was very much into the Roman scholar and writer and orator Cicero, in that Jesus was telling him, "You're more a follower of him than Me." And when Jerome woke from this, he decided to have a deeper conversion in his life.
And he went to Syria and spent some time as a hermit in Syria and eventually would return to Rome, where he would become the secretary of the Pope, Pope Damasus. And it was there that he was entrusted with one of his most important works, translating the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin. And this work took him about 30 years. And we still use St. Jerome's scholarly translation to this day, that all translations are based on St. Jerome's scholarly work, which he was dedicated to translating the scriptures to make it more easily read by the faithful.  He has, of course, many very special quotes. One of his quotes is, "Ignorance of the scripture is ignorance of Christ," that he reminds us that we need to know Christ, to come to know Christ deeper. We encounter Him through sacred scripture.
He also said on sacred scripture that it is "shallow enough for a babe to come drink without drowning and deep enough for theologians to swim in without touching the bottom," meaning holy scripture can be approached by everyone, even for beginners or theologians. But it's shallow enough for babes to drink without fear of drowning and deep enough for theologians to swim in without touching the bottom. Just a beautiful insight into the depth of holy scripture. And he said one should fall asleep with the scriptures in their arms. That's another one of his quotes, that one should fall asleep with holy scripture in their arms. So great was his love for holy scripture.
He also had a very interesting quote about becoming in our spiritual life, which was "good, better, best," that your good be made better and your better be made best, meaning that we don't rest in our spiritual life, that we want to keep on progressing in our spiritual life, that what is good we want to be made better, and what is better we want it to be made best, just that we continually strive to progress in the spiritual life and deepen our spiritual life.
St. Jerome would eventually leave Rome, and he went to spend the remainder of his life, about 20, 30 years, in Bethlehem. There is a famous episode, and I believe all these stories of the saints, in which a lion came to him and he took the thorn out of the lion's paw, and that lion became like a protector of him and watched over him and protected him for the remainder of his life. And there are many famous paintings of this, of St. Jerome taking the thorn out of the lion's paw. St. Jerome's body was buried in Bethlehem and then eventually would be transferred to Rome, and his relics remain in St. Mary Major's Basilica in Rome under the high altar. So St. Mary Major's is called the Bethlehem of the East because under the high altar is also the crib of Bethlehem, the crib of the baby Jesus from Bethlehem. And above it are the relics of St. Jerome, who had such a great love for Jesus and died there in Bethlehem.
St. Jerome can help us today to have a renewed love and appreciation of sacred scripture, knowing that through sacred scripture, we come to encounter Christ, know Christ more deeply, and fall in love with Christ and want to be ever more faithful in following Him. As he said so beautifully, "Ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Christ." May St. Jerome pray for us that we have a renewed love and devotion to sacred scripture and see it as a means to come more deeply united to our Savior in knowing Him and following Him.  
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.