Last week and today during his General Audiences, Pope Benedict focused on St. Jerome, whom most of us know as the translator of the Bible into Latin – the Vulgate – and his associations with lions. (The legend of St. Jerome and the lion has been retold many times, including a version by Rumer Godden. In it, the lion taken in by the monastery is falsely accused of killing the monastery’s donkey. He does his penance, but then is discovered to have been innocent all along, and he spends the rest of his days contentedly at St. Jerome’s side.)
The text of last week’s talk is here:

What can we learn from St. Jerome? Above all I think it is this: to love the word of God in sacred Scripture. St. Jerome said, “To ignore Scripture is to ignore Christ.” That is why it is important that every Christian live in contact and in personal dialogue with the word of God, given to us in sacred Scripture.
This dialogue should be of two dimensions. On one hand, it should be truly personal, because God speaks to each of us through sacred Scripture and has a message for each of us. We shouldn’t read sacred Scripture as a word from the past, but rather as the word of God addressed even to us, and we must try to understand what the Lord is telling us.
And so we don’t fall into individualism, we must also keep in mind that the word of God is given to us in order to build communion, to unite us in the truth along our way to God. Therefore, despite the fact that it is always a personal word, it is also a word that builds community, and that builds the Church itself. Therefore, we should read it in communion with the living Church.
The privileged place for reading and listening to the word of God is in the liturgy. By celebrating the word and rendering the Body of Christ present in the sacrament, we bring the word into our life and make it alive and present among us.
We should never forget that the word of God transcends time. Human opinions come and go; what is very modern today will be old tomorrow. But the word of God is the word of eternal life, it carries within itself eternity, which is always valuable. Carrying within ourselves the word of God, we also carry eternal life

And today’s is here. The bulk of today’s talk is taken up with citations from Jerome’s writings, particularly letters in which he gives guidance and advice on Scripture, prayer, personal behavior and parenting. With Scripture always at the center:

Jerome underlined the joy and importance of familiarizing oneself with the biblical texts: “Don’t you feel, here on Earth, that you are already in the kingdom of heaven, just by living in these texts, meditating on them, and not seeking anything else?” (Ep. 53,10).
In truth, to converse with God and with his word means to be in heaven’s presence, that is to say in God’s presence. To draw close to the biblical texts, above all to the New Testament, is essential for the believer, because “ignorance of Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” This is his famous sentence, also quoted by the Second Vatican Council in the constitution “Dei Verbum” (No. 25).
Truly “enchanted” by the Word of God, Jerome asked himself: “How could we live without the science of Scriptures, through which we learn how to know Christ himself, who is the life of the believer?” (Ep. 30,7). Hence the Bible, the instrument “with which God speaks to the faithful every day” (Ep. 133,13), becomes catalyst and source of Christian life for all situations and for everyone.
To read Scripture is to converse with God: “If you are praying,” he writes to a noble young lady from Rome, “you are speaking with the Groom; if you are reading, it is He who is speaking to you” (Ep. 22,25). The study and meditation of Scripture makes man wise and at peace (cf. In Eph., prol.). Certainly, to penetrate more deeply the word of God, a constant and increasing practice is necessary. This is what Jerome recommended to the priest Nepoziano: “Read the divine Scriptures with much regularity; let the Holy Book never be laid down by your hands. Learn there what you ought to teach (Ep. 52,7).”

Speaking of the Fathers, a few days ago, Fr. Z published a translation of a letter Pope Benedict recently wrote on the subject of St. John Chrysostom on the occasion of the 1600th anniversary of the saint’s death. His post summarizing the letter is here and the translation, in a .doc format, is here.  Fr. Z notes:

Chrysostom (“golden mouth”) is a figure who unites the East and West.  Indeed, and this is one of the things Pope Benedict is trying to say to the East, Chrysostom is a figure for reconciliation between the Churches.  The headline in L’Osservatore Romano when it reported the Letter read “Un vescovo per l’intera chiesa… A bishop for the whole Church.”  Chrysostom, in a special way among the Fathers, has been highly venerated by both East and West since his death.  Benedict cites St. Augustine of Hippo (+430) as the first to calls St. John a “Father”.  Benedict, as part of his larger “Marshall Plan” for the Church is deeply concerned with reconciliation of the Churches, both within (think of Summorum Pontificum) and more proximately but without, with the separated Eastern Churches.  Reconciliation of the Churches is a building block of this pontificate.  Pope Benedict takes pains to remind everyone in this Letter that St. John Chrysostom with great diplomacy together with the Bishop of Alexandria organized a delegation to Pope Siricius to help resolve the schism of the Church of Antioch.  Chrysostom helped resolve a schism. 
This act of diplomacy was not isolated from his theology.  It was a concrete gesture that flowed from his teaching.