(A.D. 404.)
[Roman Martyrology. S. Paula died on Jan. 26th, after sunset,
consequently some commemorate her on Jan. 27th. Authority: her life
written by S. Jerome, her director, in a letter to her daughter
Eustochium.]
[Illustration: S. PAULA.
Jan. 26.]
[Illustration: S. PRISCA.
From a Window at Winchester.
Jan. 18.]
[Illustration: S. PAUL.
After Vischer.
Jan. 18.]
The blessed Paula was born at Rome in the year 347. Her father was
Rogatus, of noble Grecian origin. Her mother, Blesilla, reckoned the
Gracchi, the Scipios and Paulus Aemilius among her ancestors. This
illustrious birth was made more honourable by her union with Toxotius,
of the Julian race, and very wealthy. Her virtues endeared her to the
people of Rome, and her modesty, gravity, and prudence caused her to be
generally respected. Her husband died when she was aged twenty-three,
and grief for his loss nearly brought her to the grave as well. Toxotius
left behind him four daughters, Blesilla, Paulina, Eustochium, Julia,
and Ruffina; the youngest child was a boy, and he bore the name of his
father.
The heart-broken widow at length found repose in submission to the will
of God. Filled with a sense of the vanity of all earthly things, she
strove to detach her affections daily from all save God. After the death
of her husband she would not sit down to table with any man, not even
with the bishops, whose advice she sought, and who were most hospitably
entertained in her house. By degrees she accustomed herself to plain
food, and inexpensive clothing. Instead of a downy couch, she made her
bed on the hard floor. "Hitherto all my care has been how I might please
my husband," said she, "now I will care for naught save how I may best
serve Jesus Christ."
She was now called on to bewail the death of her eldest daughter
Blesilla, who died shortly after her husband, to whom she had been
married only for a short time. S. Jerome wrote on this occasion to S.
Paula from Bethlehem. After having tenderly recalled the pale and gentle
face, bowed with exhaustion after fever on the slender neck, the angelic
form, of the departed daughter, S. Jerome adds; "But what am I doing? I
would dry the tears of a mother and mingle mine with hers. I do not
conceal my emotion. I write weeping. But Jesus wept over Lazarus,
because He loved him. It is difficult to console another when one is
also overwhelmed with grief, and when the broken heart can find no
words. O Paula, I take Jesus Christ to witness, whose Majesty Blesilla
now sees; I take the holy angels to witness, whose companion she now is;
that I suffer the same anguish of heart as you, for I, having been her
spiritual father, had learned to love her dearly."
Paula saw also her second daughter Paulina die, who had been married to
Tammachius, a man of noble consular birth, as illustrious for his piety
as for his descent, "the first of monks in the first of cities," S.
Jerome called him in after years, when he had embraced the monastic life
in Rome. She also survived her fourth daughter Ruffina, married to the
patrician Aletheus, but this affliction fell upon her when she was no
longer in Rome.
Her daughters had grown up, and her son Toxotius, having been secured a
careful bringing up, by his sister Ruffina, S. Paula felt that she might
now follow at liberty the bent of her desire. The stirring life in Rome
gave her no rest. Her noble birth and great wealth made her in great
request, and the time, which she desired to devote to God alone, was
broken up by the petty business and formalities of social life, which
could not be dispensed with in the great city. She therefore resolved to
abandon Rome, her palace, her crowds of servants, her numerous
acquaintances, many friends, and dear children.
She desired to visit the holy scenes consecrated by Christ, and then to
settle quietly down near her old confessor and director Jerome, then
inhabiting a cell at Bethlehem. It was no light matter parting with her
relations and children, but she had this consolation, Eustochium, her
unmarried daughter, accompanied her, one in heart with her mother,
desirous of consecrating her virginity, as Paula desired to dedicate her
widowhood, to Jesus Christ.
When they left Rome, the kinsmen accompanied them to the port. It was a
heart-breaking scene. Paula took her place on the deck of the vessel
that was to bear her away for ever. The anchor was drawn up, the
moorings cast loose, and the rowers bowed to their task. Then the grief
of Toxotius became incontrollable; he stretched forth his arms to her,
sobbing, "Mother, mother! do not leave me." The grief of the others was
silent, manifesting itself in copious tears. But Paula, raising her dry
eyes to heaven, turned her face from the shore, and conquered by a
superhuman effort the agony caused by the rending of so many dear ties.
On reaching Jerusalem she found that a palace had been furnished for her
reception by the governor, with every comfort and even luxury. She,
however, chose the meanest chamber therein, in which to lodge, and spent
her time in visiting the holy sites. She prayed long and earnestly
before the true Cross, kissed the stones on which the body of Jesus had
lain, and watered with her tears the dust of the Dolorous Way along
which He had borne His Cross.
She then journeyed to Bethlehem, and adored Christ in the cave of the
Nativity. Overwhelmed with awe she exclaimed, "Oh, how dare I, a poor
sinner, kiss the crib where the Lord wailed as a little babe? How dare I
offer my prayer, where the Virgin brought the Word into the world in the
substance of our flesh! Let the home of my Redeemer be henceforth my
resting place, here will I dwell where He walked the earth as man."
Having settled at Bethlehem into a poor little house, she engaged
workpeople to erect on the road to Jerusalem a spacious hospital for
pilgrims and sick persons, and also a monastery for S. Jerome and his
monks. She then erected three convents for women, with one church in
which all the inmates of the three houses assembled for the divine
office. There they met to sing prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers,
compline, and the midnight lauds; thus they daily sang the whole
psalter, which every sister was required to learn by heart. On Sundays
they went to the neighbouring church where the Divine Sacrifice was
offered, and where they communicated.
All the sisters worked with their hands, and made clothes for themselves
and for the poor. No man was ever suffered to set foot within their
doors. Paula governed them with great charity and discretion, animating
them by her own example. Neither she nor her daughter, Eustochium,
refused to perform the most menial offices in the sisterhood. If any of
the sisters proved talkative she was separated from the rest, and made
to walk last and to eat alone.
She was gladdened to hear in her retreat of the marriage of her son
Toxotius to a pious maiden, named Leta, to whom S. Jerome addressed the
first treatise on the education of women which the Christian spirit had
inspired, and which prepared for cloistral life the young Paula, her
daughter, devoted to the Lord from the cradle, and a nun, like her
grandmother and her aunt. He offered with the candour of genius, to
educate the child himself, and "old as I am," said he, "I shall accustom
myself to infantine lispings, more honoured in this than was Aristotle,
for I shall instruct not a king of Macedon, destined to perish by poison
of Babylon, but a servant and spouse of Christ, to be presented to Him
in the heavens."
But Toxotius and his wife seem to have thought that an aged monk,
immersed in study, would not prove so suitable for the nurture of the
little maiden as a woman, and they therefore sent her to S. Paula, her
grandmother. S. Paula lived to the age of fifty-six years and eight
months, of which she had spent in her widowhood five at Rome, and almost
twenty at Bethlehem. In her last illness she repeated almost incessantly
the verses of the psalms, which express the ardour of the soul to see
Jerusalem which is above, and there to be united to her God. When she
was no longer able to speak, she formed the sign of the Cross on her
lips, and expired in perfect peace, on Jan. 26th, A.D. 404. Her body,
borne by bishops, attended by acolytes holding lighted tapers, was
buried on the 28th of the same month, in the church of the Holy Manger
at Bethlehem.