Part 27 (2/2)

Footnotes: 1. Ch. ii. v. 9.

2. Eus. Hist. l. 5, c. 20, p. 188.

3. Cat. vir. ill.u.s.tr. c. 17.

4. See also 1 John ii. 18, 22, and 2 John 10.

5. St. Ignatius begins his letter to the faithful at Smyrna, by glorifying G.o.d for their great spiritual wisdom, saying he knew them to be perfect in their unshaken faith, as men crucified with our Lord Jesus in flesh and in spirit, and deeply grounded in charity by the blood of Christ. He then solidly confutes the Docaetae, heretics who imagined that Christ was not incarnate, and died only in appearance; whom he calls demoniacs. He adds: ”I give you this caution, knowing that you hold the true faith, but that you may stand upon your guard against these wild beasts in human shape, whom you ought not to receive under your roof, nor even meet if possible; and be content only to pray for them that they may be converted, if it be possible; for it is very difficult; though it is in the power of Jesus Christ, our true life. If Jesus Christ did all this in appearance only, then I am only chained in imagination; and why have I delivered myself up to death, to fire, to the sword, to beasts?

but who is near the sword, is near G.o.d; he who is among beasts is with G.o.d. I suffer all things only in the name of Jesus Christ, that I may suffer with him, he giving me strength, who was made perfectly man. What does it avail me to be commended by any one, if he blasphemes our Lord, not confessing him to have flesh? The whole consists in faith and charity; nothing can take place before these.

Now consider those who maintain a false opinion of the grace of Jesus Christ, how they also oppose charity; they take no care of the widow, or orphan, or him who is afflicted, or pining with hunger or thirst. _They abstain from the Eucharist and prayer, (says he,) because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which was crucified for our sins, and which the Father, by his goodness, raised again._ It is advisable for you to separate yourselves from them, and neither to speak to them in public or in private. Shun schisms and all discord, as the source of evils. Follow your bishop as Christ his Father, and the college of priests as the apostles; respect the deacons as the precept of G.o.d.

Let no one do any thing that belongs to the church without the bishop. Let that Eucharist be regarded as lawful which is celebrated by the bishop, or one commissioned by him. Wherever the bishop makes his appearance, there let the people be a.s.sembled, as wherever Christ Jesus is, there is the Catholic church. It is not lawful to baptize or celebrate the Agape without the bishop or his authority.

What he approves of is acceptable to G.o.d. He who does any thing without the bishop's knowledge, serves the devil.” The saint most affectionately thanks them for the kindness they had shown him and his followers; begs they will depute some person to his church in Syria, to congratulate with his flock for the peace which G.o.d had restored to them, adding that he was unworthy to be called a member of that church of which he was the last. He asks the succor of their prayers, that by them he might enjoy G.o.d. ”Seeing,” says he, ”that you are perfect, entertain perfect sentiments of virtue: for G.o.d is ready to bestow on you who desire to do well.” After the most tender salutations of many in particular, and of all in general, especially the virgins who were called widows, (_i.e._ the deaconesses, who were called widows, because they were often such, though these were virgins,) he closes his letter by praying for their advancement in all charity, grace, mercy, peace, and patience. St. Ign. ep. ad Smyrnaeos, p. 872, ed. Cotel.

The apostolic St. Ignatius writes as follows, in his letter to St.

Polycarp. ”Thy resolution in G.o.d, founded as it were upon an unshaken rock, I exceedingly commend, having been made worthy of thy holy face, which I pray I may enjoy in G.o.d. I conjure thee in the grace with which thou art enriched, to increase thy stock in thy course, and to exhort all that they may be saved. Have great care of unity and concord, than which nothing is better. Bear with all men, that G.o.d may bear with thee; bear all men by charity, as thou dost apply thyself to prayer without interruption. Ask more perfect understanding than thou hast. Watch, seeing that the spirit which sleepeth not, dwelleth within thee. Speak to every one according to the grace which G.o.d giveth thee. Bear the weaknesses and distemper of all as a stout champion. Where the labor is greater, the gain is exceeding great. If thou lovest the disciples that are good, thou deservest not thanks; strive rather to subdue the wicked by meekness. Every wound is not healed by the same plaster; a.s.suage inflammations by lenitives. Be not intimidated by those who seem worthy of faith, yet teach things that are foreign. Stand firm, as an anvil which is beaten: it is the property of a true champion to be struck and to conquer. Let not the widows be neglected. Let religious a.s.semblies be most frequent. Seek out every one in them by name. Despise not the slaves, neither suffer them to be puffed up; but to the glory of G.o.d let them serve with greater diligence, that they may obtain of G.o.d a better liberty. Let them not desire that their liberty be purchased or procured for them by the congregation, lest they fall under the slavery of their own pa.s.sions. Fly evil artifices; let them not be so much as named. Engage my sisters to love the Lord, and never entertain a thought of any man but their husbands. In like manner enjoin my brethren, in the name of Jesus Christ, to love their wives as Christ loveth his church. If any one is able to remain in a state of continency, in honor of our Lord's flesh, let him be constantly humble: if he boasts, or is puffed up, he is lost. Let all marriages be made by the authority of the bishop, that they may be made in the Lord, not by the pa.s.sions of men. Let all things be done to the honor of G.o.d.” Then addressing himself to all the faithful at Smyrna, he writes: ”Listen to your bishop, that G.o.d may also hearken to you. With joy I would lay down my life for those who are subject to the bishop, priests, and deacons. May my portion be with them in G.o.d. Let all things be in common among you: your labor, your warfare, your sufferings, your rest, and your watching, as becomes the dispensers, the a.s.sessors, and the servants of G.o.d. Please hi, in whose service you fight, and from whom you receive your salary. Let your baptism be always your weapons, faith your helmet, charity your spear, and patience your complete armor. Let your good works the the treasure which you lay up, that you may receive the fruit which is worthy. Bear with each other in all meekness, as G.o.d bears with you. I pray that I may always enjoy and rejoice in you. Because the church of Antioch by our prayers now enjoys peace, I am in mind secure in G.o.d; provided still that by suffering I may go to G.o.d, and be found in the resurrection your servant. You will do well, O Polycarp, most blessed in G.o.d, to hold an a.s.sembly, and choose a very dear person fit for dispatch in a journey, who may be styled the divine messenger; him honor with a commission to go to Antioch, and there bear witness of the fervor of your charity. A Christian lives not for himself alone, but belongs to G.o.d.” The holy martyr concludes by desiring St. Polycarp to write for him to the other churches of Asia, he being at that moment called on board by his guards to sail from Troas to Naples.

6. St. Iren. b. 3, c. 3. Euseb. b. 5, c. 24. S. Hieron. c. 17.

7. N. 1, and 4.

8. [Greek: To tur hen autois psuxron to ton apathon basanitzon.]

Frigidis ipsis videbatur immanium carnific.u.m ignis. n. 2, p. 1020.

9. Dr. Middleton pretends, that this voice was only heard by some few; but the acts in Ruinart say, by those who were present, [Greek: hoi parontes]: Eusebius says, [Greek: polloi]: Rufinus _plurimi_, very many. A voice from heaven must certainly be sensibly discerned to be more than human, and manifest itself sufficiently, to be perceived that it could not come from the crowd.

10. L. 71.

11. Or. 20, 21, 22, 41.

12. The great council of Asia seems to have been held at that time in Smyrna, instead of Ephesus, which the Arundelian marbles show sometimes to have been done.

13. Or president of the public games, chosen yearly by the common-council of Asia.

14. Dr. Middleton ridicules the mention of a dove issuing out of the wound of the side; but this is only found in some modern MSS. by the blunder of a transcriber: it is not in Eusebius, Rufinus, Nicephorus, or the Greek Menaea; though the last two would have magnified a prodigy if they had found the least authority for any.

According to Le Moyen, (Proleg. ad varia sacra.) Ceillier, &c., the true reading is [Greek: ep apisera], on the left side; which some transcriber blundered into [Greek: perisera], a dove. As to the foregoing miracle, that a wind should naturally divest the fire of its property of burning, and form it into an arch about the body, is a much more wonderful supposition of the doctor's than any miracle.

15. St. Polycarp says himself, ”That he had served Christ eighty-six years.” Basnage thinks he had been bishop so long, and was a hundred and twenty years old when he suffered: but it is far more probable that this is the term he had been a Christian, having been converted in his youth, and dying about one hundred years old or upwards, as Tillemont understands it.

16. 1 John iv. 3.

17. Some of the Philippians had seen St. Ignatius in chains, and perhaps at Rome. The primitive martyrs, Zozimus and Rufus, are commemorated in the Martyrologies on the 18th of December.

ST. PAULA, WIDOW.

This ill.u.s.trious pattern of widows surpa.s.sed all other Roman ladies in riches, birth, and the endowments of mind. She was born on the 5th of May, in 347. The blood of the Scipios, the Gracchi, and Paulus aemilius, was centred in her by her mother Blesilla. Her father derived his pedigree from Agamemnon, and her husband Toxotius his from Iulus and aeneas. By him she had a son called also Toxotius, and four daughters, namely, Blesilla, Paulina, Eustochium, and Rufina. She shone a bright pattern of virtue in the married state, and both she and her husband edified Rome by their good example; but her virtue was not without its alloy; a certain degree of the love of the world being almost inseparable from honors and high life. She did not discern the secret attachments of her heart, nor feel the weight of her own chains: she had neither courage to break them, nor light whereby to take a clear and distinct view of her spiritual poverty and misery. G.o.d, compa.s.sionating her weakness, was pleased in his mercy to open her eyes by violence, and sent her the greatest affliction that could befall her in the death of her husband, when she was only thirty-two years of age. Her grief was immoderate till such time as she was encouraged to devote herself totally to G.o.d, by the exhortations of her friend St. Marcella, a holy widow, who then edified Rome by her penitential life. Paula, thus excited to set aside her sorrow, erected in her heart the standard of the cross of Jesus Christ, and courageously resolved to walk after it.

From that time, she never sat at table with any man, not even with any of the holy bishops and saints whom she entertained. She abstained from all flesh meat, fish, eggs, honey, and wine; used oil only on holydays; lay on a stone floor covered with sackcloth; renounced all visits and worldly amus.e.m.e.nts, laid aside all costly garments, and gave every thing to the poor which it was in her power to dispose of. She was careful in inquiring after the necessitous, and deemed it a loss on her side if any other hands than her own administered relief to them. It was usual with her to say, that she could not make a better provision for her children, than to secure for them by alms the blessings of heaven. Her occupation was prayer, pious reading, and fasting. She could not bear the distraction of company, which interrupted her commerce with G.o.d; and, if ever she sought conversation, it was with the servants of G.o.d for her own edification. She lodged St. Epiphanius and St. Paulinus of Antioch, when they came to Rome; and St. Jerom was her director in the service of G.o.d, during his stay in that city for two years and a half, under pope Damasus. Her eldest daughter Blesilla, having, in a short time after marriage, lost her husband, came to a resolution of forsaking the world, but died before she could compa.s.s her pious design. The mother felt this affliction too sensibly. St. Jerom, who at that time was newly arrived at Bethlehem, in 384, wrote to her both to comfort and reprove her.[1]

He first condoles their common loss; but adds {230} that G.o.d is master, that we are bound to rejoice in his will, always holy and just, to thank and praise him for all things; and, above all, not to mourn for a death at which the angels attend, and for one who by it departs to enjoy Christ: and that it is only the continuation of our banishment which we ought to lament. ”Blesilla,” says he, ”has received her crown, dying in the fervor of her resolution, in which she had purified her soul near four months.” He adds, that Christ seemed to reproach her grief in these terms: ”Art thou angry, O Paula! that thy daughter is made mine? Thou art offended at my providence, and by thy rebellious tears, thou dost offer an injury to me who possess her.”[2] He pardons some tears in a mother, occasioned by the involuntary sensibility of nature; but calls her excess in them a scandal to religion, abounding with sacrilege and infidelity: adding, that Blesilla herself mourned, as far as her happy state would allow, to see her offend Christ, and cried out to her; ”Envy not my glory: commit not what may forever separate us. I am not alone.

Instead of you I have the mother of G.o.d, I have many companions whom I never knew before. You mourn for me because I have left the world; and I pity your prison and dangers in it.” Paula afterwards, completing the victory over herself, showed herself greatly superior to this weakness.

Her second daughter Paulina was married to St. Pammachius, and died in 397. Eustochium, the third, was her individual companion. Rufina died young.

The greater progress Paula made in spiritual exercises, and in the relish of heavenly things, the more insupportable to her was the tumultuous life of the city. She sighed after the deserts, longed to be disinc.u.mbered of attendants, and to live in a hermitage, where her heart would have no other occupation than on G.o.d. The thirst after so great a happiness made her ready to forget her house, family, riches, and friends; yet never did mother love her children more tenderly.[3] At the thought of leaving them her bowels yearned, and being in an agony of grief, she seemed as if she had been torn from herself. But in this she was the most wonderful of mothers, that while she felt in her soul the greatest emotions of tenderness, she knew how to keep them within due bounds. The strength of her faith gave her an ascendant over the sentiments of nature, and she even desired this cruel separation, bearing it with joy, out of a pure and heroic love of G.o.d. She had indeed taken a previous care to have all her children brought up saints; otherwise her design would have been unjustifiable. Being therefore fixed in her resolution, and having settled her affairs, she went to the water side, attended by her brother, relations, friends, and children, who all strove by their tears to overcome her constancy. Even when the vessel was ready to sail, her little son Toxotius, with uplifted hands on the sh.o.r.e, and bitterly weeping, begged her not to leave him. The rest, who were not able to speak with gus.h.i.+ng tears, prayed her to defer at least her voluntary banishment. But Paula, raising her dry eyes to heaven, turned her face from the sh.o.r.e, lest she should discover what she could not behold without feeling the most sensible pangs of sorrow.

She sailed first to Cyprus, where she was detained ten days by St.

Epiphanius; and from thence to Syria. Her long journeys by land she performed on the backs of a.s.ses; she, who till then had been accustomed to be carried about by eunuchs in litters. She visited with great devotion all the princ.i.p.al places which we read to have been consecrated by the mysteries of the life of our divine Redeemer, as also the respective abodes of all the princ.i.p.al anch.o.r.ets and holy solitaries of Egypt and Syria. At Jerusalem the proconsul had prepared a stately palace richly furnished for her reception; but excusing herself with regard {231} to the proffered favor, she chose to lodge in an humble cell. In this holy place her fervor was redoubled at the sight of each sacred monument, as St. Jerom describes. She prostrated herself before the holy cross, pouring forth her soul in love and adoration, as if she had beheld our Saviour still bleeding upon it. On entering the sepulchre, she kissed the stone which she angel removed on the occasion of our Lord's resurrection, and imparted many kisses full of faith and devotion to the place where the body of Christ had been laid. On her arrival at Bethlehem, she entered the cave or stable in which the Saviour of the world was born, and she saluted the crib with tears of joy, crying out; ”I, a miserable sinner, am made worthy to kiss the manger, in which my Lord was pleased to be laid an infant babe weeping for me! This is my dwelling-place, because it was the country chosen by my Lord for himself.”

After her journeys of devotion, in which she distributed immense alms, she settled at Bethlehem with her daughter Eustochium, under the direction of St. Jerom. The three first years she spent there in a poor little house; but in the mean time she took care to have a hospital built on the road to Jerusalem, as also a monastery for St. Jerom and his monks, whom she maintained; besides three monasteries for women, which properly made but one house, for all a.s.sembled in the same chapel to perform together the divine service day and night; and on Sundays in the church that was adjoining. At prime, tierce, s.e.xt, none, vespers, complin, and the midnight office, they daily sung the whole psalter, which every sister was obliged to know by heart. Their food was very coa.r.s.e and temperate, their fasts frequent and austere. All the sisters worked with their hands, and made clothes for themselves and others. All wore the same uniform poor habit, and used no linen except for the wiping of their hands. No man was ever suffered to set a foot within their doors. Paula governed them with a charity full of discretion, animating them in the practice of every virtue by her own example and instructions, being always the first, or among the first, in every duty; sharing with her daughter Eustochium in all the drudgery and meanest offices of the house, and appearing everywhere as the last of her sisters. She severely reprimanded a studied neatness in dress, which she called an uncleanness of the mind. If any one was found talkative, or angry, she was separated from the rest, ordered to walk the last in order, to pray at the outside of the door, and for some time to eat alone. The holy abbess was so tender of the sick, that she sometimes allowed them to eat flesh-meat, but would not admit of the same indulgence in her own ailments, nor even allow herself a drop of wine in the water she drank. She extended her love of poverty to her buildings and churches, ordering them all to be built low, and without any thing costly or magnificent; she said that money is better laid out on the poor, who are the living members of Christ. She wept so bitterly for the smallest faults, that others would have thought her guilty of grievous crimes. Under an overflow of natural grief for the death of her children, she made frequent signs of the cross on her mouth and breast to overcome nature, and remained always perfectly resigned in her soul to the will of G.o.d. Her son Toxotius married Laeta, daughter to a priest of the idols, but, as to herself, she was a most virtuous Christian.

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