ON S. BLAESILLA, ROMAN WIDOW.
Year of Christ 383.
CommentaryBlaesilla, widow at Rome (S.)
BHL Number: 1367
From various sources.
[1] The name of Blaesilla, a most noble and most devout widow, entered in the registers of the Blessed, is displayed by the German Martyrology, Constantius Felicius, Philip Ferrarius in the general catalogue of Saints and in the catalogue of the Saints of Italy, The feast of S. Blaesilla. Silvanus Razzi, volume 1, On Women Illustrious for Holiness. Baronius treats of her in volume 4, at the year 382, numbers 40, 42, 43. Spondanus in the compendium of Baronius under the same year, number 8.
[2] S. Jerome mentions her in various places. In Epistle 22 to S. Eustochium, her sister, On the Preservation of Virginity: "You have learned the burdens of marriage and the uncertainties of wedlock from a domestic example: In the seventh month she was bereaved of her husband, since your sister Blaesilla, older in age but lesser in purpose, after receiving a husband, was widowed in the seventh month. O unhappy human condition, ignorant of the future! She lost both the crown of virginity and the pleasure of marriage. And although widowhood holds the second degree of chastity, yet what crosses do you think she endures from moment to moment, seeing daily in her sister what she herself has lost; and though it is harder to go without a pleasure one has experienced, she has a lesser reward for her continence? Let her however be secure, let her be joyful; the hundredfold and the sixtyfold fruit come from the one seed of chastity."
[3] Jerome himself writes in Epistle 116 to S. Paula, her mother, and Eustochium, which is the preface to Ecclesiastes, how he stimulated S. Blaesilla in her widowhood to piety and divine worship: "I recall," he says, stimulated to virtue by S. Jerome, "about five years ago, when I was still at Rome and was reading Ecclesiastes to S. Blaesilla to provoke her to contempt of this world and to consider everything she saw in the world as nothing, that she asked me to discuss, in the manner of a little commentary, the more obscure passages, so that without me she might understand what she read. And so, since in the midst of our undertaking she was snatched away by sudden death, and we did not deserve, O Paula and Eustochium, such a companion of our life, and struck dumb then by so great a wound; now, stationed in Bethlehem, in a rather small city, I pay what I owe both to her memory and to you."
[4] The same Jerome, in Epistle 26 to S. Pammachius on the death of Paulina his wife, who was another sister of S. Blaesilla, writes thus: "At the close of my letter I recalled your chariot of four (which consisted of Pammachius, often praised by him. Paula, Eustochium, and Paulina) and noted that a fifth, Blaesilla, was missing from the proposed team, who was the first of you to precede to the Lord." S. Pammachius is venerated on 30 August; S. Eustochium on 28 September; and S. Paula on 26 January, where S. Jerome in her Life, no. 3, establishes S. Blaesilla as the eldest of her five children, and says he consoled Paula over her death, in Epistle 25, which Surius published on this day. Epistle 23 he wrote to S. Marcella (whose life we give on 31 January) concerning the illness of S. Blaesilla. We have excerpted from both letters those things which in any way presented the life of Blaesilla, omitting what did not pertain to her, since those letters are otherwise in everyone's hands.
[5] Epistle 23, cited above, commemorates the illness of Blaesilla and the occasion for renouncing all vanities, and among other things writes thus: After a grave illness, "We saw our Blaesilla burning continuously with the heat of fevers for nearly thirty days; so that she might know that the luxuries of the body are to be rejected, which is shortly to be plowed by worms. The Lord Jesus also came to her, and touched her hand, and behold, rising, she ministers to Him. She gave off something of negligence and riches, bound in bandages, she was lying in the tomb of the world; but Jesus groaned and, troubled in spirit, cried out saying: 'Blaesilla, come forth.' She, called, arose, and having come out, dines with the Lord. Let the Jews threaten and swell, let them seek to kill the one raised up: let the Apostles alone glory. She knows that she owes her life to Him who restored it: she knows that she embraces the feet of Him whose judgment she feared shortly before. The body lay almost lifeless, and approaching death was shaking the gasping limbs. Where then were the aids of relatives? Where were words emptier than all smoke? She owes you nothing, O ungrateful kinship, who has died to the world and been reborn to Christ. Let whoever is a Christian rejoice: whoever is angry shows that he is not a Christian."
[6] she renounces the pomps of the world and vain adornment, "Our widow formerly adorned herself more fastidiously, and all day long sought at the mirror what she might be lacking; now she speaks confidently: 'But we all, with unveiled face, reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.' Then her little maids arranged her hair, and her innocent head was bound with curling head-bands; now her neglected head knows that a veil alone is sufficient for it. At that time even the softness of feathers seemed hard, and she could scarcely lie upon piled-up couches; now she rises in haste for prayer, and with a ringing voice, snatching the Alleluia ahead of the others, she is the first to begin praising her Lord. Her knees are bent upon the bare ground, and her face, formerly stained with white lead, is cleansed with frequent tears. After prayer the psalms resound; assiduously devoted to the service of God. and her relaxed neck, tottering knees, and eyes drooping toward sleep, by the excessive ardor of her mind, scarcely obtain permission to rest. Her dark tunic is less soiled when she has lain on the ground. A cheaper shoe; the price of gilded footwear is lavished on the needy. Her belt is not adorned with gold and gems, but is of wool, most pure in all simplicity, and such as can bind her garments rather than tear them."
[7] In Epistle 25 he consoles the mother Paula on the death of Blaesilla, and proclaims many things about her virtues, beginning thus: "Who will give water to my head, and a fountain of tears to my eyes? And I shall weep, not, as Jeremiah says, for the wounded of my people; nor, like Jesus, for the misery of Jerusalem; but I shall weep for holiness, mercy, innocence, she died in the 20th year of her age, chastity; I shall weep that all virtues together have perished in the death of one person. Not that she is to be mourned who has departed; but that we must grieve with greater impatience who have ceased to see such a woman. For who with dry eyes would recall that a young woman of twenty years raised the banner of the Cross with such ardent faith that she grieved more for her lost virginity than for the death of her husband? Who would pass without sobs over her persistence in prayer, the brilliance of her tongue, skilled in languages, the tenacity of her memory, the sharpness of her intellect? If you had heard her speaking Greek, you would have thought she did not know Latin. If her tongue had turned to Roman speech, it had no foreign flavor at all. And indeed, what all Greece marvels at even in that great Origen, in a few, I will not say months, but days, she had so overcome the difficulties of the Hebrew language that she vied with her mother in learning and singing the psalms."
[8] conspicuous for the humility of her clothing, The humility of her clothing did not, as it often does with most people, betray a swelling spirit; rather, since she had cast herself down in her inward mind, there was no difference between the dress of her servant-maids and that of their mistress, except that she was more easily recognized because she went about more negligently attired. Her steps wavered from illness, and her thin neck could scarcely support her pale and trembling face; yet she always held either a Prophet or a Gospel in her hands. Tears fill the face; sobs seize the voice; and the troubled inward parts do not release the tongue that clings to the palate. When the burning of fevers was consuming her holy little body, and a circle of relatives surrounded the half-alive woman on her bed, she entrusted these as her final words: "Pray to the Lord Jesus, that He may forgive me, because I was unable to fulfill what I desired." Be at ease, my Blaesilla: we are confident; you prove true what we say. Conversion is never too late. This saying was first dedicated in the case of the thief: "Amen I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise." Luke 23.
[9] After, however, the soul had cast off the burden of the flesh and flown back to its Author, splendidly buried: and the long-wandering soul had ascended to its ancient possession; the funeral rites were prepared according to custom, and with the order of nobles going before, a golden covering was spread over the bier. splendidly buried: It seemed to me then that she was crying out from heaven: "I do not recognize these garments; this apparel is not mine; this adornment is foreign to me." But what are we doing? While intending to restrain a mother's tears, we ourselves are weeping. I confess my feelings: this entire letter is written with tears. Jesus also wept for Lazarus, because He loved him. He is not the best consoler whose own sighs overcome him, whose softened heart perspires with words broken in tears. I call to witness, my Paula, Jesus, whom Blaesilla now follows: I call to witness the holy Angels, whose fellowship she enjoys, that I endure the same torments of grief that you suffer; that I am a father in spirit, a foster-parent in love.
[10] Let us favor our Blaesilla, who has migrated from darkness to light, she had been contemplating the monastic life: and amid the ardor of incipient faith received the crown of a completed work. Truly, if untimely death had snatched her away while she was thinking of worldly desire and—which may God avert from His own—the pleasures of this life, she would have been worthy of lamentation and to be mourned with every fountain of tears. But now, since, with Christ being favorable, about four months ago she washed herself in what was, as it were, a second baptism of her resolution, and thereafter so lived that, having trampled the world, she always thought of a monastery, do you not fear that the Savior might say to you: "Are you angry, Paula, because your daughter has become my daughter?"
[11] Spare, I beseech you, yourself; spare your daughter who now reigns with Christ; spare at least your Eustochium, whose young age and nearly tender infancy is directed under your guidance. The devil now rages, and because he sees one of your children triumphing, grieving that he has been crushed, he seeks in the one remaining the victory that he has already lost in the one who has gone before. Great piety toward one's own she was carried out amid her mother's great mourning; is impiety toward God. Abraham joyfully slew his only son, and you complain that one of several has been crowned? I cannot speak without groaning what I am about to say. When they carried you half-dead from the midst of the funeral procession, the people whispered among themselves: "Is this not what we often used to say? She grieves for a daughter killed by fasting, because she did not at least hold grandchildren from a second marriage for her. How long will the detestable race of monks not be expelled from the City? Not be overwhelmed with stones? Not be cast into the waves? They have seduced a miserable matron, who is proved not to have been a true nun by the fact that no pagan woman ever so bewailed her children." What sadness do you think Christ felt at these words?...
[12] What crosses do you now suppose our Blaesilla suffers, what torments does she bear, seeing Christ displeased with you? She now cries out to her mourning mother: "If ever you loved me, mother, if I nursed at your breasts, if I was formed by your instructions, do not envy me my glory; and do not bring it about that we be separated forever. Do you think I am alone? In your place I have Mary, the Mother of the Lord. I see many here whom I did not know before. O how much better is this company! I have Anna, once prophesying in the Gospel: and, to increase your joy, the labors of so many years I have achieved in three months. We have both received the one palm of chastity. Do you pity me because I have left the world? But I grieve for your lot, whom the prison of this age still encloses, whom daily fighting in battle, now anger, now avarice, now lust, now the enticements of various vices drag to ruin. If you wish to be my mother, take care to please Christ. I do not acknowledge a mother who displeases my Lord." She speaks these and many other things which I pass over in silence, and she prays to the Lord for you, and obtains pardon of sins for me, so that I may be at ease concerning her state of mind: mindful of her own in heaven. because I warned, because I exhorted, because I endured the jealousy of relatives so that she might be saved. And so, while the spirit rules these limbs, while we enjoy the passage of this life, I pledge, I promise, I vow: my tongue shall resound with her, my labors shall be dedicated to her, my talent shall sweat for her. There shall be no page that does not proclaim Blaesilla: wherever the monuments of our discourse shall reach, she shall travel with my little works: virgins, widows, monks, and priests shall read her fixed in my mind. The brief span of her life shall be compensated by eternal memory; she who lives with Christ in heaven shall also live on the lips of men. The present age too shall pass away, and future centuries shall follow, which shall judge without love and without envy. Between the names of Paula and Eustochium she shall be placed in the middle: she shall never die in my books: she shall always hear me speaking, with her sister, with her mother."