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Commentary on 1 Timothy 3:9Ambrosiaster(Verse 14, 15.) I write these things to you, my son Timothy, hoping to come to you soon. But if I delay, I want you to know how you ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. As for his knowledge, it was relevant that he would see him sooner: but because what pleases God is accustomed to be different, and his providence is only known to him, therefore, he says, in case I am delayed, I write to you so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the church which is the household of God; even though the whole world belongs to God, nevertheless his house is called the Church, of which Damasus is the current ruler. For the world is indeed in a state of perversion, disturbed by various errors; therefore, it is necessary that the house of God be said to be there, and the truth, where it is reverenced according to His will. To those who profess to be His servants, He has marked these virtues, which can be done by no other; so that unbelief, accused by these, may perish without excuse. For the signs and wonders of this truth are the foundation.Against Jovinianus · Book 2 2:19Jerome31. As regards your attempt to show that railing and murder, the use of the expression raca and adultery, the idle word and godlessness, are rewarded with the same punishment, I have already given you my reply, and will now briefly repeat it. You must either deny that you are a sinner if you are not to be indanger of Gehenna: or, if you are a sinner you will be sent to hell for even a light offence: "The mouth that lieth," says one, "kills the soul." I suspect that you, like other men, have occasionally told a lie: for all men are liars, that God alone may be true, and that He may be justified in His words, and may prevail when He judges. It follows either that you will not be a man lest you be found a liar: or if you are a man and are consequently a liar, you will be punished with parricides and adulterers. For you admit no difference between sins, and the gratitude of those whom you raise from the mire and set on high will not equal the rage against you of those whom for the trifling offences of daily life you have thrust into utter darkness. And if it be so that in a persecution one is stifled, another beheaded, another floes, or the fourth dies within the walls of a prison, and one crown of victory awaits various kinds of struggle, the fact tells in our favour. For in martyrdom it is the will, which gives occasion to the death, that is crowned. My duty is to resist the frenzy of the heathen, and not deny the Lord. It rests with them either to behead, or to burn, or to shut up in prison, or enforce various other penalties. But if I escape, and die in solitude. there will not at my death be the same crown for me as for them, because the confession of Christ will not have been to me as to them the cause of death. As for your remark that absolutely no difference was made between the brother who had always been with his father, and him who was afterwards welcomed as a penitent, I am willing to add, if you like, that the one drachma which was lost and was found was put with the others, and that the one sheep which the good shepherd, leaving the ninety and nine, sought and brought back, made up the full tale of a hundred. But it is one thing to be a penitent, and with tears sue for pardon, another to be always with the father. And so both the shepherd and the father say by the mouth of Ezekiel to the sheep that was carried back, and to the son that was lost, "And I will establish my covenant with thee; and thou shall know that I am the Lord: that thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth ever more, because of thy shame, when I have forgiven thee all that thou hast done." That penitents may have their due it is enough for them to feel shame instead of all other punishment. Hence in another place it is said to them, "Then shall ye remember your evil ways, and all the crimes wherewith ye were defiled, and ye shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the wickedness that ye have done; and ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have done you good for my name's sake, and not according to your evil ways, nor according to your evil doings." The son, moreover, was reproved by his father for envying his brother's deliverance, and for being tormented by jealousy while the angels in heaven were rejoicing. The parallel, however, is not to be drawn between the merits of the two sons (one of whom was temperate, the other a prodigal) and those of the whole human race, but the characters depicted are either Jews and Christians, or saints and penitents. In the lifetime of Bishop Damasus I dedicated to him a small treatise upon this parable.Chronicle · Pages 188-332 95:20Jeromee Damasus is ordained 35th bishop of the Roman Church, and after a not very long interval Ursinus, is appointed bishop by some people, and with his partisans invaded (the church of) Sicininum, in which, 6 l The Church of the Holy Apostles is dedicated in Constantinople. 370Letters · letter_022 2:1Jerome22. How great inconveniences are involved in wedlock and how many anxieties encompass it I have, I think, described shortly in my treatise-published against Helvidius -on the perpetual virginity of the blessed Mary. It would be tedious to go over the same ground now; and any one who pleases may draw from that fountain. But lest I should seem wholly to have passed over the matter, I will just say now that the apostle bids us pray without ceasing, [1 Thess. 5:17] and that he who in the married state renders his wife her due [1 Cor. 7:3, R.V] cannot so pray. Either we pray always and are virgins, or we cease to pray that we may fulfil the claims of marriage. Still he says: "If a virgin marry she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh." [1 Cor. 7:28] At the outset I promised that I should say little or nothing of the embarrassments of wedlock, and now I give you notice to the same effect. If you want to know from how many vexations a virgin is free and by how many a wife is fettered you should read Tertullian "to a philosophic friend," and his other treatises on virginity, the blessed Cyprian's noble volume, the writings of Pope Damasus in prose and verse, and the treatises recently written for his sister by our own Ambrose. In these he has poured forth his soul with such a flood of eloquence that he has sought out, set forth, and put in order all that bears on the praise of virgins.Commentary on John 202:23Thomas AquinasPossibly the climax of the fourth century came with the Council of’ Rome in 382 under Pope St. Damasus I, in which the whole development of Christian doctrine up to that date was summarized in the Tomus Damasi, and the canonical books of Sacred Scripture were fixed as we have them today (see Denz. 152-180).TREATISE ON THE CARDINAL VIRTUES · Question 86 1:20Thomas AquinasOn the contrary, A canon of Pope Damasus [*Damasus I] quoted X, qu. i [*Can. Hanc consuetudinem], says: "None but the priests whom day by day we see serving the Lord may eat and drink of the oblations which are offered within the precincts of the Holy Church: because in the Old Testament the Lord forbade the children of Israel to eat the sacred loaves, with the exception of Aaron and his sons" ( Lev. 24:8 , 9 ).June 2:4The Roman MartyrologyTheir bodies were buried in the crypt, hard by the body of holy Tibertius, and holy Pope Damasus in after-days decorated their grave with a set of verses.