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 God 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 God, 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
disincumbered of attendants, and to live in a hermitage, where her heart
would have no other occupation than on God. 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 fa